Hi everyone! 👋🏻

I’m Daniel Valenzuela, Third Officer in charge of cargo operations on a chemical tanker. Today I want to share a truly heart-pounding story from the Atlantic, where I found myself wrestling with live chemistry inside hundreds of tons of steel.

We were steaming toward Rotterdam under blazing sun and a brisk breeze. Our insulated tanks held a batch of dicarboxylic acid, loaded by the book: checked at 20 °C, confirmed all lines were airtight, monitored pH levels closely. On paper, everything looked flawless. But late one afternoon, I noticed a troubling trend on the control panel: the temperature in Tank 3 was creeping up—just half a degree per hour, you might say “no big deal,” but with dicarboxylic acid that tiny uptick can spell the start of an exothermic runaway reaction. The moment that little red indicator nudged upward, a chill ran down my spine—I knew this cargo was “waking up.”

Without hesitation, I rallied the chief engineer and the senior cargo officer, and we enacted the emergency cooling protocol. First, we dropped the cooling-water setpoint to the lowest safe limit, then cranked up the recirculation pumps on all three tanks. I stared at the gauge, heart pounding, watching every fractional change. Meanwhile, I was on the sat-phone to our shore-based chemical specialists. They advised adding a mild alkaline buffer to slow the reaction. I personally oversaw the slow injection through the cargo manifold, feeling every drop could decide our fate. Two hours later the temperature finally steadied—relief flooded through me as I allowed myself a small, triumphant smile under my hard hat.

All the while, the ocean roared around us: waves pounding the hull, wind howling across the deck. I stood at my station like a surgeon in an operating room, eyes locked on that gauge, knowing any delay could trigger a violent pressure spike, an emergency venting, or worse. Our crew moved as one—precise, unflinching—and that teamwork kept us safe from disaster: no cargo loss, no port diversion, and most importantly, no harm to our ship or people.

This episode reminded me that cargo operations are far from routine checks and valve adjustments. They’re a two-way conversation with chemistry itself, where the smallest anomaly can be a critical signal. If you’re tasked with hazardous cargo, never dismiss subtle changes—they’re the cargo speaking, telling you, “Look closer. I’m alive.”