Tomorrow's the day! I leave for the Rockland, Maine shipyard to board the spruced up Corwith Cramer and sail away into the Atlantic Ocean. All I can say is... holy shit. It hasn't fully hit me yet, I dont think... and so that leaves me to wonder what will happen when it DOES hit me. I think I might cry, then other times I think I'll pee myself with excitement... so I'll keep you updated on what actually happens.
But I've kind of fallen behind on explaining what I've been doing all these weeks in Woods Hole... and let me just tell you that's because it was so busy I could barely breathe. I wanted to get the most out of everything I was doing … So I was constantly doing things. Whether it was homework, making dinner, cleaning, adventuring or socializing... I was always busy! Well anyway, I'm going to go back in time and let you all know what I've been up to!
So about three weeks ago... or so... My class ventured to the New Bedford Whaling Museum. We've learned a lot about whaling and its history but essentially New Bedford was the American capital of Whaling and so their culture has been completely built around being a fishing port. It's absolutely a city built around the harbor instead of a harbor built for a town. Even today New Bedford is one of the top producers of fish! So for our field trip we headed straight to the fishing dock to look at the boats and I got some fantastic photos.
After touring around the dock for a while we headed into town and visited the Save Buzzards Bay Coalition. This organization is dedicated to raising awareness and money for the restoration and preservation of Buzzards Bay which is the bay in which New Bedford and Woods Hole are located. There has been a huge increase in nitrogen levels in the water around there which causes almost total destruction of the life at the bottom of the bay. They've had a lot of issues with the waste processing plant in New Bedford which has led to a lot of dumping of untreated waste into the bay and has killed a huge portion of the life there. We talked to the volunteers there for a while and looked over their really impressive map of the bay. Here's the Woods Hole Portion... racing beach there on the top is where all the SEA students hang out. On clear days we can see the edges of New Bedford and we knew nothing of the pollution coming from so close by. Its sad.
After learning about Buzzards Bay we headed up to The Seamen's Bethel which is a church erected and dedicated to all the men who have left the port of New Bedford never to return. There are plaques lining the walls of the church, each dedicated to a person or crew who went down with a storm or died at sea another way. It was a very humbling experience reading all the ways people had died and it was very interesting to look at how the Ocean demanded respect from the people of a town dedicated to living on the ocean and making their living from it. The bethel was quaint and tucked behind the huge Whaling museum, but it was run by an amazing man with his own story of loss. He had lost his brother to the sea and now works at the bethel.
Then we moved on to the Whaling Museum itself! Before even going into the building there were lots of things to see.
Next, as you enter the actual museum, you are reduced to the size of an ant as three skeletons of whales hang above your head. The largest of them, given the name KOBO, King Of the Blue Ocean, by the museum, he was a 66-ft, rare, juvenile Blue Whale that was killed when a tanker accidentally ran into him, he was probably only 4 or 5 years old. This happened in 1998 and when they finally got the skeleton on display, the head and jaw bones (which by themselves are about 18 ft long) were leaking oil. This oil is one of the main reasons whales were hunted at all. Today, the jaw is STILL excreting oil. For 13 years!! Crazy.
The rest of the museum was equally as amazing as the whale skeletons in the lobby. It was like a maze, every corner, crevasse and nook led you down a different path of the history of New Bedford. I learned so much and had a fantastic time. Also, within the museum there is a scaled down replica of a whaling boat that you can get up on and walk around on, that was awesome as well.
The Whaling museum was a fantastic trip and it really helped me start to grasp what the ocean means to other people around the world.
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