When I was at college there was no money at all in oceanography. That’s why I never finished my doctorate. By global warming and over-fishing have changed all that. Now we urgently need to know all sorts of things about our oceans. And now my former colleagues get to go on expeditions like this. Which is exactly the sort of thing I dreamed of as a kid, and why I signed up for the course in the first place.

Ah well, if I was spending my life swanning about the Caribbean in research vessels I probably would never have won a Hugo, or met Kevin.