In 2019, Hayden Roberts was selected to participate in the Teacher at Sea program through NOAA. He spent two weeks in the Gulf of Mexico job-shadowing a research team. As part of the fellowship, NOAA asked him to post blog entries about his time aboard the ship to generate educational material. Alternatively, the collection of these blogs has value outside of its intended audience. The blogs are an example of auto-ethnography whose content serves as a point of engagement for scholars interested in studying cultural groups. In this case, the groups are research vessels, which exist as their own microcosm.