It’s 6:15 on Easter Sunday morning, and the ship is still quiet, but not for long. This is departure day. Even now I hear people beginning to stir. Soon her scientists, technicians, and crew people will be attending to final preparations for sea. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be underway from Duncan Dock in Cape Town, South Africa by noon.
Knorr is designed for and dedicated solely to ocean
research (doing so, she’s logged well over one million
miles in every ocean on the planet). So of course in the
next twenty days we’ll be discussing oceanography, the
science of the sea, in our daily journals on this
website. We’ll also tell you about day-to-day life
aboard this fine old ship, the one, by the way, that discovered
the Titanic. But the reason we’ve gathered
here in Cape Town from three continents is to investigate a
major Indian Ocean current called the Agulhas. We’ll
be talking much more about the Agulhas, it’s behavior,
significance, its relationship to the rest of the Indian Ocean
and to the other oceans of the world—and ultimately to
our climate. We’ll talk also about just how and why
ocean scientists go about investigating and measuring their
subject. The work aboard Knorr is a unique
combination of advanced technology and traditional seamanship
performed around the clock in all weathers by some of the best
scientists, technicians, and sailors in the world.
Photo Credit: Clement Rousset
Wait, I feel the engines rev. We’re pulling away from the wharf, and the Cape Town Harbor pilot has just come aboard. This a lovely town in a magnificent natural setting at the foot of Table Mountain, and we’ve all enjoyed our brief visit, but now the time has come to leave it for the open sea. The day is crisp and crystalline, but a stiff wind has gotten up to about 40 knots with higher gusts, white caps in the harbor. Derek, our second mate, is on the helm, Captain Kent vigilant on the starboard bridge wing, when the harbor pilot calls for us to wait while a fuel ship enters the breakwaters at the mouth of the harbor. It looks to me to be a bit difficult to keep our bow steady in the breeze, but this is routine stuff for these pros.
Captain Kent hears a radio call from a massive, multi-decked cruise ship lying to the wharf we’ve just left. Three of her dock lines have parted, and her bow his swung fifteen meters from the wharf. The cruise-ship captain wants a tug to push her back. Anyway, she won’t be allowed to sail today, the pilot says, too rough for the likes of them. It’s a little surprising for those of us from the other hemisphere to see this much wind on a fine, cloudless day. As a small-boat sailor, I was hoping to steer to get the feel of a ship; clearly, however, these are not the best conditions for beginners to practice.
We’re clear of the harbor now, in the main channel, and the pilot, an easy-going, jovial fellow, calls for his boat to come alongside. I escort him down three decks to the starboard rail, where his boat is keeping pace with Knorr. By the time I climb back up to the bridge, we feel the distinct swell of open ocean. It’s nice. It’s a good place to be.
As you already know if you’ve read the introduction to our
website, Dr. Lisa Beal is our chief scientist, which is to say
that this is her trip. Her grant from the National
Science Foundation is paying for the cruise. An expert on
the Agulhas Current, she has chosen a line some 150 miles long
on the east side of South Africa, where she means to place a
string of instruments picket-fence fashion astride the flow
from the surface to the bottom. That’s where
we’re heading now, a two-day steam from Cape Town, toward
the inshore end of the line. Her instruments will remain
in the water for eighteen months measuring the velocity and
volume of water transported by the Agulhas Current. After
that time, she will return to the line, retrieve the
instruments, collect their data, re-deploy the instruments for
total study period of three years.
We’ll talk
tomorrow about why she wants to measure the Agulhas, how she
and her science staff will do so, and about why it’s
important for the rest of us that scientists understand the
nature of this and other such currents coursing like giant
blood vessels through the body of the world ocean.
But
for today, let’s put it simply: Dr. Lisa is seeking
to understand how our world works; that’s what scientists
do. It’s just that ocean scientists do it from
ships, and one way or another, as we’ll see, all of us
benefit from their efforts.
The wind is down now as darkness falls on this our first day at sea. The ship feels stable, comfortable, pleased to be back in her element, but then, I’ll admit, I’m an ocean romantic. Good evening to you all and welcome aboard.
Photo Credits: Brett Kuyper
