Adam invites hapless scientists to the cafe who've fallen behind in their report writing and mercilessly plies them with fine expresso coffee until they agree to submit their data - it's ruthlessly efficient. The other major trade item on board is tobacco. Tim Sharp, an Australian sedimentologist from the University of Technology in Sydney, was devastated to discover I'd arrived aboard without a carton of cigarettes - we work on opposite sides of the street in Sydney and he lamented not having a friend deliver me a bulging package of contraband before I left. Everyone, it seems, is missing something after being at sea for seven weeks, and most have a long list of activities planned for when they arrive at port. Ridiculous as it sounds from a ship at sea, I just want a long swim in the surf.
Modern communications do make the isolation out here easier to bear.
Email was installed in 1992, giving staff and crew a precious electronic lifeline to the outside world. Everyone's allocated a quota of 100 kilobytes free email - after that, they start paying at 40 cents a kilobyte. It's a measure of the system's popularity that some staff now have bills worth hundreds of dollars. All the email from the ship is packaged together three times a day and beamed via the Inmarsat marine satellite to ODP headquarters in Texas, before being distributed through the internet to the rest of the world. It's crazy to think that a quick note punched out casually to a friend on a ship keyboard rockets out into space, is bounced back down to a satellite dish in Texas, is diverted into an optical fibre and whisked half way around the world, before it arrives, as those same flippant remarks, magically on your friend's computer monitor.