#now that I’ve weathered squalls and storms and have had survival training

[finrays]

Thanks y’all, a good night’s sleep was pretty recharging, lol.

What happened was this: we got hit with a sudden squall while working on the back deck of the boat. Within like, ten seconds of the first gust, we were dealing with heavy rain, super powerful wind (our chief scientist estimated 50 mph) and our captain not noticing how bad it had gotten and going through it with the engine at full tilt, which added sea spray to the situation. It was strong enough to pick up a metal pan full of crabs and fling it off the table into the river.

We’d been cleaning up after fieldwork in what was just the expected rain, then the wind came TOTALLY out of nowhere, and it triggered the ol’ Flight/Fight/Freeze response hard on the side of Freeze; I kinda remember ducking under the sorting table (which didn’t help because it was open underneath) and seeing red as what felt like salty pebbles hammered into me. It was DEFINITELY a combination of the rain and river water, which was pretty saline that close to the mouth.

I couldn’t get my brain to work. It was like “If we stand up we’re in trouble. We can’t do that.” Eventually I had to hold out a hand to my coworker and let her grab it to show me where the deck lab was so I could scuttle inside. We were all squished into this tiny little shotgun room together, completely soaked and in some form of shock. Like, wet t-shirt contest, post-shower hair soaked. It was insane.

It all lasted about two minutes but MAN; that was a primal kind of fear I haven’t felt in years and years, if at all. Something in my brain stem was like “This could kill us” and I locked up in response. We lost the sorting pan but no one was hurt, just rattled. I really get why the old-time sailors crossing the oceans on wooden vessels were terrified of storms, this was a quick stinker on the river and it was scary as hell.

The hilarious part of it was that the captain missed it all. No one could get around through the storm to yell at him to slow down, and when we looked through the window into the cabin, was just casually driving with not a care in the world, lol. It was like the marine biology equivalent of;

That was Scary Death-Adjacent Work Incident. Now it’s another notch in my belt and a story to tell, since it didn’t turn out tragic for us. I think y’all are right; adrenaline rush spiked and then lowered. Whew! Definitely better now. Even the jellyfish stings I’d been collecting all day have calmed.

And the NextDoor post wasn’t about me, lol.

It’s incredibly odd how less than two minutes of sheer terror will wipe your reserves out for the rest of the day. We had an Incident at work today that came uncomfortably close to the “Looking Death in the Eye” category and I have been a jittering, exhausted mess with zero ability to cope since then. Like, somebody posted something on NextDoor that my roommate got as a notification that could have vaguely been about me, and I almost burst into tears when I was filling my water bottle and her phone, which she’d left on the kitchen counter when she went out, dinged with it.