I’m Bringing Duct Tape on a Desert Island

I know there are many great answers to the question, “what would you bring with you if you were stranded on a desert island?” Let me tell you why I’m bringing duct tape.

The most surprising thing I discovered when I worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was the amount of duct tape that was used across the campus. I’m not sure what I expected when I first started working at NASA, but based on my imagination and what I’d seen in the movies, I was anticipating state of the art equipment, fancy lab supplies, and blinking upgraded technology.

What I found was duct tape. Duct tape holding corners of bookshelves together, duct tape in the clean room, duct tape being sent into space! I was shocked that there were so many uses for duct tape. I was also really inspired by the creativity and ingenuity in the ways that duct tape was used by the engineers at NASA. It was remarkable to see that my expectations for the fancy lab set up at JPL was completely different from my experience working there.

When I worked for NOAA at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, my experience was no different. While the lab was impressive with glassware and micropipettes on every lab bench, duct tape was still an essential material in the lab space. In the field, duct tape was a standard item in the boat to take blood samples from sea turtles.

In South Africa we used duct tape every day - on the boat, in the aquarium, and even in the computer lab. In our work to track and monitor great white sharks, we needed to be prepared for anything. We also got creative when we made a seal decoy out of an old carpet….we don’t get those decoys back after the sharks get after them.

And I think the most frequent use of duct tape was at the South Pole. From insulating fiber optic cable connections under the ice to repairing parts on the hot water drill, scientists and engineers need to get creative when building or fixing their instruments - especially when you’re isolated at the bottom of the world. Perhaps the best example of duct tape being used to save lives can be seen in the photo below...a roll of duct tape fastened to a metal rod hanging from the ceiling to protect my head ;)​

This definitely changed my perspective about what a science “lab” looks like. I no longer assume that scientists and engineers have access to unlimited supplies or resources, but that they need to be inventive and creative with the resources they have. Duct tape would definitely be the item I would want to bring on a desert island. How do you use duct tape in your life? ​