Brenan Kronenberg #2

Today, I was able to go on a shipment vessel, called the Victoria, and help check its storage bays to ensure that the residue of from the last shipment is not present in any of the bays because RMG is shipping food pellets and if residue from the last shipment mixed with the food pellets, it could potentially be toxic to the animals eating it. After the cargo is brought to a port by barges, it is transferred to these bays by a “lobster claw”, which is a 30 square yard claw, attached to a craine. The process is essentially a glorified claw machine but instead of winning a stuffed animal, you win a paycheck. After visiting the ship, we went to a fleet of barges and took samples of the rice inside. The sample process is very complex, and involves taking many different samples of the product to ensure that the sample group accounts for the whole shipment rather than just one section of it. After taking samples I measured the distance between top of the barge and the water, because there is a formula based off of this distance to find an approximate weight of the shipment inside. I enjoyed being able to do this, and taking samples was my favorite part of the internship, but it is not something that I would want to do as a career because I have realized that manual labor and direct sunlight are two things that I am not physically cut out for.