Japan Week 4: TOURING A RESEARCH VESSEL AND FINAL REFLECTIONS

2022-07-29

This week we toured Hiroshima University’s research vessel, the Toyoshio Maru. In Canada, it can be quite difficult to get ship time for research, so I was jealous that students in the department have access to a vessel like this!

 

 

[The Toyoshio Maru]

 

 

 

Then we drove to a lookout to see the Inland Sea of Japan. Professor Uye has been working in this area for almost 55 years, so he knows a lot about it. It was great to have him recount the changes he has seen over time and his experience informs his research in a way that isn’t available to everyone, especially junior scientists. The weather was quite humid and hazy but it was a fitting way to cap off my experiences here in Japan.

 

 

[A hazy view of the Inland Sea of Japan]

 

 

 

This week we also wanted to return to the Ariake Sea to try fishing for jellyfish (jellyfishing?) one more time. Unfortunately, it seems that the jellyfish have low numbers this year and there was only a small chance of seeing some. We decided to skip the trip given the cost and time required to get there.

Although I didn’t get to see everything I expected to see on this trip, it is a good reflection of the true nature of being a biologist and a reminder of how unpredictable and awesome nature is. This intrigue is what originally drew me to biology, so these opportunities are an unexpected reminder of why I became a scientist in the first place. One of my favorite (paraphrased) expressions that is often used in research is: ‘no data is still important data’. It means that if something didn’t work out the way you expected, rather than being a failure, it is a new topic to investigate. Why didn’t this work out how we expected, have I stumbled on something new? In my case, the fact that jellyfish are unpredictable and more abundant in some years than others means that there is still a lot we don’t know about jellyfish biology. Lucky me!

I expect I will be retuning to Japan in the future – my experience here has been more than I could have hoped for. I have new colleagues to draw on when I have questions, and a better understanding of the challenges Japanese fishers face.