“Serving overseas as a small-town boy from America is intense, stressful and humorous! Enjoy a light-hearted story with me from our last 20 years overseas!”
– Matt
Seeing Sea Mammals
Have you ever worn fishing waders? My favorite class for my Wildlife Science degree at Purdue University was ichthyology, the study of fish. I liked the class for the field labs. All the students would wear chest high waders and had long nets in hand as we stood in rivers and creeks in Indiana. One student wore a battery pack on his back that had a long metal rod to it. He would touch the metal rod to the water and send a short burst of electricity into the water and the fish would be stunned for a moment while we’d feverishly collect and identify the species. The waders that the students wore insulated us from the electricity, but the lab waders were pretty old. Sometimes a student would have a small leak in his waders. We’d hear a yell as that student got a shock, ZAP!, and jumped out of the water as quickly as possible. We were inadvertently shocking a water mammal!
When surveying a place we would serve in overseas, we took a large ferry boat to visit the location. I had never been on the open ocean or a boat of that kind before. I went to the front of the boat to watch the sea mammals (dolphins) that were jumping nearby. However, within a few moments my stomach was jumping. I was sea sick and there was no way to reverse it until we finally arrived at the port. I spent the rest of that trip hunched over a plastic bag.
A couple decades later, I was walking along the shore of a fjord with my family when one of my sons said he spotted something out in the water. I told him that I thought it was a seal with its flippers popping out of the water. Another son guessed it was a small shark thrashing as it ate fish caught in a net. When water spurted out of a blow hole, my wife guessed it was a porpoise or dolphin. As we got a better look, we saw that the water was blowing out from a white tube. It was a sea mammal called a diver.
In life, things often come around full circle. Just like in small-town America, and everywhere else in the world, people are the most interesting sea mammals to watch jumping around in the water.
Something similar ever happen to you? Contact me and let me hear your story!
mattsmishaps@gmail.com Matt’s Mishaps, PO BOX 114, Grabill, IN 46741
