It has been an interesting journey so far producing Modern Seafarers on the Central Coast. What originally started out as a creative outlet for one bored mariner has morphed into an experiment of various multimedia storytelling techniques. There have been 385 unique viewers from 15 countries this year.
One of the most difficult aspects of writing about maritime topics is that the professional audience is relatively small. Paul Schuyler, supply boat captain for Edison Chouest Offshore in Cut Off, Louisiana, felt that the information site was better suited to “non-seafarers who want to learn more.”
Veteran and commercial fisherman Joseph Conchelos of Morro Bay, California was kind enough to point out a confusing caption on the History of the U.S. Merchant Marine timeline. John Paul Jones first captained a merchant vessel in 1768 and later became the leader of the Continental Navy in 1775.
The unifying theme of seafarers does seem to gather different types of mariners to the site. Commercial fishermen Joel Hughes and Tobias Moore of Eureka, California both agreed that California Coastal Harbor Dredging and Sand Wars was an informative look into a different type of marine industry. The site does seems to cross pollinate knowledge between commercial fishermen and U.S. Merchant Marines.
The topics did tend to generalize over time and both mariners and non-seafaring viewers gravitated towards the more personal and humorous tales.
Tatiana Brasil enjoyed the anti-seagull rant Larus and Assorted Trash and commented with an interesting platitude, “seagulls are to coasts, what pigeons are to cities. Little devils with wings!”
Kirk Lombard, one-time avid blogger in the fisheries industry, also enjoyed the seagull post and feels that it has the potential for more.
“It’s almost like that could be a blog in and of itself. One man’s continuing struggles against the evil seagull empire,” Lombard said.
As the academic portion of this blog comes to a conclusion, I have some interesting avenues to pursue and am excited to continue blogging.
Modern Seafarers on the Central Coast 