Something is very fishy with this wrong bird

Ship: Regina Maris
Date: 27th of March 2025
Position: Horta, Azoren
Geographical Position: 38°31.946‘N 028°37.494‘W
Etmal: 0 nm
Total: 10,966 nm

Trigger Warning! This content may be disturbing for some readers. If you have problems with projects involving the dissection of dead animals or if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, you probably shouldn’t read this blog post and/or look at the pictures.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue, birds were chirping and the smell of flowers was in the air – one of the first real spring days this year. And what’s the best thing one can do on such a beautiful day? Exactly! Take a history class indoors. And, in the case of the morning class, also have lessons in the afternoon.

We couldn’t do it outdoors because the afternoon class was dissecting fish, so in addition to the smell of spring, there was also, well… the smell of dead fish.

In the two hours before lunch, the morning class had a very creative task: We were supposed to draw a large land map of all the areas we had covered in our history lessons, which were mostly parts of our route. Then we had to glue dates, facts and pictures onto the corresponding parts of the map and connect everything.

Since some of us wanted to take a history test to improve our grades, this was a great way to review everything we had learned so far.

After lunch, we switched – or at least, the morning class had to dissect fish while the afternoon class had free shore leave since they had already completed the history lesson on another day. But they had to be quick! Right after finishing lunch, the Regina moved to another spot in the harbor to refuel.

So while the oil was flowing into the tank, we sat outdoors and started with some theory: drawing a fish, naming all its parts, and reading about its organs and bodily functions. Then we put on plastic gloves, wrapped cutting boards in aluminum foil and got our fish.

The problem was: There weren’t enough fish for all four groups. We only had two flying fish left in the freezer and all the other fish had already been gutted by Janno to prevent them from rotting. So what do you do in such a situation?

Right! You ask Malte for help.

Five minutes later, Malte was standing on the railing with a fishing rod and some orange peels in the water (the fish love them) and quickly caught two fish. We were later told that eating them could cause hallucinations.

The fish my group received was so fresh (but already dead, so no, we didn’t cut open living animals) that its heart was still beating the entire time we dissected it. We found a lot of internal organs – its liver, lungs, appendix, gills and gall bladder.

After finishing the dissection, we had to draw two pictures of a fish: one showing its external features and one showing its internal organs. Unfortunately, we didn’t eat the fish, because the flying fish were way too small and old and, well, eating the other ones could have caused hallucinations.

In the evening, everyone was stressed because there were a lot of assignments due in biology, math and physics. Many of us sat down to work on our school tasks and once we were done, we were allowed free shore leave until 11:00 at night.