The Polaris

The Polaris at dockside.

At 100' long, the Polaris is the largest ship I've ever been on for research. She is an old cruiser yacht that was donated many years back to the USGS and which they now use to sample in the San Francisco Bay. As I understand, it's the oldest boat still in service that's owned by the federal government. The boat was plush in its day and is still very comfortable. She sleeps 13, has a kitchen as well as tv/dvd and loads upon loads of science equipment.

San Francisco Skyline

Golden Gate Bridge

We left early Tuesday morning and toured the South Bay, Central Bay and North Bay to Rio Vista, which is almost 2 hours drive from San Francisco. We slept on the boat at the dock in Rio Vista and on Wednesday returned via the same route. I got great views of Alcatraz, the Golden Gate bridge and downtown San Francisco.

This device was lowered to collect water quality data from water at the bottom and at intervals throughout the water column.

Val and Tim sluicing clams from a benthic grab sample. They're collecting data on benthic fauna to relate to changes in water quality in the bay.

In Rio Vista we went to a bar called Foster's, whose claim to fame is the largest collection of stuffed prey in the US. From baboons, gazelle and lions to moose, bear and even a chipmunk, this guy has shot it all. The collection was from the '20s and '30s so you can imagine they looked pretty worn. There must have been 300 mounted heads on the wall.  No pics though, I left my camera on the boat.

And my personal highlight of this trip was the bathrooms aboard the Polaris. Because of the polluted San Francisco Bay, ships are required to store or burn refuse, no dumping allowed. (pun anyone?) The Polaris used a fairly common ship toilet that combusts deposits using high-powered electrical coils that are vented to the outside. The system works well with one drawback. Anytime the toilet was used the invisible smoke puffed out above deck and anyone who was not below caught a good whiff of burning carbon. With two toilets and 13 aboard, this happened quite often. Luckily, I mostly worked in the cabin and had to tolerate the stench seldomly.

The Fire Toilet with lemonade for demonstration purposes. The white paper liner is required for both liquid and solid deposits in order for the burn to succeed.

The Fire Toilet's button, pretty self-explanatory.

The Fire Toilet in action. The doors only open briefly and I was afraid I might drop the camera so this one's a little fuzzy. Then poof, Fire in the Hole!