On the Job

Engineer John Kemp
Woods Hole Oceanograpic Institution

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First, what is your title?

I am our Senior Engineering Assistant II...an engineer.

Who does Woods Hole collaborate with? Do you have specific groups that you work with a lot of the time?

Woods Hole is a nonprofit institution, so we have no affiliation with a college, but we do a lot of joint work and we have students here in the summer from MIT—we had a joint program with MIT. But we typically work for the National Science Foundation or ONR, the Office of Naval Research, and we do some applied work for some outside companies, but about 80 percent of the work here is pure research. We’re moving ever so slowly into doing more applied work.

What’s your favorite part of the job? Being out in the field or in the office?

Oh, definitely, in the field. It’s a passion. I have the luxury of being able to travel with somebody else paying for it. To be able to go to the Arctic and spend as much time there as I have—it’s an amazing part of the world. I should say it’s an amazing, changing part of the world.

Do you find the changes really frustrating and alarming?

Personally, to have been up there and seen 15 years ago what the Arctic was like, and what it was like this past winter, it’s dramatic. You can’t help but notice that something’s changed. But the fact is, we’re not really sure what the issues are. It’s something that’s gotta be studied long-term.

Does some of your research help that, or are you completely not covering that area?

There was a lot of interest in the Arctic back when we had the Cold War, and then after the Cold War was over, all the funding for the Arctic kind of dried up. But now with global warming there’s a lot more research up there and a lot more projects planned to monitor and see what’s going on.

Is the research by Woods Hole?

There are a lot of different institutes looking at climate change [that have Arctic programs]. Woods Hole has quite a few. I was in the Arctic last year on three different projects for about three months—and I think there are four more trips planned to study global warming and climate change this year.

Do you get seasick at all?

Fortunately I’ve never been seasick in a day in my life. I don’t think I’d go to sea as much as I do if I got seasick, but I’ve been at Woods Hole for 30 years and I’ve never been seasick a day in my life. It is amazing, actually. There’s some people, friends of mine that work here, they just get violently sick. They manage to work through it. I don’t know if I could do it. I wouldn’t do it as much.

It seems like your job is a mix of using your brains and brawn.

Exactly. You need a strong mind and a strong body. When we go to sea, there’s a lot of physical labor, a lot of long hours, a lot of time outside. You need to like the outdoors, you need to like nasty weather and be able to work fairly hard.

Are the sleds that you pull off icebreakers heavy?

It’s not that hard to pull. Typically we would actually use the ship’s helicopter to ferry us out to a piece of ice, an ice floe that is suitable to deploy one of these things, but sometimes we’re fortunate enough that the ice floe is right next to the ship, so we put the gear on the ice with the crane and then we move it by hand over to near where we want to work.

How long have you been in this field? It looks from your resume that you’ve worked at Woods Hole your entire professional career.

I have, I’m a lifer. I’ve been here 30 years this month. I think it was March 10, 1978.

And you went to Mass Maritime?

Yes, I was at Mass Maritime. It’s a popular school back East. Lots of people at Woods Hole got started there. I went there for a year and realized that going to sea wasn’t for me, and then I came to Woods Hole and I probably spend more time at sea than people would in the Merchant Marines, but it’s a lot more fun, being able to work with scientists and develop new things. It’s a really cool job because I get to see things from inception to the finish, where I get to actually work on things and then go out in the field and deploy them for data collection.

What did you study in school?

Mechanical engineering.

Have you always been interested in the ocean?

Yeah, I’ve worked on the water since I was 12.

What types of challenges does the weather present in the course of your daily work?

Well, when we’re at sea, the weather dictates basically everything. If we’re on an icebreaker, we don’t have to worry about sea state because you’re in the ice, and there are no waves. There’s plenty of wind, but the ship doesn’t move. But if we’re doing work that needs the helicopter, then in the Arctic in the summertime it’s always foggy, and so the helicopter can’t fly. And some days it’s brutally cold, but you still have to work through that kind of stuff.

What are the coldest temperatures that you’ve experienced?

I think once it was around 1997, we pioneered an ice camp, and it was -40°F. We landed with a Twin Otter on the ice, we unloaded everything—the tent, and food for a day, and everything that we needed to set the camp up; the airplane took off, and we had to work. You needed to get the tent up, get the heat going, and it was about -40°F. But it’s like anything, over time you get acclimatized to it. A week or 10 days later, you’re sometimes walking around in a t-shirt to go outside. Your body really does get acclimatized to the cold weather.

Do you enjoy the cold?

Yeah, I’m a cold-weather person. I don’t do really well in the heat, hence the reason I don’t do much tropical work. I tend to stay away from the hotter climates. The way I look at that, I can dress for the cold, but I can’t dress for the heat. And so, I’m probably the only person who has been at WHOI for 30 years and never crossed the equator, and I’m going to keep that record. It’s too hot.

Countless survival stories warn readers to never be careless in the face of Mother Nature. What are some lessons that you’ve learned working in the Arctic?

In the Arctic, don’t sweat. Dress in layers. If you sweat in the Arctic, with that water on your skin, you’ve got a serious problem with being cold. Be smart. The thing is, dress in layers, that’s the biggest thing I’ve ever learned. If I’m working, I’m able to take layers so that when I get warm, I don’t sweat. Once you break a sweat, water vapor is on your skin, and it’s not good.

What brands do you wear in the Arctic?

I have some R.E.I. stuff, I have L.L. Bean stuff, I have Northface stuff, it’s a mixture of different things, different liners, different wind protection. It’s a mish mash of all the yuppy stuff.

Have you had any close encounters with polar bears?

I haven’t—I’ve seen them really close. We’ve been on some ice camps where they’ve come in at night, but I’ve never been anywhere where we’ve seen one killed because he’s encroached on the camp. They’re amazing creatures. When you see one up close, it’s unbelievable. A beautiful animal. We all abide by what we call the Arctic Creed, which is: always travel with a slow friend, because if you can outrun him, then the polar bear is going to get him first.

I saw that you went on Polar Discovery Expedition 2. Did you find what you were hoping to find?

We did not discover any vents. We discovered evidence of different biological life, but as far as finding a hypothermal vent, the answer to that was no, we did not.

Was that disappointing?

It was very disappointing because it’s so costly to go to the Arctic. The icebreaker is very expensive, so to go up there and not discover what you wanted to, it’s difficult. But, it’s also a very difficult place to work, because a lot of times in the Arctic you can’t get where you want to go with an icebreaker because the ice is too thick. And so there’s lots of times when we’re up there that we wanted to go to a certain point, but we just can’t get there because we couldn’t break the ice.

I read the day-by-day review and it said that you were testing the machines and testing the instruments. You’re operating very precise machines in a hostile environment, so mistakes are costly. Did you find bugs when testing, and what type?

With any new development of an instrument, it’s almost always a software issue. These ROVS (Remotely Operated Vehicles) are getting more and more complicated, they’re doing multi-functions, multi-tasking, and typically it would be a bug in the software.

It definitely seems like a very unpleasant job a lot of the time.

We work long hours, some of these systems that we put in the water and take out of the water might take us 16 or 20 hours to do, so we’re typically on-deck and whatever the weather is, the weather is...once we start, we can’t stop.

You have to embrace it instead of fighting it?

The phrase we use is “Just deal with it.” Don’t whine, don’t pout, just deal with it. It’s part of the job when you sign up to do this. It’s all based on safety. We try not to get ourselves in a situation with the weather where life is at risk. We spend a lot of time in the early morning, before we start looking at the weather maps, checking the barometer, making sure that all signs point to the weather’s not going to get any worse, it will get better.

Are you going on Expedition 4 to Greenland?

I’m not going to do that one. For my next job I’m going on The Healy, which is the U.S. Coast Guard’s largest icebreaker, and we’re going to go up to the Beaufort Sea and do some work there in August.

What type of work will you be doing?

We’re doing some more mooring work, or buoy work, to look at time series measurements in the Arctic Ocean, observations related to climate change. Then I’ll come back to Woods Hole, and then I head off, then I’ll probably go back to another icebreaker in Russia in September.

Who owns the ships that you use?

Well, The Healy, for example, is owned and operated by the Coast Guard. Woods Hole has three vessels and they’re typically owned by the National Science Foundation or the Navy. Woods Hole doesn’t own those outright. Typically the vessels we use are part of UNOLS—the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System—but they operate the vessels, they’re typically operated by a university, or, like Scripps, and the University of Washington has a vessel, University of Rhode Island has a vessel, and so you know, when they schedule these ships, you submit a ship request saying that you need this size vessel to go this place, for this many days, and then a bunch of people get together, put a schedule together, and next thing you know, you’re on some ship.

So it’s a bunch of people on the ship who have the same goal but aren’t from the same group?

Yeah, typically on the smaller class vessels, you would go with your science team, it might be six or eight people that are there to support the project you’re working on. There is typically a chief scientist, and then an engineer or two and a bunch of field technicians that go in support of the particular project that we’re working on at the time. And in some of the larger vessels that go for extended voyages, like for 40 to 60 days, you might see multiple disciplines on the ship, where there’s one chief scientist but there are three other scientists to do different work. Typically the ship operates 24/7; we’re working around the clock. [There are] some particular operations that can only be done in daylight, then during the night there are some other ancillary things going on so that the vessel’s working 24/7.

Over your past 30 years of working at Woods Hole, have there been any trips or expeditions that you’ve especially loved?

I mean, I haven’t really had any bad ones. I mean, I think any trip that I can get to the Arctic is a good trip. I was on the Fedorov, which is a Russian icebreaker, this past summer. I had never been on a Russian ship before, and it was one of the best experiences, it was awesome.

Really?

Yeah, the people were really nice, and despite what everybody says, the food was really good. And it was fun. It was one of the better trips.

What type of changes in technology—both the kinds that you’ve developed, and in general—have you seen during your time at Woods Hole?

I think the biggest change in technology is communications. I mean, we used to go to sea and not have any communication with home for 30 to 40 days, but now...not only do you have to do your job at sea, nowadays, but I have to do my Woods Hole job at sea because everyone is in communication with email. So you never leave your day job. But I think the communications, the Internet, the wealth of information that is available to you anywhere in the world is amazing.

Blah blah – plant a buoy, and have it there for 2 years—

Yeah, just the navigation ability nowadays, we’re able to put these things up in the Arctic for a year and then we go back a year later and we find it...it’s right there, we know exactly where to go with GPS.

It seems like your job is really hard—you’re away from home a lot, and nasty weather, but that you enjoy that?

Well, it makes life more challenging when the weather is a little bad. You have to put more thought into what you do, you have to put more thought into being careful, that you don’t fall or yget washed over the side. We all like working in really flat, calm seas, but that doesn’t happen very much, despite your best wishes. Typically, when you go to sea, you’re going to get bad weather. It’s a fact of life, and we prepare for it, we have clothing for it, and we have enough experience to know when we can do something, and when we can’t.

Wrapping up, is there anything that you want to add that you think is important?

It’s amazing that I’m fortunate enough to be able to work for Woods Hole, and to go to sea and represent Woods Hole. As hard as you can work ashore, you can work 364 days ashore and go to sea for one day and not be able to get anything done because of weather is bad. We put a lot of thought into the engineering of equipment that we’re going to use at sea, and half of that thought is how we’re going to get it in and out of the water safely in rough weather conditions. We want to make sure that we can get it in and out of the water in bad weather. I really like my job, I’ve got the best job in the world.

—MEGHAN JOYCE is the associate editor at Weatherwise.

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