My name is Mirjam and I'm from the Netherlands. I'm a deckhand on the MV Greenpeace and I'm supposed to stay here until half of July. For me this is the first time to work as a deckhand on a ship. Everything is new and every day I learn something new. Most of my work is not very complicated. A lot of painting, chipping and cleaning. The difficulty is to get an overview of what is going on on a ship so you can anticipate the things that need to be done. That for me is the tricky part. The other thing is that I can't speak my motherlanguage - Dutch. My English is not too bad. But shiplanguage is another story. A lot of words which are used on board of a ship I've never heard of. That makes things sometimes more complicated for me.

As a deckhand we do nightwatches too. That means we give company to the mate or captain who is sailing at night. We help them to locate other ships and we go around the ship every hour to see if everything is still alright. What you can see at night on a ship is amazing. Brilliant sunsets and sunrises, a sky you have never seen before since there are no lights at sea. The stars are so bright and when the comet Hale Bop was still in the sky you could see its long two tails. The moon shines on the water which makes it silver. Sometimes I'm miles away when I'm on nightwatch since everything is so peaceful. The horizon is so wide and that makes me feel free.

I sleep in a cabin down below in the ship. That means there is only a thin piece of steel in between me and the ocean. When we are sailing I can hear the waves hitting the side and bow of the ship. As he waves get bigger, my sleep will get less peaceful. Sometimes I can't sleep because the ship is moving too much. But then it's great to let your body rock with the movements of the ship. But when the ship is in a real storm you have to be careful not to get thrown out of your bunk.

The reason why we are here is to protect the Atlantic Frontier. Before I came here I've never heard of this name and I didn't know how beautiful it is around here. The last few weeks we spend on docmentation of wildlife around the little islands west of Scotland. I've seen a lot of pilotwhales, dolphins, seals, puffins, oystercatchers, black guillemots and other pretty seabirds. Unfortunately we can't see the fish who live in the big depths of the ocean. They must be amazing, for instance, a fish that looks up, shines blue light down and swims ahead. Who has ever heard about that? We know so little about them and as long as we don't know in what way we may harm them we must leave them alone.

To live on a ship is very special, especially when it's a Greenpeace ship. You never know what the next day will bring and I like that very much. Our captain thinks it's very important we see the things we try to protect. So we have lots of opportunities to enjoy what nature shows us. That's much better than traveling around the world without doing something back. At least, that's my opinion.

The crew on board is great. Because we are here for the same reason we have got a basis together. That makes a bond. We look after one another since working for Greenpeace means you may find yourself in tricky situations. Than you have to rely on each other, that's very important. But living together with 20 people in a small area can build up some tension too. Imagine you spend 4 months with your colleagues in a house and there is no place to go. Every morning, afternoon and evening you see the same faces all over again. So sometimes I withdrawn into myself to get some space in my head. I guess everybody on board has got his or hers mechanism to cope with that.

When we are in the harbor we all run to the closest pub to see some other faces. That has got another advantage too. It's good to talk with other people so they know what we are doing and why we are here. We invite them to come to our ship and have a look. A lot of people visited us already, spontaneously or on open days. Some time ago a hundred school kids came to our ship. That was a lot of fun, for them and for us. It's important we show ourselves to people and explain them what we are doing. We can not do this alone - we need all the support we can get.