Programs Blog

03 September 2025

Location (Lat and Long): 44° 11.8’N x 136° 33.6’W

Ship Heading: 030 PSC

Ship Speed: 8 knots!

Log (nm): 2266 nm

Weather/Wind/Sail Plan: Winds SxE at force 4, overcast and cold, sailing under the four lowers and tops’l

Yesterday morning I was awoken after 2 hours of sleep by Rocky’s PA announcement of “whales, whales, breaching whales”. I was awake on the first “whales”, upright by the second, and out of bed by the third. I raced up to deck with speed that would certainly come in handy during emergency drills, and yet by the time I oriented myself in the bright morning sun, I had missed the young sei whale breaching off in the distance. Oh well, you win some you lose some. I won this morning when a similar announcement was made (minus the breaching) and I caught a glimpse of a fin whale as it took several breaths and made a terminal dive. Last night, however, was akin to a championship win. During my first hour of midnight watch, C Watch was informed by our lookout that there were dolphins playing in the bioluminescence at the bow. We all raced up to watch for a moment before waking the others and having a sparkle dolphin watch party. They came zooming in to our bow wake in ones and twos, darting back and forth in front of us, and having loads of fun surfing the crests of the waves we were creating. The bioluminescence was not the brightest I had ever seen, but it was enough to coat them in an otherworldly sheen as they sped through the water. They flew at us like torpedoes, momentarily disappeared as they leapt from the water, and left perfect outlines of their dorsal fins and tails as they sliced through the surf. Over the din of the waves you could sometimes hear the occasional click or squeal as they spoke to each other. As I stood there watching, I thought to myself “well, the blog tomorrow just wrote itself”. That was a little presumptuous of me, since something as special as that moment deserves some sort of artful comparison beyond basic description. I wracked my brain for what I could say about them, that they looked like they were ghosts, mermaids, or made of starlight. While all of those would be accurate, what stuck in my head was a song recently released by one of my favorite bands, Cayucas, titled The Spirit of a Surfing Cowboy. While dolphins and cowboys might not seem related in the slightest, I found more comparisons the longer I thought about it.

For starters, both are entirely over romanticized and inaccurately described in popular media. Dolphins are the poster child for marine biology, and oftentimes people will chalk up my field to simply “playing with dolphins”, completely erasing the hard work and dedication that marine scientists undergo to research and protect entire ecosystems. Because of this, some marine biologists have negative feelings towards dolphins ranging anywhere from annoyance to outright disgust. This feeling is, of course, not entirely deserved, and just about anyone would still love a chance to see them in the wild. That being said, dolphins are also intelligent enough to have the capacity for evil and can be far more sinister that the playful cuddly image most people have of them (I’ll leave it to you to look it up on your own). Similarly, the Hollywood depiction of the Wild West is a romantic one of soulful harmonica around a campfire under the open sky out on the prairie. While this might not necessarily be untrue, stories of cowboys often neglect the harsh realities of the time period such as the forced removal of Indigenous peoples, the mass slaughter of animals like wolves and bison, and hardships caused by diseases like tuberculosis, cholera, and typhus. The biggest lie told by popular media, however, is that most cowboys were white. The vast majority of cowhands in the west were Indigenous, Black, or Latino men who sought a new life where their hard work would be more important than their race. But of course, the US incorrectly associates ideas like manifest destiny and American greatness with whiteness, so we end up with white cowboys.

Additionally, both dolphins and cowboys have been victims of the institutions they found themselves in; cowboys by the aforementioned discrimination and disease, and dolphins by everything from whaling, to cruel treatment in captivity, to use in naval warfare. But the biggest comparison between the two is that no matter how complicated their reality might be, we simply can’t tear ourselves away from them. One of my favorite video games, and one of the most successful in recent years, Red Dead Redemption 2, is essentially Cowboy Simulator. It tells a beautiful yet tragic story of a gang trying to escape to the last truly free spaces in the country while acknowledging all of the harsh realities mentioned above. Despite portraying life out west as anything but ideal, people still pour hours into the life of a Wild West outlaw. As for the dolphins, I still find myself as giddy as a small child when I see them, especially as close as I did last night. Something about the way they are so clearly having FUN, rather than just feeding or migrating, leaves you unable to do anything but smile ear to ear and shout with joy when another pair comes surfing in alongside the ones that are already there. The spectacle of being cloaked in starlight is so fitting for these animals that is seems as if they themselves are emitting the light, and it truly made them look like ocean spirits. All of my conflicting thoughts were quickly shoved aside and replaced by a much simpler one: Surf on, sea cowboy.

-Sam Ruemmler, Deckhand, C Watch