As we cruise today we cruise through the deepest part of the North Pacific. The sea floor is some 6,000 metres below. We are 1,200nm from Hawaii and 1,200nm from Vancouver, which puts us dead in the middle, the exact halfway point of the crossing. The captain advises we are as far from land as we can be. Quite literally the middle of the ocean.
Sea days are developing a bit of a routine now. Comfortable. Brent Nixon today talks about sea turtles. His style again is intriguing and interesting. He details the different types, where they live, how they reproduce, sadly only around 1 percent of eggs survive, with females laying as many as 1,000 eggs across four nests in a season. Sunscreen is also a problem for Hawai’i, with strict rules now in place about the types that can be sold.
They’re named not for their shell, which is usually olive to black, but for the layer of green fat beneath it, a byproduct of being the only sea turtle species that eats mostly plants, seagrass and algae, once they reach adulthood, having started out as omnivores as juveniles. They’re big, up to 1.2 metres and well over 100 kilograms, and slow to mature, not laying eggs themselves until somewhere between their mid-twenties and late thirties, which makes population recovery painfully slow work. Females return to nest on the same beach where they themselves hatched, sometimes travelling thousands of kilometres to do it, navigating by the Earth’s magnetic field. The sand temperature decides the sex of the hatchlings, warmer sand produces more females, which is why climate change is such a specific threat to them. On the sunscreen point, Hawaii became the first US state to ban the sale of sunscreens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate back in 2018, chemicals shown to cause coral bleaching and genetic damage even in tiny concentrations, with an estimated 14,000 tonnes of sunscreen washing into oceans worldwide every year.
After the talk we enjoy the Retreat Lounge. We meet with the Retreat manager Connell. We provided Celebrity with some feedback, not a complaint. Something that bothers both of us, and I’m sure most people, is the use of personal devices without headphones in public. Whether it be FaceTime calls on loudspeaker, watching sports, or listening to music, it’s bloody annoying. And for Mardi, it impacts her in ways people don’t understand.
It’s worth explaining why. Sound sensitivity like this often falls under something called misophonia, a real and recognised condition where certain everyday sounds, talking, chewing, a tinny video playing from a phone speaker, trigger a genuine fight-or-flight response rather than mild irritation. Brain imaging studies show the sounds light up the same regions involved in threat and emotion processing, not just hearing, which is why telling someone to simply ignore it doesn’t work, the reaction isn’t a choice. It’s especially common alongside neurodivergent conditions like autism and ADHD, and tinny, high-pitched phone speaker audio, thin on bass, heavy on harsh upper frequencies, tends to be one of the worst offenders precisely because those frequencies are the hardest for the brain to filter out as background noise.
We’ve experienced a number of people in the lounge chatting away, watching videos, and so on, and the impact takes away from the quiet, relaxed environment and has a negative effect on Mardi’s health and wellbeing, so we wanted to talk to Celebrity about how they could lead the way in ensuring noise pollution from personal devices could be better handled. Celebrity have done great things with accessibility, ramps for wheelchairs, large, easy-to-see buttons in lifts, accessible rooms. We explored with Connell that visible disability is well understood and catered for in society, but invisible disability remains largely ignored. He was very receptive to our conversation and offered to escalate this within Celebrity’s management.
We then tried the sun deck, but it’s a bit windy, so head to our room for a few minutes before lunch.
Lunch in Luminae is back to its best. We both enjoy a delightful tomato and cheese salad, followed by crusted branzino and chicken breast.
We spend early afternoon in the lounge. Interestingly, a group of four people nearby fire up their phones and start watching music videos. I approach them and ask if they might use headphones or watch in their room. They apologise and tell me a guy was doing it near the pool earlier, and they agree it is annoying. We chat for a bit about the impact this situation has on people who are neurodiverse. They are very understanding. In fact, the four or so people we’ve experienced doing this type of thing have all realised, once reminded, how anti-social this behaviour is.
We’ve developed a business card sized handout in an attempt to educate people, with a companion web link. Check it out here: https://www.linke.com.au/please-use-headphones/
Other than that incident we enjoy a couple of nice, relaxed hours watching the sea glide by. We travel through two rain events. The scenery becomes quite dramatic as the sun quickly disappears and is replaced by dense cloud, and the ocean ripples with the rain as it pelts down for 20 minutes, only to be replaced again by bright sunshine.
We meet up with Debbie and Geoff for round 3 of progressive trivia. We are currently in equal 4th place on 24, the leaders are on 28. Today we score 15 out of 20, our best score yet.
After trivia we relax in our room for a bit before heading out and doing a little bar hopping. We try the bar on the outer aft of the ship, the Sunset Bar. We enjoy a cocktail, spicy tequila for me and creamy coconut for Mardi. It’s warm, but windy. We then move to the Magic Carpet, again warm and a little windy. We then wander the upper deck for a bit before heading to the Retreat before dinner.
The further southwest we go, the warmer the weather. Tomorrow we expect 23 degrees. Tonight it’s around 16.
Dinner we enjoy raw tuna, crab cakes, and sea bass. Oh, and some chocolate ice cream.
The casino is more fun tonight, I win back the $75 I lost a few nights ago, and we enjoy sitting with the cats, rats, and bats machine. We call it a night, but pop into the buffet for an iced chocolate and a slice of late night pizza.
