Last of three parts
By COURTNEY FLATT/Northwest Public Broadcasting
NEWPORT – Nothing stays still when living on a research vessel.
Not the mug placed on a vinyl-covered mess hall table. Not the sample of plankton left on a stainless steel lab bench. Not the water that sloshes around in the bottom of a shower.
Especially not time.
That’s why the crew and officers of the Bell M. Shimada research vessel work as a team and live as a family as they help scientists seek answers from the ocean.
The Bell M. Shimada is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel based in Newport and designed to gather scientific information. But it’s the collaborative effort of the crew and officers that makes scientific endeavors at sea possible.
During an 11-day research trip in May, the crew worked demanding 12-hour shifts as officers drove the ship non-stop through weather and complicated channels near Newport. On board was a 13-person science crew for a twice-a-year study of the Northern California Current ecosystem that runs from northern California to Washington.
“Before coming out to the Shimada, I hadn’t been out to sea more than just a couple weeks,” said Jonathan Witmer, a NOAA survey technician.
Witmer and others stay out at sea more than 220 days a year, although not all in a row, which means a lot of time away from family and land. However, the crew and officers say they don’t mind because of the ship’s science-based mission and the second-family they’ve made living below deck.
“We’re in a workplace where, when most people go to work, they only have to see those people for a certain amount of time,” Witmer said. “Then, they get to go home and reset. Here, you live with these people. You become more forgiving.”
People on board the Shimada seek different reset buttons. Like the organized cornhole tournament.
Teams of two, including officers, crew and scientists, tested their skill at the popular beanbag game. The first to score 21 points, without going over, wins. Any beanbags tossed overboard, a distinct possibility when playing on the 44-foot high fly bridge, results in an automatic disqualification.
Players adhere strictly to the rules. A dispute in the semifinals was resolved by consulting the National Cornhole Association website.
Others release stress over a chessboard each night in the mess hall, quietly contemplating moves as others grab snacks. People pile into the ship’s six-recliner theater to watch movies during off hours, or when the ship travels between sampling stations, sometimes a 20-hour commute.
A small city on water
While the atmosphere can be fun at times, work always takes precedence.
“It’s a hard lifestyle that’s maybe not for everybody,” said Cmdr. Amanda Goeller. “There isn’t anybody that isn’t an active member of getting the operations done every day.”
On the May voyage, the scientists aboard the Shimada surveyed the Northern California Current ecosystem, hoping to open up the ocean’s black box a tiny crack. With each study, the scientists onboard continue to unravel the mysteries of the deep — the physical condition of the ocean, how sea life survives, and what a changing climate could mean for the future.
That research takes time. The Shimada can stay on the ocean for around 40 days at a time, although the ship usually doesn’t stay at sea for much longer than three weeks, said John Wolfston, the ship’s lead engineer. Each voyage is limited by the amount of food the ship can stock.
In addition, the ship basically operates like a small city – making water, feeding crew, incinerating trash.
“It’s a city that can sink,” Wolfston said.
The ship carries 100,000 gallons of fuel, Wolfston said, and uses anywhere from 1,500 to 2,500 gallons of fuel per day. The engineering team also brings everything it needs to fix anything that might break, while maintaining and monitoring the rest of equipment that runs the ship.
“It’s about 90 percent calmness and 10 percent ‘oh crap,’” Wolfston said of most ship repairs.
The 208-foot Bell M. Shimada is constructed to allow it to quietly move through the water to leave sea life undisturbed and measurable, said Roger Hewitt, the assistant center director for NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
The ship uses “active acoustics” to measure fish abundance in the ocean. Instead of dragging tools and listening for noise, the ship sends out a signal to ping off whatever was below, like echolocation, which is a technique often used in the animal world by dolphins and bats. The acoustics array on the Shimada is one of three such systems worldwide.
In addition, the ship’s design lessens disturbances for sea life with a welded steel and aluminum hull, which minimized bubbles generated by the ship. The engines and generators are mounted on shock absorbers. Walls are thickly insulated.
“So ultimately it’s a very, very quiet ship,” Hewitt said.
Special boat, special namesake
With envelope-pushing equipment, this ship followed in the footsteps of its namesake, fisheries biologist Bell M. Shimada, an internationally-known scientist.
Shimada, born in the United States, was imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho, in 1942. At the time, he had been studying fisheries at the University of Washington. A year after his imprisonment, he enlisted in the U.S. Army.
Among other research gigs after the war, Shimada worked for the Pacific Oceanic Fisheries Investigations in Hawaii, where he often went to sea on research vessels.
He then moved to the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, where he made his name studying Pacific tropical tuna stocks, leading early studies of tuna feeding patterns, distribution and spawning.
While en route to conduct more surveys of Pacific tuna, Shimada’s plane crashed near Guadalajara, killing Shimada, 36, and fellow researcher Townsend Cromwell, 36, after whom a now decommissioned NOAA research was named. In 2007, a group of five freshmen from Marina High School in Huntington Beach, Calif., nominated Shimada as this ship’s namesake.
And many shipmates have since shared experiences on this vessel.
Three current crew members took the Shimada on its maiden voyage. In the naval world, they’re known as plank holders or plank owners: Bruce Knoepke, chief bosun; Matt McFarland, lead fisherman; and Goeller.
The plank holders saw the ship built in Mississippi. Everything on the boat had to be carried on board, a procedure known as the initial outfitting list.
“Think about every spoon, every pillow, every block. Everything that ever needed to come on the boat, we had to organize and assess,” Goeller said.
Then, the crew brought the Shimada through the Panama Canal so it could conduct research surveys on the West Coast. For all of the original crew, driving through the Panama Canal at night marked a highlight of their time onboard.
“That entire experience, I’ll never forget,” McFarland said 12 years later.
Dedication to research
The work isn’t easy and crew members could make more money on commercial oil tankers.
“Right now, they’re having a hard time staffing these (research) ships because there’s a lot of demand for seagoing people,” Hewitt said. “A lot of them work for NOAA because they like the mission, which is why they would rather work on a vessel that’s out there assessing how many fish there are and how many can be sustainably caught as opposed to lugging oil around or cargo around.”
Those on board the Shimada enjoy its unique culture, often cited as “Shimadatude,” said Lt. Cmdr. Justin Ellis.
“Every ship has a personality,” Ellis said. “People come and go. Captains come and go. Chief engineers come and go. Here, it’s just a pleasant, professional, can-do attitude that has pervaded overtime. It’s an even-keeled ship.”
The survey trips might seem long at the time, but the days pass by quickly because all on board work to help the science crew get the information they need, he said.
Moreover, Ellis said, the ship’s crew and officers take pride in the success of the scientists’ work and helping the fishing communities where they live.
“We’re not all scientists. We don’t all understand fisheries biology. We don’t all know about copepods and plankton,” Ellis said. “But everyone that works on this ship has chosen to work on a research vessel. The vast majority, if not all, are here because they feel good about the work they’re doing.”
- Courtney Flatt is a Richland, Wash.-based reporter for Northwest Public Broadcasting who traveled with researchers about the Bell M. Shimada during its trip off the west coast in May.