NOWRAMP
2002
Loading (9/7/02)
D-Day
minus one.
by
Carlos Eyles
|
The
Rapture at dock in Honolulu
|
We
depart for the Northwestern Hawaiian islands tomorrow at
noon the eighth of September. We, the members of the scientific,
education and documentation teams are stowing our gear this
Friday morning. The one hundred and fifty foot vessel, Rapture
rests at the dock on Sand Island at the Coast Guard Station
on the island of O‘ahu in the heart of Honolulu. Working
my way up the gangway past sweaty men loading machinery
I cannot identify, I dodge around heavy hawsers on deck,
outboard motors some so fresh they have never felt the wound
of salt, others seemingly in disrepair with covers off exposing
their maladies. Mechanics working at an unhurried pace in
the way of their trade. We will be gone a month and all
must be in working order. Boxes and buoys strewn about the
deck as well, what looks like a new compressor awaits loading
on the dock. It is a ship preparing to depart.
I
share a room with two others, Andy Collins, who heads the
education team and Jim Watt the chief photographer whom
I've known for twenty five years and is a veteran of expeditions
such as this, "but never," he says, " one
of such magnitude." Our quarters are not exactly roomy,
though if pressed could bed nine souls. Already it is cramped
with equipment, primarily Jim's underwater photography gear,
filling every corner, piled high on unused bunks and in
general eating up floor space. For now our dive gear must
live in these quarters along with tools of our respective
trades, reducing it down to what has become a rabbit hole.
Down
on the lower deck of this three deck vessel is the main
salon/mess hall where lie 14 long tables with booth like
benches. Already electronic equipment is being set up and
wires spider web the floor Here is where the bulk of the
topside work will be done, and will be the nerve center
of the entire operation. The aft wall is honeycombed with
scuba tanks that await their respective 
scientists,
archeologists, fish counters, and educators. Forward is
a brand new decompression chamber, its parts still sitting
awaiting assembling. It is claustrophobically small, I would
not wish to more than a few minutes sealed in its chamber.
Starboard forward stand O2 bottles and a foose ball game.
Port forward is a kind of bar which on this dry ship seems
strangely out of place, perhaps to compliment the foose
ball game which stands awkwardly next to the chamber I wonder
if it will still be here when we depart. (It is)
Wandering
the boat I find a covey of surfboards and skateboards wedged
above a stair well. Forward port in a dead quiet stateroom
are some sixty-five white buckets sealed with names like
Nihoa, Pearl and Hermes, Necker, French Frigate Shoals,
Laysan, and Lisianski written on their lids. These are the
islands whose terrain we will be investigating and inside
the buckets are the clothes, all decontaminated, that we
will be wearing.
All
this and of course much, much more for the express purpose
of gathering data on the reef systems and terrestrial mysteries
that lie within these incredibly wild and remote islands.
Then to make this data available to the public and as Robert
Smith, who, among others, largely made this expedition possible
said, "We will bring the place to the people rather
than the people to the place." And so we will. There
is a sense of value here, of importance, that what we will
provide in terms of data will determine the future of these
precious waters. Each of us from every discipline holds
a measure of responsibility that is not only valuable in
its own right, but in a way, sacred insofar as this is history
in the making. History for the Hawaiian culture, for science,
and for the generations of children who will have a natural
world to connect to if they so desire.
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