When Alan Wood wanted to break free from his nine to five job, he headed for the Indian Ocean.

He tells Nick Morrison about his dash for freedom - and how he reckoned wihtout swimming in whale poo.

AS work came to an end on Alan Wood's latest project, the artwork on the Premiership Manager computer game, he began pondering his future. After spending more than ten years doing a succession of office jobs, from interior design and freelance illustrator to working as art director for a computer games company, he fancied a change, something completely different.

Sailing seemed like a good idea, exchanging the confines of an office for the vastness of the oceans. He enrolled at a sailing academy on the Isle of Wight, and, after completing a three-month course, managed to get a couple of temporary jobs on boats in the Mediterranean.

But still he felt restless. What he really wanted was to do something worthwhile, something where he felt he was making a difference.

He had always been interested in the environment, and he remembered that a friend of his was first mate on the Odyssey, a ship run by the American research body Ocean Alliance, dedicated to studying whales and other long-lived marine mammals. It so happened there was a voluntary position going, if he could get to Sri Lanka within a week. Five days later he turned up at the dockside.

Alan's job was as a deckhand on the 30 metre ketch, the most junior of the nine-strong crew. But as well as his dogsbody duties, he came to have two main jobs on board. The first was as the ship's cook, where his natural flair and ability to work in a heaving and pitching galley came to the fore. The second was as the boat's poo jumper.

"When the whales defecate in the water I have got to jump in there with a net and fish out as much as I can," he says. "It's then sent off to a laboratory where it can be analysed."

The Odyssey was tracking sperm whales, the largest carnivores on the planet and would sail as close as possible, when the giant mammals, which can reach up to 60ft long, came to the surface. With the approach of the vessel, the whales would generally dive, and as they dived they defecated.

"It is like an oil slick on top of the water," says Alan, 34. "It is more like diarrhoea. Their main diet is squid and the only thing that doesn't get digested is squid beaks, so in this oil slick of poo there are these squid beaks which are raining down through the water. My job was to dive in and swim through this poo with my net, which was like a goldfish net, and get as many squid beaks as possible."

As the only solid elements of the poo, the squid beaks, which are about an inch long, are collected and sent to a laboratory where they are analysed. The level of toxins in the beaks gives researchers a good idea of the level of pollutants in the ocean, and of how their build-up can affect long-lived mammals over time.

As sperm whales are at the top of the food chain, the cumulative effect of pollution shows up in their bodies more than in other marine creatures

"The first time I did it, I was really surprised that it smelt like shit. I was literally swimming through shit, and it stank. It didn't occur to me that it would smell until I was in the middle of it. And because you are swimming through it, you get mouthfuls of it," he says.

"It doesn't stick to you, because it is well-diluted, but you can still smell it afterwards, although there is a shower on board.

"But your mind is focussed on the job and you only have a certain amount of time before all these squid beaks sink down out of sight. And you are trying to keep the ones you've got in the net while you catch other ones."

While there are hundreds of squid beaks in each defecation, Alan would collect around 12-20 each time. But even as he dived into poo, there were two distractions which stopped him thinking about his surroundings.

"Sperm whales are the world's biggest meat-eaters, so that was a bit frightening, but I think I was more scared of being left behind by the boat. It is quite a big boat, with a big turning circle, so if it leaves you behind and you're watching the back of the boat disappearing, it can be quite scary.

"You are in the middle of the Indian Ocean, with all of the worst type of predators, so you're hoping they don't come near. With all this, you don't have time to think about the poo."

As well as Alan collecting squid beaks, two members of the Odyssey crew would fire crossbow bolts into the backs of the whales. As these bolts bounced out, they would bring with them blubber samples from the whale. If they bounced right, they could be collected using grappling hooks. If not, Alan would dive in to recover them. These samples were also analysed for toxins.

The three-month voyage took the Odyssey from Sri Lanka to Mauritius, where the crew continued collecting samples, as well as visiting local schools to explain their work.

"It was surprising how little they knew about the environment, but once they found out about our work they were so interested. We had visits on the boat as well, and it was so good to get the younger generation interested," Alan says.

Now back home in Witton le Wear in County Durham, Alan's poo jumping days may be behind him, but he has not finished with the oceans yet. He is heading for the Boat Show in London next month to try and pick up sailing work, but his real aim is to continue environmental work. And when he thinks about it, he can even get a bit nostalgic for whale poo,

"I didn't realise how bad the pollution was in the ocean before, and I do want to carry on with that sort of work if I can. I don't think I could sit in an office any more. Once you have been to sea and you've got the bug for it, it's very hard to get back to a 9 to 5 job again.

"If you're in the middle of the ocean and you have these lovely sunsets, even swimming in a bit of whale poo doesn't seem so bad."