Wage Mariners: The Backbone of the NOAA Fleet: Steward Department Version

What if you could find a secure, well-paying government job, but instead of a cubicle, your office has an endless horizon? It's definitely not your nine-to-five job. Never a dull moment. It's kind of fun. Instead of a commute, you get to travel around the world. Good places not many people get to go. We got some time in at St. Kitts and in the Virgin Islands. We're going to take off to French Polynesia and New Cahiva. Places I've never been. Places that are so pristine that no one in the commercial industry will ever get to. And what if, instead of a monotonous day-in, day-out shift, your job was surrounded by cutting-edge technology and groundbreaking discoveries every day? You get involved in projects that you read about in the news. There's always new things that you're discovering. You're surrounded by the latest and greatest technology, new designs, new engineering systems. That's what you'll find in a career with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, the premier science agency of the United States federal government. Aboard NOAA's growing fleet of oceanographic and fishing vessels, career positions are available at all levels of experience, including no experience. As a civilian mariner with NOAA, you'll have opportunities to train and work at sea aboard state-of-the-art scientific ships, which are commanded and managed by officers in the NOAA Corps, as well as civilian officers. The NOAA Corps is a branch of the Uniformed Service dedicated specifically to NOAA and under NOAA's own leadership. You'll work in concert with these officers and visiting science teams in support of NOAA's mission to further the nation's understanding of oceans and atmosphere, support commerce, and protect lives and property. It's no small thing that we're going out and that the data we collect is the data that they use to manage their fisheries. We're part of that. There's no doubt. That's what we do. A lot of the science that is done out here is pretty high-profile stuff, and these ships support that science. All through college, you learn about NOAA as being a leader in oceanographic research, and to be able to work for the organization is pretty amazing. The instruments that protect our coasts from deadly tsunamis are deployed by NOAA wage mariners. When disasters occur at sea, NOAA ships respond, lending their unique capabilities to mitigation efforts. And research that shapes national policy on air quality, climate change, fishery management, and many other key issues could not be maintained without competent mariners keeping the ship and its crew going. Without the mariners, you will not accomplish any mission. A deck officer, as myself, drives the ship, whereas the mariner will be the one that's actually making sure that we get our mission completed. We will get out there. They will service the buoy. They will make sure that we get the fishing lines in and out. They're the ones that feed us. They're the ones that collect some of the scientific data, and they're the ones that clean the ship and maintain the ship and make sure it's running in proper condition. Most of the vessels in the NOAA fleet remain in U.S. waters. Home ports are many, from Woods Hole to Kodiak, and from Charleston to Honolulu. Many of the ships in the fleet are new, with more on the way, which means you'll have the opportunity to work on high-tech, modernized platforms, such as acoustically quiet fishery science vessels and a recently refitted ship devoted entirely to ocean exploration. When you're bringing stuff up from the ocean, it's really exciting to see these things, especially stuff you've never seen before. Stuff that looks just like the weird cartoons and the science fiction stuff, you know? It's an unbelievable science platform. Everything from acoustics to fish surveys to charting the ocean bottom to studying the water column. Basically, in a nutshell, it's like the space shuttle, but on the ocean, you know? Most NOAA mariner positions fall under one of four departments. The deck department, the engineering department, the steward department, and the survey department. If the engineering department is in charge of keeping the ship moving, the stewards are in charge of keeping the crew moving. All over the fleet, NOAA mariners are saying the same thing about the food served on NOAA ships. The food on this ship is awesome. I think the food's awesome. The food's awesome. The steward we have right now, I wouldn't trade her for the world. It's good, man. It's wholesome, and they just keep it coming. It's like full plate every meal. The food is outstanding, and it really, really is a strong point in the morale on board a ship. For dinner tonight, we have veal chops and vegetable sauce, and we also have a mustard-rubbed pork loin, which we have going on in the oven right now. We give them all fresh ingredients. We do fresh soups on a daily basis, fresh vegetables, and we also give them a huge variety of choices. We don't limit our menu to just one or two different items. I mean, you just see it. You know, we have Mongolian night. We got prime rib once a week. I mean, some fresh cod, some fresh haddock. Never-ending free buffet. I look down, and I'll say, you know, if I was in Newport, this would be like a $60 meal. It's a good meal for the crew every day. It energizes them and motivates them. It also gives them something really to look forward to, because we really put an extra effort into what we put together. Aboard NOAA's fleet of ships, officers and scientists will come and go, but critical to the success of every operation are the ship's full-time personnel. The single greatest resource in the NOAA fleet, the wage mariner. Nobody does what NOAA does. Every trip, I come back learning something new. It's a great opportunity and a great experience, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. If you have any interest in going to sea, working for NOAA would be an ideal opportunity. I'm positive that this experience will open a lot of doors for me. If we're going to continue to research our planet and learn more about global climate change and all these different things that are going on, we're going to need some really good sailors to go out there and retrieve that data. So I see a bright future in the mariner community here in NOAA. Knowing that I'm contributing to the larger body of scientific work that's out there, I find that incredibly gratifying. Being on a NOAA ship, it's the intangibles that matter more than anything else. It's not the paycheck. It's not the steady employment. It really is the science. You get to be on board with crews from National Geographic, some of the preeminent scientists in the world doing cutting-edge studies. Where else are you going to find that? You won't. You have a chance to be part of something bigger than just a commercial organization, and that's what NOAA's about.