STEM jobs and environment – Brabu - Crețu Andrei
During this exchange, I had the opportunity to visit the Laura Bassi vessel and also meet its crew. The ship is docked at the Trieste Commercial Port and it’s owned by OGS (“National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics”). This enormous but fine piece of engineering is classified as an Icebreaker used for scientific research missions in Antarctica. With a capacity of a little over 70 persons (including the scientific personnel as well as the main crew), this ship is sent yearly for 60 days into the unexplored territories of Antarctica for seabed imaging.
The whole ship was presented to me by Mr. Filip, one of the most important people on board. He is part of the permanent crew of the ship and his role is to coordinate the whole team during the expedition. After he showed me all of the technological processes used to determine the seafloor topography of the Southern Ocean, I asked him about his professional work history. He didn’t really have many different jobs in the past but all of them were in the same domain: sailing. He started as a simple sailor on cruise ships, where he then learned the mechanical field of a ship so he became an engine engineer. He worked for 11 years in total on cruise ships. Then he boarded the Laura Bassi ship where he found the oceanographic research field, which he stuck to since 2019. “I used to work as a Deck Officer. I was the bonding between the bridge and the research area. I was the guy who placed the waypoints on the map, waypoints that had to be followed by the commander to gather more information about the unknown substrate. Now things changed, I teach the newcomers how to operate our technology and to make sure everything goes well during our mission”
In conclusion, was a pleasure to talk with this awesome crew, I learned lots of new things about their jobs and lifestyle during the expeditions and I wish them luck in their future expedition which starts at the end of the following month.