Written by Izzy Kuethe, Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences, Geological Sciences Major, Class of 2026
Date: September 29th, 2025
Beauty in the Night Shift 
Working the night shift, our hours are spent inside, looking at a wall of screens that show anything and everything important. One screen displays a GPS tracker of our ships, showing our waypoints and plan for the night. Often, it takes three hours to complete a line before the ship starts rumbling, takes a turn, and is followed by a call from the Third Mate asking where to set the next waypoint. Another screen displays a comprehensive list of values that indicate the ship's speed, water temperature, salinity, wave height, and other relevant details. The top three screens display video footage of the ship's back deck, where hands-on work takes place. Three more screens display the SBP29 acoustic data. These are the screens on which we watch the seismic lines and acoustic returns. We are many miles from shore, but often it feels like we have left the world altogether. The dark blue Atlantic stretches in every direction, with no visible horizon at night. Rarely, while out on the deck launching the XBT probes, we will spot a few sparkling lights in the distance, the only hint of other life for days. It's easy to pretend that we are on a spacecraft floating through the never-ending void. The few mornings that we stayed up to watch the sun rise almost felt like we were watching from worlds away.
It is a small group that works the night shift here. Most of the science crew works during the day. Shifts are 12 hours long, from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. A few of the day crew members will usually keep working past 6 pm. They slowly start to trickle out, announcing “goodnight’s” and “see you tomorrow" between 8 pm and midnight. There are only five of us working the night shift, and lately we have been passing the time by talking and getting to know each other, asking questions like what path took them to working on a research vessel, to telling funny stories about our animals back home. I like the small group environment. In a way, it has helped dampen the isolating feeling of being away from home.
It was about 7 hours into our shift when Alex, who takes some of his breaks stargazing on the deck, came in and announced that there were dolphins. I stood up so fast, following him to the door that led to the deck and equipping my life vest. I peered over the edge, looking down at the white capped waves flowing off the sides of our ship. There was a flash of movement in the water, and a large pod of dolphins shimmered under the surface of the waves. A dolphin broke through the surface, blowing out a puff of misty air, and one after another, the dolphins would rise above, playing and surfing the wake of our boat.
Emily and I took videos (most of the audio consists of us exclaiming in awe every 5 seconds). We sat out on the edge of the deck for almost a whole hour that night, watching the show. I watched as a little pink squid, about 5-6 inches, swam along the side of the boat. It wasn't long before I realized that the dolphins were chasing and eating them! Two nights later, another pod of dolphins came to visit us. This time, I saw the dolphin swirl in for the strike when, to my amazement, the squid jumped out of the water and over the dolphin’s head, narrowly avoiding the fate of being a dolphin’s midnight snack.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing so close, right in front of me. Their sleek and shimmery bodies looked almost too ethereal to be real. It was a mesmerizing reminder that even in the middle of what feels like nowhere, life is thriving. A reminder that we are not in the vast expanse of space and that the ocean is full of magic and mystery, above the surface and below.
In those moments, we weren’t scientists staring at a wall of data but simply humans experiencing this magic.
Moments like this anchor you when you are at sea. When the dolphins slipped back into the dark, the ship once again felt like a vessel drifting out into space, except something was different. We felt uplifted by the joy and shared connection. This experience is singular. It was meaningful, distinct, and defining of life at sea and special in ways one can only experience in the void of the ocean.