Got a call in the middle of the night, convinced your best friend to drive her truck 5 hours into the sunrise, convinced a local surfer to let you use their standing board, pulled some straps out of the back of the truck, paddled out to sea, grabbed a glider, strapped it to the board and gently floated back to shore with it?

Ice cracked far from the break line and an instrument fell under, had to use an explosive to get below and concocted an ad hoc pulley-and-net system to gather the submerged instruments and then helicopter off the ice sheet before more ice broke?

Found out where an instrument was stolen after a Facebook post by an angry local fisher somehow made its way into your feed?

Years of field work with climate and ocean scientists has meant countless stories of recovering lost instruments. These stories are the ones of genius, heroics, ingenuity, and often many big belly laughs and deeply impressed nods.

“Catch my DRIFT” is a compendium of these stories of recovering instruments adrift at sea as told to me in conversations, interviews, survey responses and email exchanges.

Interested in contributing?

You may add your story at this link -OR – email Dr. Stephanie Jordan at sbjordan at msu dot edu to have a conversation in email or interview.

Banner image description: field photo of a winch aboard a ship on calm blue waters with bright blue sky and white clouds in background.