Lessons from Stanford @ Sea: The More I Learn the Less Sure I Become

I think a lot. Usually, I think too much. Beyond the rocking of the ship and the resonating boom of the hull crashing into turbulent waters, my thoughts would keep me awake during nights I could barely keep my eyes open. I felt cheated. Previously, the thoughts that kept me up at night centered around my life in California, a life I departed from for 5 weeks when I embarked on this adventure. Most of those thoughts stayed in California, but the void they left was shortly occupied by new thoughts related to my life at sea, providing me no respite for my sleepless nights. There’s no escape from one’s own mind.

However, not every thought stayed in California; in particular, one question that traveled with me burned ever more brightly in my mind as time passed: what do I really know? The root of this question lay not in a lack of self-confidence but rather in the realization that the more I learn about the world around me, the more I’m reminded of my own ignorance. Uncovering mysteries of the ocean revealed dozens of new unanswered questions. Visiting new islands and peoples added layers of complexity to my understanding of the world as I tried to accustom to new surroundings and culture shock. Every lesson I learned about ship handling taught me that there are always more lessons to learn. I began to wonder if I would ever feel like I knew what I was doing if every clarification led to more confusion.

The more I thought about it, the more I came to terms with the fact that being in a state of constant confusion isn’t inherently a bad thing. If anything, feeling disoriented isn’t an indicator of failure; it’s an indicator of an eagerness to absorb and discover. My bewilderment stems from my refusal to stop questioning everything I see around me, and from my unwillingness to admit that I am truly knowledgeable about anything.

The process leading to this recognition encompassed the entirety of my journey at sea as I struggled day and night with the idea that I wasn’t meeting some sort of intangible expectation. At some point I stopped interpreting these feelings as signs of shortcomings and merely observed them as they came and went. Instead of guilting myself into thinking that I should have a better understanding of something, I prided myself on my desire to learn more and improve. In my longing to better understand the world, I came to understand myself better. And what more could I hope for? I’ll never truly understand all the complexities that make the world what it is, but I can come to understand my own place and way of interacting with the world.

Stanford@SEA contributed to my internal growth by helping me come to another important realization about myself: I need people in my life, and I need to tell them that. As I said my goodbyes to fellow shipmates and crew members at the dock in American Samoa, I was struck by how each and every one of them positively impacted me in more ways than one throughout our journey together. I’ve never felt more fortunate to have been around such a group of compassionate, hard-working and goofy individuals. And the timeliness couldn’t have been better –  my Winter quarter proved to be one of the most difficult three months of my life, as I learned was true of many of the friends I made on this voyage. I never properly expressed how much I needed their companionship and support, so I hope this will do. Thank you for uplifting me. Thank you for inspiring me. Thank you for making me laugh. Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for putting up with me, despite my incessant need to make bad jokes and puns. Thank you for making this voyage one I will remember with nostalgic fondness and melancholy. If that wasn’t enough, hopefully I can thank you all with one final song you’ve all come to love (or hate) me for.

-Daniel Jacobson


Ballad of the Robert C. Seamans (to the tune of Piano Man)
(sick harmonica / piano duo)

‘Twas 11 o’clock on a Saturday
Irregular crowd shuffled through
Friends and strangers stood next to me
Beginnings of a rough n’ ready crew

They said, “Welcome aboard the Bobby C!
Forget everything that you know
We’re to set sail across the deep blue sea
Anchors away and get down below!”

Sail us away O Seamans!
Sail us away tonight
Well we’re all in the mood for an ocean breeze
And you’ve got us feeling water-tight

Now Chris at the helm is a captain fine
He got us to Iles-Maria with ease
With its corals aplenty, a beauty worth envy
Oh there’s no place that I’d rather be

I said, “Megan this journey is thrilling me!”
As I stood lookout in her stead
She said “I’m sure glad you’re having a blast,
But did you see the lightning dead ahead?”

Now the journey to Palmerston was strenuous
The winds howled forty knots with might
Under the care of B watch, three sails they did botch
We motored the rest of the night

And Tongatapu it was marvelous!
As Alema inspired a crowd
Yes they’re sharing a moment called companionship
I don’t think I could be more proud

Sail us away O Seamans!
Sail us away tonight
Well we’re all in the mood for an ocean breeze
And you’ve got us feeling water-tight

It’s a pretty good crew for a Thursday
As  Barbara Block gives us a smile
Cuz she knows that the journey’s come to an end
And we won’t see each other for a while

And Samoa it looked so beautiful
And the harbor it smelled like fish
And we stood in a circle and held on to each other
And it fulfilled our every last wish

Sail us away O Seamans!
Sail us away tonight
Well we’re all in the mood for an ocean breeze
And you’ve got us feeling water-tight

Full Circle

Four years ago, my classmate Hannah and I stood in front of the gathered crew and students of S259 and presented the results of our research project studying how seabird community composition changed as we sailed north from Tahiti to Hawaii.

Today, I was one of the faces in the audience as students shared the results to the questions they have spent the past weeks working hard to answer. As we rotated through a series of scientific posters duct taped to the port side of the lab, I had flashbacks to my time as a student spent attempting to interpret and organize data into a compelling story.

During our last class underway, the students became teachers as they shared the results of their projects. I learned that sea cucumbers impact the alkalinity of the water they live in, that deep water squid use chromatophores (color changing muscle) to manipulate their photophores (light producing organs), and the plastic pieces we have been collecting in our neuston tows reflects areas of converging currents. I enjoyed stepping back into the role of a student and learning more about the ocean and Islands we just spent four weeks sailing through.

Sailing this trip has been more sentimental for me than usual. I fist stepped aboard the Robert C. Seamans May 2015 in Papette to sail as a Stanford@Sea student. Though I grew up in the Bay Area, I had never sailed a small boat before in the San Francisco Bay, let alone a tall ship in the Pacific. As time passes I remember less and less about my time as a student but what remains is the overwhelming sense of newness and confusion, the joy of learning lines, how to gybe, shoot stars, and becoming familiar with a ship that I now call home. What I remember most of all is the burning desire to return. As I said bye to the crew and ship, any sadness I felt was eclipsed by the knowledge that if I could, I would come back. I was hooked on the purpose and satisfaction that came with shipboard routine and hard work, and I had only just scraped the surface of the seemingly endless pool of learning opportunities.

I am fortunate enough to say that after finishing my undergraduate degree at Stanford, I was able to return to SEA and sail as a sailing intern and now, scientist. I have had the pleasure of spending this trip getting to know energetic, curious, and hard working students who are excited to be here and remind me how grateful I am. I have spent quiet moments reflecting how much I have learned and grown as a person, educator, and shipmate over the past four years. As long as there is more to learn and room to grow, I am excited to keep sailing.

This afternoon was just the beginning! I look forward to learning about the rest of the student projects tomorrow afternoon, followed by some quality time together as a ship's company one final night at anchor.

-Anna Wietelmann, 2nd Assistant Scientist

Reflecting on the Voyage

Now that our voyage is almost over I'm reflecting on all of the amazing parts of this voyage. For me, one of the most exciting parts of each day has been seeing what zooplankton we caught in the net tows.

It's rare to get a glimpse of what lives below the surface of the ocean.
We've seen whales come up to look at the ship and flying fish leap out of the water and glide for longer than seems possible. We've caught fish and snorkeled among the bright tropical coral reefs. Sea birds visit when we are miles from the nearest island. There are fleeting glimpses of the fantastic organisms that make this place their home but those glimpses are often interspersed by miles of waves and sky.

Part of the reason for this is that we're traveling through an ocean desert.

Few things are able to grow here because of low nutrients. However, just as in a land desert this does not mean that the area is devoid of life. It is still full of organisms entangled in a complex web of interactions that enable them to survive in a place where other organisms can't. How do we observe the life living in the water column, hidden out of sight of human eyes? One way (at least for smaller animals) is to do net tows. During a net tow we drag fine mesh net alongside the boat. Usually we do a Neuston net, which is dragged across the surface layer, or a Meter net, which is sent deep water column where many organisms take refuge. But the exciting part is what comes out of the net. You get a first look during the initial processing when you can watch the zooplankton swimming around the bucket, confused about why they are no longer in the ocean.

During the next step we do what's called a 100 count to get a measure of species diversity and you get a closer look under a microscope. I love looking at the fantastic shapes, shells, legs, gelatinous structures, eyes, and segmented bodies that make up the organisms we find. The best part is that I've seen organisms I didn't know were possible, full of strange curves and crazy shapes that give clues about how they live. Some of my favorites are the many varieties of pelagic snails (a type of zooplankton that we've been seeing more of recently). Pelagic snails have a shell and body like the snails you see attached to rocks but instead of having a foot they have wings that allow them to swim through the water. Some have shells that are a round spiral while others have spikes or shells shaped like ice cream cones.

A common find in the Neuston net are tiny purple snails called bubble raft snails that create a raft of bubbles that they use to float at the surface of the water. There are even naked pteropods (snails without shells) that look like little angels flapping their wings as they swim. I've seen so many amazing creatures and learned so much during these past five weeks and I'm excited to continue learning about the ocean.

-Laura

Birthday in Tonga

Land Ho! We arrived in Tonga the morning of June 4th - convenient for me since my birthday is June 5th! As I write this, it's still my birthday back home in Texas thanks to the weirdness that is crossing the International Date Line. I have yet to contact my family since getting on the ship (sorry, y'all), and because I couldn't help but think about being with them on my birthday, this one's for them.

We got time off the ship yesterday morning, and while multiple plans and ideas of where to go and what to do were circulating, I had set my mind on three things: the blowholes, the market, and ice cream. Somehow, I managed to get my wish, so first stop was blowholes. I wasn't entirely sure what that referred to or what I'd see when we actually got there, but I was not let down! It was a whole stretch of coastline where big waves would crash up against a cliff-like ledge and water would be pushed through holes in the rock and shot way up into the air. The bigger the wave, the bigger the spray! The most magical part was that in all the misty spray left in the air, you could see rainbows. All in all it was a very majestic spot, and I was glad to have gone.

Next stop was the craft market. There were beautiful handmade necklaces, earrings, bags, cloth, figurines, and so much more. I stopped at one woman's stall, and she explained to me all the different materials used for each piece. Some were mother-of-pearl, some were conch shell, some were black stone, and I found it impressive that she could make beautifully carved pieces in every one of them. Right next to the market was an ice cream shop with some of the largest single scoops I've ever seen. Most of us got a big ole scoop in a waffle cone, and I gotta say, there really is something so nice about eating an ice cream cone on a hot day. By then it was about time to get back to the ship, but I'd had a great few hours.

As appreciative as I am for having the privilege to spend my 21st birthday in Tonga, though, I have been thinking of home. There have been many moments this whole trips where I take a second to zoom out, and I have a feeling of being so distinctly far from home. Not even really in a bad way at all, but in a way that urges me to treasure all these moments. My distance-from-home measure has been to imagine taking my mom from our favorite cozy chairs in our living room (the epitome of my comfort zone if there ever was one) and plopping her down wherever I am in that moment.
However much she'd be freaking out is how far I am from home - both physically and figuratively. I think I've been associating the word home less with places and more with feelings these days. Home, to me, is where I feel at ease. Most times it's at the house where I've grown up in Houston, but sometimes it's at Stanford getting lunch with my friends. Or maybe it's trying not to fall asleep in the Hopkins library. Or maybe, just maybe, it's laying in my bunk on the Robert C. Seamans, looking out my porthole, thinking about the incredible, weird, exhausting, exciting day I've just had and how amazing, fascinating, and beautiful the next is bound to be.

With love,
Casey Mullins

Still Growing

There's a reason why the Spiderman franchise has been rebooted three times in the last 15 years.  Yes, corporate politics are involved, but think about the point in the story we always come back to.  Everyone knows the origin of Spiderman, and yet the franchise always kicks off with Peter Parker's transformation into a superhero.  Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield, or Tom Holland, we start with a young man who must learn how to use his powers and, to a larger extent, about his place in the world.  The first movie in the series is almost always the best because origin stories are easy:  the whole world is new to the hero and the path to growth is straightforward and well defined.  Subsequent films struggle because there are fewer obvious paths toward character development, and without growth, the story gets boring.

This anecdote was very much on my mind in the beginning days of Stanford@SEA.  Having previously done Stanford@SEA in 2017 as a student and returned this year as a TA, I felt like I had already lived out my exciting origin days and had landed myself in a dull sequel.  I grew a lot during the last Stanford@SEA simply by virtue of being thrown into an entirely new environment.  I had to learn to adapt to constantly changing levels of responsibility, to manage the logistics of hourly deadlines, and to rely on my watch mates to accomplish complex tasks using our combined memories.  All these new experiences and demands meant that no conscious effort was required on my part to grow.

Joining the Robert C. Seamans in 2019, though, I felt stagnated.  Everything that was going to happen in the next five weeks, I'd already done.  Sure, I could learn more about sailing, because there's always more to learn about sailing, but I'd already crossed the arc of personal development that the SEA program leads students through.  Staying at the end of that path didn't sit well with me.  So few people have the privilege of experiencing something as incredible as Stanford@SEA once in their lifetime-let alone twice-and I couldn't stand the thought of coming out this time the same as I'd been before.

I really didn't expect my time as a TA to lead to much growth:  TA-dom is not a new role for me and it wasn't a leadership position like being on SEA staff.  However, the emphasis on increasing responsibility for students in SEA has taught me something extremely valuable:  how to act when it's not about me.  The second phase of SEA, which we just completed, involves the students learning to take the responsibility of running lab and deck.
Students have to learn to start thinking about everything that needs to happen on watch so they can become a watch officer in the third phase of the program.

One of the most exciting parts about coming back to the Seamans was being able to use everything I had learned two years ago.  I derived a tremendous amount of satisfaction from being able to immediately go to the appropriate lines when it was time to set or strike a sail.  This was helpful in the first week when students were still gaining their sea legs.  Past this point, though, it became inhibitory.  If I raced off to the correct line any time we went to sail handle, the students would never have the opportunity to take the initiative and figure things out for themselves.  This trip is their experience, and it's more important that they learn the leadership and self-assurance that comes from puzzling through a task than it is for me to feel proud of myself for two minutes.

In the past month, I've learned a lot about putting the group's needs above my own.  I've had to think hard about how I naturally react to certain situations and whether that reaction will benefit the students' experience.
It's a mindset that I've never had to sustain for long periods of time before.  I've spent the majority of my life as a student, where the focus was on me and how my needs could be met so I could better learn.  Even as a captain of a dance team, my needs were still at least at medium priority because I had to go out and dance like everyone else.  On the Seamans, I'm no longer front and center.  I'm not even on the stage.

Learning how to take a back seat wasn't initially enjoyable, but it's given me a deeper feeling of satisfaction in the way I conduct myself.  I feel like I'm becoming a more mature person in a way I didn't two years ago, and I'm still growing in ways I never could have imagined even in the early days of our voyage. 

After I leave Stanford in December, I will enter a world where nine times out of ten, it's not about me.  Further, I plan to join a line of work-marine conservation-where it's especially not about me.  I've started learning a mentality that I can take forward and use to be a better teacher and more effective coordinator.  Hopefully, I can continue to grow in this direction.

-Emma

Finality and the Future

Throughout this entire program we have been forming relationships and having all kinds of crazy, amazing experiences that make it my favorite Stanford experience thus far. We have learned so much about the movement of the waters in the ocean and how to harness the winds to takes us from one place to another. We have had many star frenzies with us scrambling around the quarter deck shouting, "Standby Jordan on Sirius," waiting for "Standby, Jordan" to bring the star down to the horizon and gain our approximate location, interspersed with countless tea times in the middle of evening and dawn watch marveling at the expanse of the universe and talking about whatever crazy salp (all hail the great salp!) or lucifer shrimp we found in the neuston tow that night. Through all of this we have been learning to sail our vessel, the Robert C. Seamans in preparation for this third and final leg of our journey, where the students will take over as junior watch and lab officers. As our journey nears its end and we enter this final portion of our voyage I can't help but think about all that has transpired and what amazing memories this experience has made.

Today as I was watching water spout up through the blowholes on the southern coast of Tongatapu I couldn't help but think about the fact that in less than ten days we will be docked in Pago Pago culminating our journey and parting ways for the first time in five weeks. When I first had that thought I was overcome with a sense of sorrow and a desire for this trip to continue on and never end. I truly believe that this has been one of the happiest times in my life and I don't want that to go away. Throughout all of our dawn watches from 0100 to 0700, the rough and calm seas, and the incredible foreign port-of-calls our entire group has grown closer and become a family aboard the Robert C. Seamans. The thought of not being with these people every day as we travel around the oceans is not one I enjoy. As I pondered the concept of a never -ending trip more and tried to find the silver lining, I realized that it wouldn't be as special if we were constantly on this voyage. We would get into more of a routine and everything would become so normal and mundane. Part of what makes this trip so special is that it is only for a limited amount of time. We are lucky in terms of SEA voyages in that the students all go to the same university and can have reunions more easily, but we likely will never have another period of time on a ship together, especially with all of our amazing staff from SEA.

Though I will probably never be together again with all of the inhabitants of the Robert C. Seamans from these past five weeks, they will forever hold a special place in my memory for all of the crazy experiences that we have had together since embarking on this voyage. The memories from the past five weeks are made that much sweeter with the realization that this is it and each moment is precious on this glorious vessel. I have been thinking about a quote by one of my professors at Stanford a lot recently.

He says that, "the future informs the present and the present informs the past." This means that we often don't know the full significance of a moment while we are in it. On this trip it is easy to say it is just another day on the Robert C. Seamans, or wonder why we have to get up for evening watch again after dawn watch that morning but looking back on the trip thus far, each of those watches and every single day is significant. I think we all have a sense of this concept when something happens and we look back on how we got there and things make sense that didn't before, but I think it is very difficult to remember in the moment. The finality of this trip and the limited time that we have on this vessel with these people is a part of the future that helps to inform every moment that we spend on the lab rooftop giving our spotlights or the many hours on deck and in the main salon playing music together.

We as students can't possibly know the full effect of that this trip will have on our lives. From the experiences we have had to the skills we have gained and the relationships we have formed this voyage is sure to be an important event when we look back on our lives, years in the future. Yet, like other beautiful moments the fact that they are just moments is part of what makes them even more special. I may want this trip to go on forever but I am glad it is not. The fact that we only have eight more days together aboard the Robert C. Seamans makes each of those days that much more special and each of the days we have already had so significant.

For reference here is a list of other moments or events that are improved by their finality:
Sunsets and Sunrises
Holidays
Family vacations
 Time at home from school
Rain showers
Rainbows
The night stars
Life

-Jordan Ferre

No Tech On Deck

My phone has been in airplane mode for 26 days. It's practically useless, along with my computer, which spontaneously went black two days after departing Tahiti. On the open ocean, I quit silicon cold turkey. It feels amazing. A few days ago, I sat down and read a book cover-to-cover in a day for the first time in years. The same day, alongside friends, I processed a neuston tow, helped put a gorgeous furl on the jib, saw ten minke whales surrounding the boat, planked on the quarterdeck, hauled on dozens of lines to set, trim, and bring across sails, laughed uncontrollably. How many of these delightful moments would screens have stolen?

It's feels like time stands still. Swells are a constant frothing through the limitless bright, but their metronomic rise and fall becomes a constant.

Stepping off the ship, as I did today for the first time in over a week, it seems not a day will have passed for the rest of the world. The various pieces of information that I normally use as references: the news, my personal calendar, seeing friends, meeting people, daily routine are gone.

Physics says motion is relative. A moving object will appear at rest if the observer moves with equal velocity. Say time is a car, zipping along a ribbon of the space-time continuum. In my previous life as a land lubber, references aplenty shot past my window, proving the car's motion through their relative motion. But now the azure South Pacific occupies my entire window. The car forges onward, but from my seat, its relative velocity is zero.

There's a part of me that itches to reconnect with the rest of the world.
How is my family doing? Are my summer plans still intact? Who won the Stanley Cup for goodness sake? My whole life as a citizen of digital society, a wiggle of fingers revealed these answers. Sometimes, these well-programmed fingers still open my phone and head to email or internet browsing. Of course it's just blank screens. Habits are hard to break.

Do I want to access the internet? I had the opportunity to do so today in Nuku'alofa, Tonga. But overloaded WiFi made the decision for me; I had no bandwidth to check email, send texts, or read news. So until American Samoa, I am off the grid. I will relish my last days away from impersonal cyber-clamor. But I do look forward to eventually reconnecting with friends and family who I love dearly and have not heard from or spoken to for quite some time.

My experience at sea has been too special to go back unchanged. One of my main takeaways: the ocean reminded me how little I truly need a phone or computer. These are tools with beneficial uses no doubt, but I developed immunity to their ails until the ocean took my devices away. Now, I can live in the moment, every moment. Things will change when we leave the Robert C Seamans, but don't be surprised if there are days I leave my phone off and zipped up somewhere. Life is too short not to be present for it.

Being present for the past 26 days resulted in opportunities for reflection.
What does reflection look like? It is staring into the bioluminescence exploding in the bow wave for an hour, a fourth-of-June sparkler. It is writing more. It is spending endless hours with friends laughing and singing and of course, fitting in a core workout between every watch. Praying alone.
Hanging out with friends and thinking about only what is happening in that room. It is not being able to get over the way the light plays on the ocean surface. When the towering swells during our transit to Palmerston shook us violently, the ocean was like a shredded cloud, left jagged, torn open, grey. Then for the smooth passage to Tonga, it undulated in smooth puddles of violet, pale blue, and teal, a liquid kaleidoscope.

Reflection is a blessing. Without it, I chase time away and lose track of part of myself. At sea, less technology and more reflection increased my productivity and joy. I shall not forget this lesson back ashore.

-Nathan Marshall