Shrimping!

Hey everybody,

It's been quite awhile since I told ya'll what I was up to. I have been living for the past 10 or so days on the shrimp boat. I got a quick night on shore tonight because the boss of the shrimp boat came out to transfer some of his crew and bring us supplies. Anyway, we have been finally doing some real work. Our assignment has been to patrol the off shore waters between Pascagoula and Mobile Bay. We patrol everyday getting the help of what used to be charter fishing boats, but are now oil scouts who jet around finding large areas of oil. The only problem is some of these boats don't know what they are looking for and send us on a wild goose chase leading to things other than oil. For instance, globs of seaweed, places of heavy sheen - no oil, and then dispersed oil which doesn't stick to our belt. So while the shrimp boat capt. takes us on these wild goose chases we sit around playing Rummy until we arrive at the coordinates and then we either skim oil, or everyone gets frustrated at the scout who gave us bad coordinates (they seemed to have fixed that problem though - lots of scouts have been fired or shown us what we want, that peanut buttery goodness).

Life on a shrimp boat is a mix of boredom, card games, movies, working, wishing I was back bored in the A/C, along with good eats and the occasional good sleep. Even though the beds are way to small for me - wait make that everything is too small on a boat. I have to duck through every door way! Proud to say I've only hit my head on a door frame once, sadly it was on the 9th day. Showering is interesting; I have to get in, get wet, then turn off the water, scrub on soap, rinse it off, then get out. Water is a precise thing out here, though they do let me use as much as I need when I am scrubbing the oil and GOJO off my arms every afternoon. Everyday I wake up around 5 or 5:30 to a nice hot breakfast - usually eggs, grits, sausage, & biscuits. The capts. wife is a good cook. After breakfast we usually sit around watching the news. The capt. is taking us to where he's gotten tips about oil. It sometimes takes hours to get there. I know how firemen feel now; we sit around doing nothing but watching movies, mixed with the occasional card game until the capt. yells out from the wheel house' "We are here ya'll get on it." That's our cue to race outside get on our boots, and tyvek suits. The capt. will throw his boat in reverse and butt up against the bow of our skimmer, and we have to jump from the stern of the shrimp boat to the bow of the skimmer (sounds dangerous, yes it is but calm down we now have a rope ladder and a new more reliable outboard so the new way of getting on is to climb down the rope ladder to a outboard then we drive over).



On day nine, we finally got a great tip, we found a oil slick that was 5 feet or so wide, and about 15 miles long stretching north to south off the coast of Dauphin island. We skimmed almost all of it. It was coming in so quickly it would over flow the booms, and begin to spill out from under it because the oil is so buoyant. Oil would get up under the boom and lift it, letting some escape. We got so much we estimate about 10,000 gallons were picked up that day. Though right as we were finishing we found ourselves with a huge problem. The boom that is connected to our boat is attached to the hull by a metal plate that drops down into a socket that gives the plate a little bit of play, well long story short this plate broke at a weld point and we needed a new one. One piece of that plate was stuck in that socket that is half under water and the only way to get it out was to get into the water. You can imagine who had to do that (that's right, I did). I put on long sleeve clothes and had to hop in and pull out the piece then get back on board and immediately went to shower off. I was in the water for a totally of about 2 minutes, literally.


We saw our first oily bird, it was a loon (see pics) so oily it couldn't fly. It sat on the water way out in the Gulf. As we saw it a sea turtle came swimming along though he seemed to be in good spirits.


Anyway, I am extremely tired, and am very surprised that I even did an entry tonight. I want to thank everyone again for reading, and giving me support you all have been very kind, thank you. More to come soon.

Video - Skimming Oil off of Dauphin Island

Outboard Outrage!

So I thought I would share one mishap that happened to me the other day. We have a small zodiac (inflatable dingy) that I take out to fix the booms if there are any problems. Well we were out about 2 miles, when I got bored and decide to go fix a very minor problem. I got into the small zodiac with a coworker, and my capt. untied us before we started the out board. Well needless to say I couldnt get the damn thing started. And our boat can't stop. So I watched as our boat got small and smaller into the distance. We finally got it running and I got us back to the boat. The next day the shrimp boat capts. couldnt help but laughing at my expense for the next 3 days about it. They now refer to that story when they see me.

First Blog!

Hey everyone,

This is my first blog, hope yall enjoy it. I started a blog for those of you who want to know exactly what I am doing down here. The first question folks usually ask me is how did I come about getting this job. Well, while attending USA I took a field study, which had an optional extra portion of the class call hazwoper training, not to many students took it because its miserable. But I heard it would help get me a job, so I decided to take the course. Hazwoper stands for Hazardous Waster Operations Emergency Response, in a nut shell its training to deal with bad chemicals. While dealing with those bad chemicals, I had to wear a tyvek suit on top of my work clothes, its like being wrapped in plastic. Anyway, back to the oil spill. On April 20th, an oil rig blew up just south of Venice, Louisana. Being in geology we all kept a close eye on what was going on. Then it hit me I had just been trained for this last summer, so I put a resume together posted it on the internet, and Bingo! I had job offers come flooding in, (if any of you want to work down here that's literally all you need. OSHA 40 Hazwoper training check it out).

I got a job with a labor company who informed me I would be on a ship the entire time. So we set out to Louisana to get aboard. Well thats when plans changed and I was driving to Gulfport on a early friday morning. We arrived looking for a ship that was going to pick us up. We came to the only ship there that was not a cargo ship and figured this has to be it. Someone yelled to a deckhand, Are yall the ones waiting on a crew? They replied, " Yes come on aboard." We boarded a narrow gangway with luggage in tow. Everyone set there stuff on the deck. It was a boat straight out of Deadliest catch. Long deck with no back end, so that crab traps and ropes could slide right off into the water. The capt. invited us into the galley and explained several safety issues, then turned it over to the cook. The cook made a big deal about his galley, the do's and don'ts. We ate breakfast and then everyone went back out to get there luggage and find there way to a bunk. That's when the capt. realized we are not the crew that he was waiting on. So we got off with a free meal.

Finally, we figure out in the confusion, we are not going on a ship anymore, we are working on the docks building SupSalv Navy Marcos Skimmers. They were in peices like a giant erector set. A crane would lift peices as we would fit them together. By lunch time, my team had put 3 of them together. After lunch my friend Peter, (Peter is a classmate of mine who I dragged along to keep me company, who consequently has quit) came to me and said that 4 of us were moving to Pascagoula. I have been here in Pascagoula ever since.

I work here in Pascagoula, in conjunction with BP and the Coast Guard, operating the same boats I was putting together the very first day. The ship is approx. 30 foot long and maybe 10 feet wide its not big at all. Most of the equipment takes up all the room on board. there is no where comfortable to sit and to make it worse there is very little shade, (though we have added a tent but it covers the equipment more than us. To sum it up, the boat has to be pulled through the water by 2 other vessels who tow us with boom lines, (Booms are inflatable bouys that are used to corral and funnel the oil directly to our ship). We have hired 2 shrimp boats to pull us. Once the oil is pushed toward our boat, we lower a treadmill looking belt into the water that slowly spins pullin the oil and some seawater aboard, then drops it into a storage tank below. Once our storage tank is full we decant the water off of the oil we just collected, then pump the oil into a bladder that is dragging behind the boat. The bladder can hold up to 50,000 gallons of oil before needing to be emptied. So far we have only been practicing I have yet to actually skim any oil.

My day starts at 5am, we have 2 spud barges (lift barges) that support us if we ever go out for extended periods. My crew has been broken into 2 teams because we have 2 boats. So half my team meets on one barge the other on the other. I always have to race to the wrong barge every morning because they have a better cook, and I have to eat breakfast and get back to my barge before our safety meeting starts. Safety meetings are fairly short we discuss goals for the day and ways to stay safe. Same old same old. After that we go to our boats prep them and take them out. We stay out for 3 or so hours then come back and prepping them for docking takes about 3 hours. It's very tedious and sometimes very boring, but the feed us well, and pay us well. And I am tired of writing More to come. AND PICTURES! All you english majors point out the mistakes and I will fix them.