Onboard, everyone has their own shifting time.
Hello everyone!
My name is Sijing Shen. I’m a first-year PhD student from School of Ocean Science, Bangor University. Through the previous posts, you’ve already got an overview of the QUICCHE project, which my PhD project is based on (I’m figuring out how the warm salty Indian Ocean water leakage into the South Atlantic influences the Benguela upwelling ecosystem over long time periods) …Okay! Let’s take a break away from the science; let me give you a brief introduction to how my life is on the ship.
Everyone has their own shifting time – mine is from 6pm to 2am. Therefore, I usually go to bed at 2am (sneaking into the kitchen at midnight for another meal), skipping breakfast and starting my day with a fancy lunch (today we had pizza and salad).
During my shifting time, I help deploy instruments from the deck or monitor data in the computer lab. Sometimes I take a walk on the deck at night, enjoying the night view of the ocean. Unlike the ocean in the daytime, which is blue and shining, the ocean at night is bright with the moonlight. There are lots of shining sock-shaped jellyfish in the water, and if you’re lucky enough, you can see squid or maybe even some fish! I’ll leave you with this picture of a squid (which I named ‘Mr squid’) we got one night.