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NOAA’s Holly D. Jablonski
handles tours on land and sea
Right now she’s heading up the recruiting branch, but her favorite work is in complex underwater surveying. Her next tour will take her back there
By Heidi Russell Rafferty
Senior Contributing Editor
 Lieutenant Commander Holly D. Jablonski of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Commissioned Officer Corps (NOAA Corps) has thoroughly enjoyed her career at sea and on land. Her sea duties have primarily been hydrographic surveying: imaging the sea floor to determine water depth and obstructions for ships entering major U.S. ports.
At the moment, though, she’s primarily land-based. As chief of NOAA Corps’ officer recruiting branch, she looks for candidates to apply their engineering degrees and experience to NOAA’s numerous missions.
NOAA’s missions include surveying, researching, and exploring everything from the surface
of the sun to the depths of the ocean floor. Officers trained in engineering, earth science, oceanography, meteorology, fisheries science and related disciplines operate ships, fly aircraft, manage research projects, conduct diving ops and serve in staff positions throughout NOAA. They move from post to post on an average of every two years, typically rotating between land and sea. Jablonski knows her next assignment will take her back to sea.
Survey work
A lot of NOAA Corps officers with engineering backgrounds work on hydrographic surveys. Data is acquired by NOAA survey vessels and used to update NOAA’s suite of more than 1,000 nautical charts. These are the charts used by both recreational boaters and large commercial ships entering and exiting U.S. ports every day, Jablonski explains.
“You’re doing a lot of technical work with sonar, computers and digital data acquisition. It requires not only hard science expertise but some good IT knowledge,” she notes.
Of the various jobs she’s held, survey work is her favorite. “I’m an engineer at heart and like to go for a definitive answer,” she says with a smile.
Some hydrographics jobs at NOAA are filled by civilian scientists. “When we get back to port they go back to their labs and do the final processing. But on the hydrographic ships we take
it to completion, and that’s what I prefer. It’s my data, and I like to keep ownership of it!”
A lot to learn
When Jablonski first joined NOAA Corps she had a lot to learn about computers, as well as
how to survey. A NOAA Corps officer has to become eyes and ears for the ship captain, she explains. “You could be in charge of a small boat, out of view of the ship. Your captain can’t
see the area; you’ve been sent to do the work and you have to look and see if it’s safe to go ahead. It requires a logical thought process.”
As lead recruiter based in Silver Spring, MD, Jablonski now spends her time organizing field offices around the country and processing job applications. She is currently the only officer in the recruiting branch, so she delegates many campus and career fair visits to other officers.
Engineering was great
Jablonski grew up in southern New Jersey near the Delaware River, where she watched commercial vessels travel back and forth to sea. When it was time for college her father encouraged her to “see the world.” She had Penn State in mind, but Dad said, “Don’t you
think that’s a little close to home?”
“I said, ‘Well, Purdue is on my list, too, so I’ll see you on major holidays,” Jablonski reports with a laugh.
The engineering at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) was great but the cornfields of Indiana stretched far and wide and she missed the water. When she met a recruiter for NOAA Corps at a career fair she applied, but didn’t make the final list. NOAA Corps is a small service, made up of about 300 officers, and the application process is stringent.
Alternate careers
After she got her BSME in 1994 Jablonski tried managing a restaurant. “I toyed with it as a career, but I found it wasn’t for me. I’m glad it didn’t go that way in the end,” she says.
Then she found an environmental engineering consulting job with ConTech Services, a small firm in Pennsylvania. She did environmental and engineering property inspections for lenders. “It wasn’t design work, she says. “We did inspections, reviewing properties for potential problems for a lender.”
Sailing with NOAA Corps
Two years later she reapplied to NOAA Corps and, with her added experience and continued interest, she made it. She has been a NOAA Corps officer for the past ten years.
After three months of officer training she was assigned to the NOAA ship Whiting, a 163-foot hydrographic survey vessel. She worked on surveys along the East Coast, from New Hampshire to Key West and on to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Two years later she transferred to the NOAA survey vessel Bay Hydrographer, operated in the Chesapeake Bay as a test platform for new and developing equipment. She was officer-in-charge for three years, while also working on hydrographic surveys and public outreach.
Next Jablonski moved to a shore assignment. She spent two years in Silver Spring, MD as a staff assistant for NOAA’s office of coast survey, hydrographic surveys division. During that time, she primarily worked on revising and updating the office’s field procedures manual, an
in-house instruction manual for acquiring NOAA’s hydrographic survey data.
Following her shore assignment, she transferred to the NOAA ship Rude, a 90-foot hydrographic survey vessel, as executive officer. Her duties were mostly administrative, personnel and logistics. When Rude was decommissioned she spent the remaining four months of a two-year sea tour aboard the NOAA ship Miller Freeman, a 215-foot fisheries research vessel, where she learned how to stern-trawl and deploy nets, interacted with NOAA’s civilian scientists, and got experience sailing on the West Coast all the way to Alaska. This rounded out her experience for her current work as NOAA Corps recruiter.
Wonderful blend
It’s a wonderful blend of her love for all things maritime with her ME know-how and experience.
“I like the mission,” Jablonski says. “I like seeing different things and doing a variety of jobs that a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to see or do.
“It’s neat to look out from a ship’s control bridge where you don’t see anything but water, and I love the camaraderie of shipmates. We have a special bond.”
D/C
Heidi Russell Rafferty is a freelance writer in Harrodsburg, KY.
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