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What if you could find a secure, well-paying government job,
but instead of a cubicle, your office has an endless horizon?
It's definitely not your 9 to 5 job...
Never a dull moment.
It's kinda fun.
Instead of a commute, you get to travel around the world?
You go places not many people get to go.
We got some time in at St. Kitts and in the *** Islands.
We're going to take off to French Polynesia and Nuku Hiva.
Places I've never been.
Places that are so pristine
that no one in the commercial industry will ever get to.
And what if, instead of a monotonous day-in, day-out shift,
your job was surrounded by cutting-edge technology
and groundbreaking discoveries every day?
You get involved in projects that you read about in the news.
There's always new things you're discovering.
You're surrounded by the latest and greatest technology,
new designs, new engineering systems...
That's what you'll find in a career with
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA -
the premier science agency of the United States federal government.
Aboard NOAA's growing fleet of oceanographic and fishing vessels,
career positions are available at all levels of experience,
including no experience.
As a civilian mariner with NOAA,
you'll have opportunities to train and work at sea
aboard state-of-the-art scientific ships,
which are commanded and managed by officers
in the NOAA Corps, as well as civilian officers.
The NOAA Corps is a branch of the uniformed service
dedicated specifically to NOAA and under NOAA's own leadership.
You will work in concert with these officers and visiting science teams
in support of NOAA's mission:
to further the nation's understanding of oceans and atmosphere,
support commerce,
and protect lives and property.
It's no small thing that we're going out
and that the data we collect
is the data that they use to manage the fisheries.
We're part of that, there's no doubt.
That's what we do.
A lot of the science that is done out here
is pretty high-profile stuff
and these ships support that science.
All through college you learn about NOAA as being
a leader in oceanographic research,
and to be able to work for the organization is pretty amazing,
The instruments that protect our coasts from deadly tsunamis
are deployed by NOAA wage mariners.
When disasters occur at sea,
NOAA ships respond, lending their unique capabilities
to mitigation efforts.
And research that shapes national policy on air quality,
climate change, fishery management
and many other key issues could not be maintained
without competent mariners keeping the ship and its crew going.
Without the mariners you will not accomplish any mission.
A deck officer, as myself, drives the ship,
whereas the mariner will be the one
that's actually making sure that we get our mission completed.
We will get out there, they will service the buoy,
they will make sure that we get the fishing lines in and out.
They're the ones that feed us.
They're the ones that collect some of the scientific data
and they're the ones that clean the ship and maintain the ship
and make sure it's running in proper condition.
Most of the vessels in the NOAA fleet remain in U.S. waters.
Home ports are many...
from Woods Hole to Kodiak,
and from Charleston to Honolulu.
Many of the ships in the fleet are new, with more on the way,
which means you'll have the opportunity to work
on high-tech, modernized platforms,
such as acoustically quiet fishery science vessels
and a recently refitted ship devoted entirely to ocean exploration.
When you're bringing stuff up from the ocean
it's really exciting to see these things,
especially stuff you've never seen before.
Stuff that looks just like the weird cartoons
and the science fiction stuff.
It's an unbelievable science platform -
anything from acoustics to fish surveys
to charting the ocean bottom
to studying the water column.
Basically, in a nutshell,
it's like the space shuttle but on the ocean.
Most NOAA mariner positions fall under one of four departments:
the deck department,
the engineering department,
the steward department,
and the survey department.
If the engineering department is in charge of keeping the ship moving,
the stewards are in charge of keeping the crew moving.
Would you like some?
All over the fleet, NOAA mariners are saying the same thing
about the food served on NOAA ships.
The food on this ship is awesome.
I think the food is awesome.
The food's awesome!
The steward we have right now, I wouldn't trade her for the world.
It's good, man, it's wholesome and they just keep it coming.
Full plate, every meal.
The food is outstanding
and it really, really is a strong point in the morale onboard a ship.
For dinner tonight we have veal chops
and vegetable sauce,
and we also have a mustard-rubbed pork loin,
which we have going on in the oven right now.
We give them all fresh ingredients.
We do fresh soups on a daily basis, fresh vegetables,
and we also give them a huge variety of choices.
We don't limit our menu to just one or two different items.
You just see it. We have Mongolian night.
We've got prime rib once a week, I mean....
Some fresh cod, some fresh haddock...
A never-ending free buffet!
I'll look down and I'll say, you know,
if I was in Newport this would be like a $60 meal!
It's a good meal for the crew every day.
It energizes them. It motivates them.
It also gives them something really to look forward to,
because we really put an extra effort into what we put together.
Aboard NOAA's fleet of ships,
officers and scientists will come and go.
But critical to the success of every operation
are the ship's fulltime personnel,
the single greatest resource in the NOAA fleet -
the wage mariner.
Nobody does what NOAA does.
Every trip I come back learning something new.
It's a great opportunity and a great experience
and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
If you have any interest to going to sea,
working for NOAA would be an ideal opportunity.
I'm positive that this experience will open a lot of doors for me.
If we're going to continue to research our planet
and learn more about global climate change
and all these different things that are going on,
we're going to need some really good sailors
to go out there and retrieve that data.
So I see a bright future in the mariner community here in NOAA.
Knowing that I'm contributing to the larger body of scientific work that's out there,
I find that incredibly gratifying.
Being on a NOAA ship, it's the intangibles
that matter more than anything else. It's not the paycheck,
it's not the steady employment, it really is the science.
You get to be onboard with crews from National Geographic,
some of the preeminent scientists in the world doing cutting-edge studies.
Where else are you going to find that?
You won't.
You have a chance to be part of something bigger
than just a commercial organization, and that's what NOAA's about.