Here's a brief, reconstructed travel-ogue so that you can begin to understand the daily torments of science. All times are approximate--especially the fishing site arrival times--because being in the field is like a time warp.
11:00 am Friday: I arrive in the lab. An out of breath DLC tells me that "we need to go to Louisiana this weekend"
12:00-3:00 pm Friday: I research tides, contact a research center "Can you guys help us out? We need to have fish in traps when we get there" and "I'm sorry, I'm just a grad student."
3:00-8:00 pm Friday: I ran down to South Miami to pick something up and when I got back DLC's car was gone. I went to see if Laura had heard anything about where he was--since she's working over in MFO's lab these days. I walked in and mfo was standing there. We looked at eachother and jointly exclaimed "I thought you were with dlc" No one knows where he is. I sort out gear in the equipment locker, baton down the hatches in the wetlab and head home for a quick dinner with Laura. I end up having a long dinner and watching Friday Night Wrestling.
8:00-10:00 pm Friday: dlc and I go pick up a van from main campus. I am shocked and worried when I realize it is a 15 seater. We drive over to the island and load gear.
10:00pm Friday to 2:00 pm Saturday: We drive. I take the reigns (wheel) at 4am Saturday morning. Driving the van is difficult. It groans when you turn the wheel and at low speeds has ridiculous amounts of play in the steering and at high speeds seems to respond to the slightest touch. It must be muscled down the interstate. I drink 3 red bulls. dlc takes over again around 8 after a Waffle House breakfast. I get a few hours of sleep in the back. I take over again around 11 and drive the rest of the way to Grand Isle. We stop at every Frank's Super Value between the first tourist info center off Highway 90 and Golden Meadows. We are told that there is a toll bridge before Grand Isle and that the passes must be purchased at designated locations only.
Southern LA is depressed. There is nary a flat surface that doesn't look like it's affected by rot/rust/mold. The shrimp boats are all lined up in the canals and they look positively defeated. The placards outside the churches say things like "BP options meeting tonight 7pm"
2:00-6:00 PM Saturday
We made it over the bridge. We wanted to get out to the Grand Isle state park out there on the island but we couldn't because it had been closed since Friday. after much driving around managed to locate a vacant lot with creek access. We unloaded gear and threw in some traps. I noticed the oil first. I was expecting thick black sludge, like in the Exxon Valdez pictures I remember seeing when I was young. I also expected there to be some crying baby seals. Instead it looked different. It was thin and brown and washing up at the edges of the creek. "Is that oil?" dlc didn't know either. After we pulled a few traps out later it was clear that it was indeed oil. Our traps were shiny and coated with a thin film of nast.
We saw much less than this:
It looked a lot like this:
I didn't take any pictures because I was too miserable. It was HOT and I was tired. I tried to take a nap underneath the van but the ground was hot. I grabbed an umbrella that I found in the van and tried to huddle up under it, but it didn't help. We had a breeze.
6:00pm Saturday to Midnight Sunday:
We caught some fish and loaded up the van and drove over to Cocodrie, LA to a research station there. We met up with another scientist who had collected some fish for us from Cocodrie. We dissected our Grand Isle fish and our Cocodrie fish. Dlc and I can dissect like a well oiled machine. We did 60 fish in 2 hours. Not bad.
12:00am-6:00am Sunday: We sleep in beds. The dorms at the research station are really nice and sex-segregated so I get my very own room. Ahhhh. Luxury.
7:00am Sunday: We have breakfast in a small diner. We're the only people in there that are 'not from around here, huh?' The scientists make allusions to My Cousin Vinny "I guess I'll have the breakfast" and I listen to the locals discuss their BP dividends. They seem very angry.
7:30am - 12:00pm Sunday: We drive to Dauphin Island AL.
12:00pm - 6:30 pm Sunday We fish by the side of the road there. No luck. No luck. We even try a bait shop. It is HOT again. Only here there is no breeze. dlc and I construct a sun break out of several garbage bags. We tape them to the open rear doors of the van. We manage to have about 4 square feet of shade. I get sunburnt. I throw a trap too far into the creek and have to swim out to get it. The mud only comes up to my shins and the water is cool. I feel better for a little while until the grit in my boots begins to rub the skin off my legs. Around 4 we move to a different site a little down the road (by the pay-to-fish pier, Meredith...you know the place). We catch lots of fish. I am a master-fisherman and know exactly where to put the traps. By the oysters. Dlc heads off across the creek to a little island and stomps through the porcupine grass for 1/2 hour in the heat before he comes back defeated "there's no where to put the traps, it's all oysters!" I pull out my trap by the oysters and display my 20 monster sized fish. I know something about this fishing/trapping thing. Dlc and I dissect fish in the shade of a gigantic modern oyster midden. We only get through half of the fish before we have to leave and catch a ferry.
6:30-9:00pm Sunday. We take the ferry from Dauphin Island to Point Morgan. We fish at a place that was recommended by another scientist. It is a beautiful site, a sandy mini-bay that is teeming with fish. Unfortunately none of them are what we want. The bugs come out after the sun sets and we leave, dejected. We have to fish another day in Alabama.
9:00-11:30 pm Sunday. We find a hotel and haul our fish upstairs. dlc and I dissect fish at the desk and watch baseball on tv. We are clean and have eaten Arby's for dinner. I think I enjoyed it more than him.
11:30pm Sunday to 6:00 am Monday: We sleep in beds.
6:30 am Monday: We eat cheese danishes and fruit loops that are supposed to be a continental breakfast.
8:00-10:00 am Monday: We arrive at Weeks Bay research center. I've been telling dlc all along that Meridith and I never saw a research center by the Weeks Bay site. When we arrive at a place that is completely new to me I point out on the map the difference. We are at the top of the bay, the fishing site is at the mouth of where Weeks Bay and Mobile Bay meet. But there are fish there. Again, my traps are full. We decide that we should fish where we've always fished and move onto the ditch-by-the-parkinglot that we always go to.
10:00 am to 6:00 pm Monday: It is hot. We are not catching any fish. Neither are the other people there doing the same thing. The tide is too high. One guy who is fishing the same area of the ditch as us is using whole chickens and blue crabs in his traps. We're using dog food. It works just the same. I take naps under the van. We leave around 2pm to drive around and cool off. We get barbecue sandwiches for $0.79 at a gas station. It is literally the only food available besides pringles and more cheese danishes. I eat 2 barbecue sandwiches and another cheese danish. I have a taste for them now. We catch about 40 fish in the first hour and no more. We decide to quit and go home at 6:00. We are sticky and burnt and smell like swamp. We both went into the creek after lost traps but the water here is hot and the mud comes up to our hips. Meredith had to pull me out of this creek once.
6:00 pm Monday to 8:00 am Tuesday. We drive home. I get about 3 hours of sleep in the back of the van.
THE END.
