Field log · Summer 2009
I joined NOAA Ship Fairweather as a Hollings Scholar intern in May 2009. These selected photographs and notes preserve the beginning of my NOAA career and the Alaska work that drew me toward hydrography.
This is a short, edited route through the original travel blog. Dates and source links are preserved. The full archive remains at Travels of Damian Manda, with additional photographs on Flickr.
May 16, 2009 · Petersburg, Alaska
Some people had asked whether I would document the summer. I set up a small travel blog to share photographs and notes from the ship, without realizing how durable that record would become.
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May 29, 2009 · Ernest Sound
A ship tour became a record of where the summer was spent: learning line handling, standing survey watches, watching acquisition systems, and seeing how the work moved from boats and sonar to a finished nautical chart.
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June 10–23, 2009 · Shumagin Islands
The summer moved from installing tide and horizontal-control stations to shoreline mapping, survey launches, acquisition watches, and processing. The blog tried to explain the result plainly: a measured surface that could become better information for mariners.
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July 21, 2009 · Dutch Harbor
During the final leg I finished a training-organization project, went out in the launches, collected bottom samples, and wrapped up the presentation I would carry back to the Hollings program in Silver Spring.
Read the original entryCurrent position
I returned to Fairweather as Commanding Officer in 2026. The ship, the tools, and the mission have changed since that first summer. The purpose remains clear: collect reliable data and make navigation safer.
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