Living on a research vessel is a unique experience.  Everybody knows that everybody else has a function, and that if that ball gets dropped, the order falls apart.  Your sole function on the ship is work.  Anything else is to keep you from going insane.  Well, that happened a few days ago.  I felt terrible, as if I was stuck on some floating prison.  I was useless, unable to do more than eat, sleep, and make furtive attempts at photographing ways of leaving the ship.

This pissed me off.  I was out here, in a beautiful place, doing good science, and it would only last for another few days...  My sleep pattern became more and more erratic, waking up later and later, until I almost missed lunch.  What was I doing missing all that time?  Why was I wasting this opportunity?

I started looking around, watching what kept the other crew members sane, and I thought about what would make me sane again.  The first thing that came to mind was to not miss any meals, which meant getting up early.  The other was what I was eating at these meals.  I was going crazy on the no-vegetable no-fruit diet that I had been maintaining.  So, I changed this all, I woke up early, had fruit and yogurt for breakfast, with a little coffee, and I felt great.

I don't think that it's the food itself, it is the ritual.  My day was getting unstructured, and with it, my brain.  Rebuilding that structure helped me regain my sanity.  I saw that all the other crew members had major routines, or were going insane.  Most of them have salad, fruit or otherwise, every meal.  Almost all of them get daily aerobic exercise.  I believe that this firm structure is what keeps us all hanging by the thread, as opposed to going postal with the fire axes.

Daniel Staudigel onboard the R/V Kilo Moana.