Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Art climbed onto the roof of the upper lounge and improvised a modified passage from
Moby-Dick,
in which he evoked a search for the “great white ball of trash.” We had seen
a whale earlier that day, cause for some minor thronging. The truth in Art's joke, though,
was that we would have been far more excited by a whale-size clump of trash.
Then Robin led us in a cheer, screaming something in Japanese, to which we responded
with screams of
Banzai!
again and again, filling the ocean air with our cries. Only later did
he admit that he had been screaming something, I think, about wanting to sleep with your
sister.
Handles of vodka and rum appeared from hiding places belowdecks—it was supposed
to be a dry ship—and the grog, a steel pot of fruit punch, was spiked and spiked again.
Mary raised a mug, her face uncertain at where all this was headed, and made a few an-
nouncements. She reminded us why we were out here. It was about the plastic, about proof-
ing the models, about finding the current lines. The data we were gathering was important,
she emphasized.
Nikki, one of the more forcefully dedicated volunteers, chimed in. We needed to get
more people on debris watch, she said. In her opinion, two crew members on lookout in the
bow was not enough. She thought we should have someone aloft as well. “We need to find
a way to
maximize our data
,” she said, smacking her hands together.
Little empiricist flags shook themselves out all over my brain. Maximize?
Our observations were already of dubious scientific value. For one thing, the haul might
vary widely based on how each watch went about its lookout work. Even something as
simple as whether they faced forward from the bow, or out to the side, or aft, might suggest
modulations in garbage density that didn't exist. And there were diverse opinions about
how small an object could be and still count as an object, as opposed to a
bit,
or particle.
While objects and fragments would be described in the log, and the time and coordinates of
their sighting recorded, bits would simply be added to a running tally for the period of the
watch. It had taken a good ten watches of debris-watching before consensus on such issues
had coalesced. This achieved, our log of debris sightings, though quantitatively suspect,
had a chance of some qualitative value, describing the ebb and flow of debris concentra-
tions as we passed through them.
Now it was proposed that we
maximize
our data with additional lookouts. But this would
throw the whole enterprise out of whack, if indeed it had ever been
in
whack. We would
sight more of what was passing by the boat, and the log would show an increase, but the
change would have nothing to do with a change in the water—only with how many people
were on deck. Already, the log was showing the wounds of previous maximizations, in
which Nikki had chosen to provide an extra set of eyes to someone else's debris watch.
From the crosstrees, she had rained zeal and possibly duplicate sightings.
