Leaving the desert behind, moving back to the sea

As I climb to the end of this summer and we voyage back to Monterey for my final year, I am given an opportunity to reflect on my experiences. My own feelings of my time with Secure Fisheries and the work with Somalis plus the connections that I made reminded me of the narrator’s view of the sea and world around her/him:

 

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

 

O, well for the fisherman’s boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

 

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

 

Break, break, break

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

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Where the marine meets the mountains

It is a peculiar and strange innervation working on issues in the marine space but working in a location that is surrounded by snow-capped mountains. The closest saltwater environment is Great Salt Lake while the closest marine environment is surprisingly and amusingly the Gulf of California (Mar de Cortez). Marine scientists more than likely spend more time 60 feet below water than on mountains above 14000 feet, but that has been this summer. A perplexing circumstance of opposites that have raised eyebrows of people who hear about the work I have been doing and where. Continue reading