By Kelly Luis, NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology // Aboard the Bold Horizon //
ʻAʻohe o kahi nana o luna o ka pali; iho mai a lalo nei; ʻike ke au nui ke au iki, hea lo a he alo. The top of the cliff isn’t the place to look at us; come down here and learn of the big and little currents, face to face (Pukui, 1983, 24).
I brought Sweat and Salt Water: Selected Works by Dr. Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa onboard the R/V Bold Horizon. The book was the last addition to my bag before heading to the airport. I’m not sure why I threw the book in my bag; but I was even more puzzled when I realized late into the cruise, I read Chapter 5: Lo(o)sing the Edge every time I opened the book. Maybe it was the relevance of Dr. Teaiwa’s inclusion of the ʻōlelo noʻeau (Hawaiian proverb) to S-MODE or maybe the navigation of her professional and personal life resonated with my experience navigating aquatic remote sensing as a kānaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) woman. Still in question as the vessel began its final transit to San Diego, I went on a quest to learn about the books brought aboard.
Tucked between the laptops, bungee cords, and camera bags, I first noticed Sarah Lang’s autographed copy of This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. Between late night CTD transects and long days of filtering during plane overpasses, Sarah Lang quickly finished up The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid and just started her second book.
When Andy Jessup returns to his bunk after radiosonde launches and saildrone chasing, he immerses himself in fiction, which he later donates to the ship’s library. Jessica Kozik’s exuberance for the sea carries over into her reading. She is three chapters into Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do by Wallace J. Nichols on her Kindle. Balancing graduate coursework in between ecoCTD shifts, Mackenzie Blanusa can be found in the galley with books for her classes. Audrey Delpech started L’art de perdre by Alice Zeniter on land and tries to sneak in reading time between radiosondes, ecoCTD watches, and assisting with biological sampling. When Pat Kelly isn’t reading fluorescence samples and macgyvering sensors on the CTD, he’s resting up with classics like Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck and horror thrillers like Pet Sematary by Stephen King.
Not everyone brought a book and/ or knew not to bring a book because of our workload. Our chief scientist is a prime example. Up at every hour he can be, Andrey oversees all science operations, determines boat headings in relation to changing fronts and eddies, and still makes it on deck for all Lagrangian float, waveglider, and seaglider recoveries. He did share that on a previous cruise he brought Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstader, a mathematics book he enjoys reading with the shifting sea state. Ben Hodges did not bring a book because he knew he would be busy leading ecoCTD and waveglider operations, but he wished he brought The Ashley Book of Knots by Clifford Ashley to assist with his night watch knot tying course.
From my informal survey, it seemed almost everyone wanted to get more into their books, but were worn-out after watches. From keeping up with operations and learning new instruments, we were naturally tired and the comforts of an easy to get lost in piece of work beat out starting something new. My reading of the same chapter may have simply been a deep desire for familiarity. However, I think it may also relate to our chief scientists’ sentiment toward his mathematics book. The shifting sea state provided new glimpses of the relations between the text and my journey, but also the biological and physical relations we observed on the R/V Bold Horizon. Much more can be said about the edges of existing models’ ability to capture sub-mesoscale processes and the importance of meeting these features face to face. However, this chapter of S-MODE 2022 cruise is coming to end, but another chapter awaits the science party in 2023.
Until we meet the big and little currents again.
Reference:
Mary Kawena Pukui; illustrated by Dietrich Varez. ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings. Honolulu, Hawaiʻi: Bishop Museum Press, 1983.
List of Books/Magazines Aboard the Bold Horizon
- Sweat and Salt Water: Selected Works by Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa
- Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Know and Don’t Know About the Ocean by Naomi Oreskes
- Pet Semetary by Stephen King
- Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
- Three body problem by Liu Cixin
- L’art de perdre by Alice Zeniter
- Mermoz by Joseph Kessel
- Le serpent majuscule by Pierre Lemaitre
- This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Hunter-Gathers Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and Challenges of Modern Life by Heather Heying and Brett Weinstein
- The Sentence by Louise Elhrich
- Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do by Wallace J. Nichols
- Birds of Southern California: Status and Distribution by Jon L. Dunn and Kimball Garrett
- The Book: On the Taboo of Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
- The Outermost House by Henry Beston
- The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner
- Shame of a Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America by Jonathan Kozol
- Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly D. Tatum
- Essentials of Atmosphere and Ocean Dynamics by Geoffrey K. Vallis
- Le voyage d’Emma
- Hermann Hesse by Siddhartha
- The Orion Magazine
- High Country News