08/27/26

I got in late to Norfolk last night so I was super tired this morning, but excited to get settled on the RV Atlantis. I left my very comfortable hotel room and met my team downstairs. Me and another grad student had to Uber because the rental car had too much equipment in it to hold two more people. When we got to the military base, we had to wait in line outside to go into this very small room and receive our visitor badges. The sun and the high humidity along with the weight of our bags made this a tad uncomfortable. With our new badges, we were able to scan to get onto base and  walk through to where the ship was docked. It was a bit chaotic. The RV Atlantis is Navy owned, but operated by WHOI. It is the only ship that houses Alvin, a “human occupied submersible”. It is one of the largest research vessels owned by the U.S. and yet, it looked like a toy boat compared to the massive military ships next to it preparing to leave port. These ships had to be at least twice the size of the Atlantis. The closest ship had a lot of construction happening on board leading to a lot of activity in the surrounding areas to navigate. Even the Atlantis was busy having forklifts bring luggage and lab equipment on board and I saw a crane carrying a NSF lab on board. 

I was able to drop my luggage off in my room. It is a three person room with a bunk bed and one pull-out from the wall. Luckily, I have nice roommates to make the crowded experience better. We each got a dresser and a small closet to put our stuff into. The bathroom has a small shower and toilet that connects to another bedroom so it locks on both sides. It has a heated lamp which is quite luxurious. 

After settling in a little bit, we unloaded the rest of our stuff starting with the lab equipment. Maybe the most challenging part was figuring out what space we could claim in a shared lab. We put non-skid mats on all of our tables, bolted down our microscopes, and bungeed any boxes/crates that we could to the walls. We needed to secure everything on the tables and also the ground to make sure it wouldn’t slide once we are sea-born. 

To end the day, we got to get off the ship and have a nice Italian dinner.