Channel Islands Dispatch

(Kelp)forest bathing

Sleeping “berth” is an apt name for my personal space aboard the Peace Boat last week, but its homophone also accurately describes the daily process of extracting myself from it. A midwife would have been helpful. Headfirst, contorted, kicking and with the occasional scream (if I smacked my head), I would pull myself out of my coffin-sized “womb” when I could no longer resist the smell of brewing coffee from up in the galley. And I was one of the lucky ones who scored a double-wide bunk, though I did have to share it with two big duffel bags and an increasingly fetid heap of wet laundry.

For four days and nights, seventeen of us lived in close quarters on a 62-foot converted fishing boat, eating, talking, working, and sleeping, literally on top of each other, at times sharing a single temperamental toilet. Nobody took a shower. Spartan, distilled experiences like this can quickly result in new friends or enemies. Fortunately for us, it was the former. We all got along famously, no doubt forged through a shared adventure. I had been invited to join Oceana’s diving expedition to California’s Channel Islands by their chief sponsor, Blancpain. Though initially I didn’t have a clear role and feared I’d be nothing more than VIP ballast, as the expedition took shape, I quickly found my purpose.