Life as a deck hand and garbologist

Follow the crew of the Arctic Sunrise on their campaign for Marine Reserves in our North Sea Tour blog

From Portia: As deck hand, I am on watch with the captain from 4 to 8 morning and evening, which means I enjoy both the sunset and the sunrise. My day begins with a wake up call at 3.45am. I grab a cup of tea and banana and hope the caffeine and fruit will sustain me for an hour before I do a safety round, checking that no water is flooding onto the Arctic Sunrise, there are no signs of fire and that everything is generally in ship shape.

Sunrise over the Sunrise

This morning, as the sun was rising, I caught a glimpse of two dolphins leaping through the water, racing the ship. As ship's 'garbologist', I am responsible for sorting out the rubbish, so before retiring to my bunk after the morning watch, I gather all the bags of organics, glass, plastics, paper and aluminium and move them to large dustbins at the stern of the ship. We recycle as much as we can, freezing organics to avoid rancid smells, to dispose of when we reach port.

I collapse into my cabin to sleep until lunch at midday and then spend the afternoon working on deck. After rough sailing through rolling waves, all the crew were extremely relieved to drop anchor for a day or so. The mess room was eerily empty as the crew were thrown from port to starboard, but as soon as we reached shelter, appetites returned and tummies settled. The Arctic Sunrise is here to document the overfishing that is taking place in the North Sea pretty much unabated. Despite the seriously low numbers of cod that remain, fishing continues. We are determined to drum home the message that this cannot continue.

Destination Bergen in Norway tomorrow, where the public will be able to explore the ship for themselves during the open ship day.