ALIA Expedition
Interview with Gabe Foreman -- Marine Technician

How long have you been onboard the Kilo Moana?

3 years. I’m a "Plank Owner", which means I was on the maiden voyage. This is a term from the old sailing days, and it means that if you were on the maiden voyage, when they decommission the ship you are entitled to a plank from the deck. So, I got that going for me. I will have a nice big steel plate in my living room.

After discussing the inner workings of the Voice Activated System (VAS) of the tape recorder that I was trying to use, the real questions began ...

You are a Marine Technician, what exactly does that mean?

Actually, my job title is "Marine Research Systems Engineer". What it means is that we are here to help scientists integrate their stuff with the ships systems. They have their instruments that they want to have put in and logged, we help do that. We maintain the electronics that we have onboard all the time, the ships computers and the computer and data stream network. We also get to do some design work.

Why did you become a Marine Technician?

Well, I got tired of working in a cubicle and I really liked being out at sea … and the free coffee helped.  

In your mind, what does it take to be successful at this job?

It has a lot of different aspects to it. You kind of have to be a jack of all trades, and have good people skills.

Do you find it challenging to maintain all the equipment aboard the KM?

Yeah, mainly because eventually everything breaks …

So what are your greatest/most common challenges you face?

Keeping people safe on the back deck is a pretty common challenge. Probably the greatest one is trying to fix electronics that break at sea. 

What is your approach to solving those problems?

You just have to break everything down to the most simple groups that you can, and then eliminate all possibilities to find out if it is something you can fix or if it is something you can’t.

Unique problems seem to be almost guarantied on the KM, do you find solving them to be part of the allure of the job?

Yeah, that is basically what we do: solving problems. I was just writing home about that. I really like figuring how to get around problems. The solution is not always elegant and simple, most of the time it is more "Duct Tape" than anything else ... Duct Tape is the backbone of oceanography.

What do you think of the current ALIA expedition?

I think it is a solid crew. It is a good group of people who have a lot of enthusiasm. Even if a lot of them haven’t been to sea before, enthusiasm makes a big difference. 

Can it be hard to work with all the different personalities at times?

Yes, a lot of times people don’t see outside of their little box. It can be unpleasant to work with people who just don’t understand that there are aspects that maybe they don’t understand … and that you can only work so many hours in a day. 

Time is precious on a ship, how do you like the shift schedule?

It works pretty well. Basically, when I am at sea, I come out here to work. I get compensated when I go home. I get three to five months off a year where I don’t have to call into work or anything. It has been a long time since I’ve spent any time at home, so I am ready to head back. 

Back to working with different personalities: Does it ever seem like you are asked to do the impossible … on short notice?

Yeah, sometimes people have unreal expectations. One of the rewarding things is, when I get a question like that and I figure out a way solve it, I am stoked even if the person is like, "well, yeah, that's your job, that is what you are supposed to do". The personal satisfaction that comes from that is probably the most important part.

When asked, to what lengths do you go to accomplish the impossible?

I hate admitting that I can’t do something, so I will go to pretty much whatever lengths I can, using every resource available to me.

During the beginning of this cruise, you stayed up for practical days at a time trying to get the pingers to work …

This is not the first time those little buggers have kept me up for days at a time either. For me that’s part of the fun: working really hard for a week … and then collapsing every night from exhaustion, it makes sleep that much sweeter.   

Do you have a most interesting/favorite experience aboard the Kilo Moana?

Yeah, there are a few. Probably one of my favorite experiences was when I was just starting to use the mapping sonar. We were trying to sample different water levels at the continental shelf, in the Bering Sea. We were driving along the shelf and I was trying to find a spot using the multi-beam, that I could go about half way up the shelf and set the CTD down within less than five meters of the bottom to get a good sample of the water column. I was watching the multi-beam data and calling the bridge the bridge and saying, "ok, turn right ninety degrees". We drove up, well not "up", but along this little underwater canyon and then found the right spot to put the CTD in the water. I put it in the water and then went back up the computer room and watched the CTD drop down and was able to say, "All right, you are about a meter off the bottom, bring it back up now". It was really cool to get such an intimate feel for something. I went up on deck after seeing this whole ridge system and thinking, "I am driving up this big ridge, and dropping the CTD down into this little bowl here" and looked around. All I saw was perfectly flat water. It was like no one knew what was there but me.

You seem to have a pretty intimate knowledge of all the systems onboard …

Yeah, maybe a little too intimate. For example, the multi-beam system broke on our way over to Samoa from Australia. I basically pulled the entire thing apart to figure out what was wrong with it. They flew out an extra part and by the time we landed in Pago Pago, everything was working for this trip. It was a combination of the a few components. There are probably thirty-six different computer boards in that one system and you just kind of have to figure it out … You end up emailing to the people at manufacturer (a lot) who do the field work on it for advise. 

The way technology is progressing it is hard for one person to know everything about a system, don’t you think?

Even if you are involved in the manufacturing and design of it, there is still the person who builds the sonar transducers, who is not the same guy who builds the computer boards, or programs the software, or does the wiring. In the end you have to write all sorts of emails back and forth to figure out what is going on. That helps keep it entertaining, it is not always something that you can just walk in and say, "oh this broke" and pull it out, get a new one and plug it back in and have it work.

Do you have a worst experience aboard the Kilo Moana that you would care to share? 

Spending two days fixing a pinger (again) and then being woken up in the middle of the night and being told that it had hit the deck and exploded. The little parts flew all over the lab. Yeah, that was probably the low point …