Concurrent thinking?

What drives the need to blog? Why blog? What is your reason for blogging or reading blogs?

I suspect that the requirement comes from a need to record things, to write them down, to share. So does that go hand in hand with writing a diary or take the place of it? For me arriving in Marseille was a huge step and the need to write, to record and to to tell people about what I was doing was there. The result was both a diary and multiple blog posts. So why now when I am becoming more settled has the diary dried up and the posts died away? Do I not need to tell people about what I am doing any more? or are there other outlets? Here I seem to be talking to friends online and on the telephone more often. I don't know if this has gone hand in hand with the decline, but this is possible. Just as likely though, is that I have relaxed and so the need for an outlet is not there any more..

Despite the apparent relaxation I am not just drifting along, oh no! In the past week I have undertaken six dives in the sea, my first in France. I have gone deeper than I have ever been, been onto my first wreck (and inside it!), past some stunning scenery (and this is after diving in the Red Sea earlier in the year) and seen my first Seahorse in the wild. Little Nudibranches (search for images to see why!) are getting my attention and the more time I spend down there the more I want to do more! The result is that I am eulogising into my dive log and telling people about what I have been seeing, in French and in English, the former to a certain extent! But they haven't yielded diary entries and this blog is the first for a while.

The mind is a strange thing and inexplicable.

And with that I shall depart trailing a line of ascending bubbles as I head to the next beautiful dive site for another 73 centimes (64p)/minute dive. Its worth it, come and join me!

Gelatinous sampling

As many of you will know I have the luck, or possibly the bad luck(!). to study jellyfish. Among my studies today I came across a quote which I couldn't leave hidden away in the article. I thought it might describe some of the fun and challenges that I go through to find out more about my chosen organisms.

"As Richard Harbison is fond of stating, sampling with plankton nets is akin to flying over London with a grappling hook. You might pick up hats and umbrellas and a few tree branches, but you can only speculate as to where hats belong, and what umbrellas are good for."
Haddock, 2004, A golden age of gelata: past and future research on planktonic ctenophores and cnidarians. Hydrobiologia 530/531: 549-556.

As you might expect, much of my practical research into jellies has been with the ubiquitous plankton net. It is used for its convenience, and often because we are meant to be sampling something more suited to the net, but you are always left scratching your head and wondering what else was in the water and avoided the net.

I hope your work is just as enjoyable as mine and has a smaller element of chance associated with it!
Bonne Chance!

A foggy day

The foghorn blows
out on the head,
A lonely sound
it must be said.

No wind this day
Mist on the sea
To port please go
or faithful be.

The lifeboat waits
for the call,
Brave men to risk
their lives for all.

Here it comes,
*The phone it rings*
"Way to the west"
the Coxswain sings

Out on the shout
To sea they go
Through the darkness
and waves they flow.

To the ship adrift,
heading for the rocks,
can't see them yet
the fog it blocks.

But they know,
it must be soon,
From mist she comes,
and big she'll loom.

There she lies
A ship and cargo
Eight in the crew
To save & embargo.

One by one
across they come,
dressed for the sea,
shivering, numb.

They save them all
Lucky this time,
but the ship founders
her position prime.

A Wreck she'll make
if she can't be lifted
Homes of holes
to Sealife gifted.

The lifeboat makes
her way to port
One dicey moment,
Nervous, fraught.

They make it back
safe and sound,
men to their beds
no-one drowned.

Another shout
entered to the log
Too many this year
excluding the fog

The foghorn blows
out on the head
Completely oblivious
I’m tucked in bed.

(c) Martin Lilley 4/4/10

Dependency and uncertainty

In this current economic climate many people are fearing for their jobs, looking at their future and wondering what is going to happen. For a scientist, unless you are very lucky, this is a regular thing. To have a three year contract is rare, and a permanent post almost unheard of unless you are a university lecturer.  In the later case this means a dependency on regular student contact and a movement away from the research which is probably the reason for originally getting into science.

As a researcher, as I have hinted, you are constantly looking to see where your next project will take you. A one year post-doctoral position will require the writing of grant proposals and making plans for the following year almost before you have started and certainly before you know what sort of results you are likely to get.  Add to that the difficulty now of securing funding that includes the overheads demanded by a university and you wonder why anyone goes into research at all. For the love of it...?

Currently I am trying to decide whether to continue in research, while also building all my skills and my CV up. Gaining sea experience is useful in the career I seem to have been developing, but that is heavily dependent on spaces being available on the ships. Science comes first in that respect and industry require the best people for the job. Bigger projects, such as posts gaining an input from fishermen into the current fish quotas and the science governing them, are at the whim of government agencies. If the government changes then the plug may be pulled on any recent policies of the opposition whether they were a good idea or not, because they were 'their' idea. As a scientist - how frustrating!!!  Ditto government funded national parks - funding secure until the next election, at which point who knows what will happen.

Joined up thinking requires joined up funding and commitments... maybe the public is content to live for tomorrow and cope with the consequences, rather than planning for change and pre-empting it? They shouldn't be!

Solitude

At moments like this one at Rhossili the other week I really empathise with these surfers.  Peace, space, solitude and a sense of sharing with any companions.  Does everyone need a time like this or is it just me?  I think this is what draws me to the hills, to sea and to islands. To have a chance of being at one with nature - Bliss.

All at Sea

I thought this was an appropriate title for a Marine Biological researcher. It sums up so aptly the way the world actually is.

Science is all about asking questions and trying to find out the answers, but you are never quite sure what to expect and have to have an open mind to the unexpected.  At that point you again need to re-evaluate whether the result you obtained is actually reasonable and realistic. In essence – Is it possible?  It is this sense of unknown that attracted me to research and I suspect pulls other  researchers into the field.

To take the above argument further in biological research you often are not faced with a stark yes or no.  If you were to create a circuit, or a computer program it will either work or it won’t. Yes there are several ways to achieve a working end product, but when you flick that switch the lightbulb will the light come on?  The fact that you have a middle ground where your creature will do what you expect In Some Situations (!) makes analysis of results much harder to comprehend.  The usual problem is that it is not simply one factor which is to blame for the movement/feeding/speed of swimming, but a combined effect of several things and teasing apart the factors is a challenge, as is working out which factors are actually to blame.

There are days in my research where I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall and the only result is going to be depression. Finally, if I am lucky, something may click and I’ll suddenly have an enlightened moment and find one of the results. It may even result in several days work to calculate the extent of the effect.  Then I’ll be cast back onto the sea of irritation as I seek to find a new solution to the problem.  The unlucky scenario is that the idea is fruitless for one reason or another and I am back searching for ideas immediately.  Such is life.

While the science in the laboratory and on the computer provides the outputs in the form of scientific publications and reports, it is the time in the field which some of us live for overall.

I suppose the main reason for blogging this idea was to reflect the time I have spent out on the sea. A variety of ships from a small dory right up to the 73m long Cefas Endeavour have kept me afloat as I seek to discover the secrets that lay beneath our vessel.  Being at sea, never knowing what might come up, the long hours, endless horizons, or maybe some land and trying to figure out where you are, is fascinating! I particularly enjoy the magnitude of what we are doing in the middle of the night, when there may be the light of a fishing boat, a handful of stars, or jellyfish drifting past in the stern lights.  You are afloat in a world of your own, dependent only on the people around you, responsible for those who are asleep beneath you. It is frankly awe-inspiring. 

Best of all is the moment as the first light comes across the sky and the sun is within an hour of rising. That magical moment when you look around and remember you really are All at Sea.