Hi, Peter. I'm enjoying your dispatches a lot. I hope you find lots more manta rays and hammerheads, too. I had to chuckle at the sad but funny description of your period of seasickness. Having suffered it myself once on the ferry home from Nantucket, I remember feeling more miserable than ever before or since. So why do people get seasick? Why do some people seem immune from it And what do your sealoving friends out there consider the best remedies? Say hi to Michele and Howard and the whole team. Take care.

Best wishes,

Paula

There are a number of tricks that (might) help you avoid seasickness. One isto take your prophylaxis well before you start bouncing around; once you start feeling seasick, it's all but impossible to stop it. Another is to lie down and close your eyes, because seasickness comes from having your brain working too hard to maintain balance. A third is to look fixedly at the horizon; a sailing friend of mine says that's why sea captains never get seasick—they're always looking at the horizon. The owner of the Undersea Hunter, who is aboard with us, told me a fourth method. He says that seasickness is half in your mind. If you believe you're going to get seasick, you will; if you put it out of your mind, you'll do fine. (He says that he was seasick all the time as a seaman, but once he became a captain, he never got sick, simply because he couldn't afford to.) Fifth, getting your sea-legs helps. That seasickness you read about in my dispatch is largely gone. This morning we tossed around in a small boat for two hours in six-foot seas, and I felt fine. The surest method of all? Stay on land. Immunity? If someone claims to feel nothing, don't believe him, that's what I think. Even Howard Hall, who's been on small boats all his life, suffers it now and then.