Slack tide is the loudest time at a harbor, because nothing is moving and every rope knows it. The hulls knock their slow knock against the fenders and the water answers with a sound like someone stirring sugar. The diesel smell arrives as a sound too, somehow: the generator on the trawler two berths down, idling, every four seconds.
The NT-SF1 came out of the box for this. First field test of an ambisonic mic and I mostly just stood very still on the quay like a person who has decided to become furniture. The rope-and-hull material is what convinced me. In stereo it sounds like a harbor. In the b-format it sounds like standing in one — the knock comes from below and to the left, and you can point at it.
Gull count: one, on a bollard, screaming at something with real administrative urgency. The recording has it at minute six.