The Ocean and Coastal Studies Semester of Williams College and Mystic Seaport Museum
Author: Williams-Mystic
An interdisciplinary ocean and coastal studies program integrating marine science, maritime history, environmental policy, and literature of the sea. All majors welcome and 100% of financial need met!
S’24 concludes their adventures aboard the Argo! While the class begins their trek back to Mystic, Connecticut, read on below for shipmate Sam’s reflection on their voyage and some final photos. You can check out all the photos and blogs by visiting Sea|mester’s blog here.
LOCATION: ANTIGUA SLIPWAY
I cannot summarise everything I have seen in this trip. Having never left the US before 10 days ago, the experiences are some I could not have fathomed. From shaking starfruits out of trees in Dominica to sailing by the lights of Guadalupe, this whirlwind was not what I expected when I thought about living on a boat. Not only have I learned sailing and new fish species and so many things, but I have bonded with my Williams-Mystic classmates in a way that I didn’t think was possible in such a short time. As I am writing this, I am struggling to fit every experience from our adventures into my brain and onto the page! Leaving from Antigua, we sailed to Dominica seeing leaping flying fish and diving seabirds on the rocking waves. In Dominica, we saw reefs and rivers – a little bit of Pirates of the Caribbean set dressing – and visited with the Kalinago people. Sailing back, we stopped in Les Saintes for a second chance to snorkel over reefs. Now, back in Antigua, we spent our last days packing, appreciating Argo, and sharing talents during the swizzle. At the end of this experience, there isn’t a thing I haven’t done! Except, I haven’t been to a beach. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
I am so grateful for the Seamester crew – Callum, Tomer, Gabe, Sam, Ash, Claire, and Mac – as well as all my Williams-Mystic friends and staff for the amazing experiences I’ve had in Antigua, Dominica, and the waters and islands between.
He expressed to us not only the challenges that his community faces, but the spirit of resiliency that guides their work. He talked with us, answering questions ranging from his efforts around Kalinago language preservation to his hopes for how young people will confront climate change and work to find real solutions.
By Alissa Ryan
The Spring 2024 class continues their adventures aboard the Argo! Sofia, Assistant Professor of Maritime History, writes about snorkeling, native flora and fauna, and local connections. Follow along with the class’s adventures by visiting Sea|mester’s blog here or reading and viewing photos below.
LOCATION: ROSEAU, DOMINICA
Our day began earlier than usual (6:30). We scarfed down some delicious banana bread, made our lunches in Tupperware containers, and quickly gathered all of our gear for a day of snorkeling, hiking, and more.
I’d been snorkeling before, but I’d never experienced anything like what Marcus, Thomas, and their team showed us. We were able to see beautiful coral, darting fish, even a lobster and an eel, but none of that matched the wonders of seeing bubbles coming up from the sea floor in a vent, the warm waters reflecting the island’s volcanic past and present.
It would have been fair to imagine that nothing could top that experience, but then Sam introduced us to SeaCat, the Unelected Prime Minister of Dominica. He and his daughter were our guides for the day, driving us through Dominica’s busy city streets up into the towering, lush green mountain tops. As SeaCat drove, he told us about the island’s history, its current challenges, and his family. He also introduced us to the many delicious plants covering his home country–from cinnamon to cacao. We learned that cacao, when picked fresh, has pods that taste almost like lychee (but don’t eat the seeds!). He drove us through winding roads filled with enormous plant life (we hummed a bit of the theme song of Jurassic Park, reminded of the lush wilderness of that film).
SeaCat brought us to meet with Jose Frederick, a representative of the Kalinago people and the Dominican Minister of the Environment. He expressed to us not only the challenges that his community faces, but the spirit of resiliency that guides their work. He talked with us, answering questions ranging from his efforts around Kalinago language preservation to his hopes for how young people will confront climate change and work to find real solutions.
Next, we met up with SeaCat again, and this time we stopped not just for handfuls of lemongrass or bits of cinnamon (preserved in our Tupperware), but to meet with Ophelia and her family, who welcomed us with fresh coconuts, filled to the brim with coconut water. They treated us to the delicious things they make–cacao, breadfruit, jerk chicken, coconut–and each bite was a new adventure. Their hospitality in welcoming us and sharing food with us is something I won’t soon forget–it felt like cousins meeting rather than strangers. They opened their doors to us because of their relationship with SeaCat–who liked to tell us that he was the Unelected Prime Minister, something that the waves and chats with nearly everyone we passed proved, showing how connected he is to the communities that he introduced us to. He made our day unbelievably full and wonderful–a day like no other.
Sofia Zepeda, Asst. Prof. of Maritime History
You can follow the Argo‘s progress by visiting Sea|mester’s vessel tracker here.
“There’s something special about being aboard this boat.”
By Alissa Ryan
The Spring 2024 class has begun their sailing expedition aboard the S/Y Argo in Antigua! S’24 shipmate Marvin (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) shares details about his first day on Sea|mester’s blog. Follow along with the class’s adventures by visiting Sea|mester’s blog here or reading below.
LOCATION: ENGLISH HARBOUR, ANTIGUA
Hello to my friends on land. To say that this day was long would be a woeful understatement. We began at 2:00 A.M in snowy Mystic, and just over 15 hours later, we find ourselves in beautiful (and luckily very sunny) Antigua. The day has been long, but it has also been full. Not only are we taking part in this exploration, each of us has a unique task. After a quick recovery from all the travel, I was surprised with the most important role on the ship, the Skipper. I was put in charge of an ice breaker game (the Squeezes), taking down the flag (Ensign), and what I’m doing right now (writing a blog).
There’s something special about being aboard this boat. It’s not just the beauty, the crew, or the delightful destinations that we are embarking to. Today, for perhaps the first time, I wasn’t apart from nature, but A PART of nature. That is to say, as the wind blew us about after our dinner and the mist turns to rain as I write this blog, I feel mother nature’s beating pulse in every action that we take. That is special, and I am more than excited to take part in this one-of-a kind journey through one of the Earth’s most diverse locales.
See you next time, dear Reader.
Marvin H.
You can follow the Argo‘s progress by visiting Sea|mester’s vessel tracker here. Fair winds and following seas, S’24!
Tribute written by Erik Ingmundson, Maria Petrillo, and Liz DeArruda, and shared with permission
It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of our dear friend, chanteyman, and colleague, Don Sineti. Don became ill in November and died peacefully surrounded by loved ones on the night of January 5th.
Don was drafted into military service and served his country during the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1968. During his training, he received high marks for his “command voice,” a talent that would shape the rest of his life. His tough war experiences motivated him to be a force for good when he returned from his combat tour. As he noted in an interview with The New York Times back in 1996, “It’s impossible to go through an experience like that without getting an appreciation of how delicate things are — the environment, human life. I came back with a feeling of wanting to make the world a better place.”
It was after the war that Don combined his nascent career as a folk musician with his passion for the marine environment. He helped found Cetacean Society International, a nonprofit dedicated to educating the public about whales and advocating for their protection. He also found a niche for himself singing sea songs and chanteys, with a powerful bass-baritone voice that most definitely required no amplification. He performed with folk groups such as “The Morgans” and “Finest Kind,” developing friendships that he sustained for the rest of his life. He also developed a lasting friendship with Stan Hugill, who was famously known as “the last working chanteyman.” Stan’s mentorship gave Don a rare gift – a living connection to an era when chanties were actually used for work at sea.
Don brought his talents to the chantey program at Mystic Seaport Museum in 1992. He routinely made the 120-mile round-trip drive from his home in Bloomfield because he loved this place so much. He was a fixture along the museum’s waterfront for many years, with a singing voice that could be heard from one end of the museum’s campus to the other.
He was especially passionate about sharing maritime traditions with young people. Don spent many years as a skills instructor in the Williams-Mystic Program, and delivered hundreds of programs to school children and youth groups. Even after the pandemic shutdown, Don continued to help the museum’s education department as an independent contractor. He believed in Mystic Seaport to his very core, and was a great ambassador for our organization everywhere he went.
Don’s big voice belied a deeply kind and gentle personal nature. He was always willing to give people a listening ear, seldom interrupted, and always smiled with a twinkle in his eye. He seldom spoke ill of others, even if he had a difference of opinion. Time spent in conversation with Don was always time well-spent. May we all be good stewards of the wonderful legacy of music and relationships that he left behind.
Arriving in Mystic in the Fall of 1977, Eric Laschever could never have anticipated how much the program would impact his life moving forward.
A senior history major from Williams College, Eric was looking for ways to spend part of his final year away from Williamstown. Seeing a poster with a picture of Charles W. Morgan and Joseph Conrad docked at the Seaport, Eric was spurred to talk with WM Founder Ben Labaree, who encouraged him to apply for the program. Having grown up sailing on the New Jersey shore, Eric was drawn in by a program that focused on the ocean.
Thus, Eric joined 20 other students from colleges across the country to become the guinea pigs in Williams-Mystic’s inaugural class. That class became known as the Leeward Railers, named for their collective seasickness aboard the SSV Westward during the program’s very first Offshore Field Seminar. Their offshore experience served as an early bonding agent for the Leeward Railers, one that would only grow throughout their time in Mystic, and one that remains strong to this day.
“I think the bond among our class was strong and has remained strong among many of us,” Eric said. “We have so much affection for the program and the original director and his family. Over the years, we’ve gotten to know the successors to Ben, as well as key faculty members who have been here.”
Eric and friends aboard the SSV Westward on the inaugural Offshore Field Seminar
The impact of Eric’s time with Williams-Mystic took shape shortly thereafter, as he began to pursue a Master’s degree in Marine Affairs from the University of Washington. His thesis work on a then new 200-mile Alaskan fishery zone led him to his first “real job” working for the state of Alaska on a variety of coastal and environmental issues. More recently, his continued connection to the program allowed him to work alongside Katy Robinson-Hall and Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar to pursue federal recognition for the Grand-Caillou/Dulac Band of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw.
Fast-forward to Fall 2021, feeling a deep connection to the program, Eric talked with WM Director Tom Van Winkle about a way for alums with time and capacity (e.g. older) to use their talents to remain connected to Williams-Mystic. In particular, Eric wanted to use his expertise in marine affairs and relevant knowledge of Louisiana to serve as a resource for students in their policy course. A year later, Eric arrived back in Mystic as the program’s first Senior Fellow, donating his time to the program.
Eric immediately noticed the differences he saw between Williams-Mystic in 1977 and Williams-Mystic in 2022. While he noted similarities in academic rigor and use of the Museum as a teaching tool, Eric valued the program’s current devotion to interdisciplinary education, citing the ways in which professors intentionally weave topics together to make for a more well-rounded curriculum. But, above all, Eric was struck by the remarkable relationships the program has built with stakeholders and community leaders in Louisiana, as he got to see firsthand when the program returned to The Bayou State last October.
“Underneath the intellectual rigor is the emotional feeling of connecting to people in places who are experiencing the challenges of living in coastal communities in real time,” said Eric.
One of Eric’s responsibilities on the Louisiana Field Seminar was to give a talk to students about the criteria a Native American tribe must meet to be federally recognized, a subject he is deeply immersed in on behalf of one of the program’s Gulf Coast hosts. Adding another dimension to the talk, Eric gave his talk at a graveyard that is said to have buriedTribal Ancestors, one of whom received land on the Gulf via the Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty, the infamous treaty that launched the Trail of Tears for most of the Choctaws to west of the Mississippi.
“The idea of being in what may have been his final resting place, and talking to students today about the history and how it comes to bear in the effort to achieve federal status, is very poignant and powerful,” said Eric.
Eric talking with students in Louisiana
When reflecting on his experience with the students of F’22, Eric was continuously impressed by the way students grappled with and discussed very complex issues. When advising students for Moot Court, Eric remembers being amazed at how the students mastered and argued complex legal issues in front of a judge with just 4-5 days of preparation. In Louisiana, Eric remembers being impressed during van rides and the ways students balanced fun moments, like singing to oldies and more contemporary tunes from the students’ play lists, with serious moments and interesting discussions.
Having the chance to connect with a younger generation of students was another big motivator for Eric to return to Williams-Mystic. Eric noted that when he was their age, he was able to witness many of the early environmental laws being put into place. 45 years later, Eric understands that the world his generation is handing off to the next is not in the place it should be.
“One of the important things to me in this chapter of my life is to spend time with young adults, to share some of what I’ve learned, and to give them tools to face the challenges that my generation is leaving them,” said Eric.
In this regard, Eric encourages future students to remain hopeful about a better world, advising them to cultivate hope and use it to channel action.
“Hope is different from optimism,” said Eric. “Optimism is when you think, statistically, that things will be better in the future. Hope is not based on a calculation that things will be better.”
Williams Mystic remains a critical part of this equation, in Eric’s eyes, as it provides important information and tools to inform and ground such action.
Gabi is a science writer and communicator, along with doing advocacy work to increase accessibility in the sciences.
Written by Hayden Gillooly S’19
Hayden is a senior Geoscience major at Williams College, with concentrations in Spanish and Maritime Studies. She is a Spring 2019 alumni of the Williams-Mystic Program.
Through the phone, I could almost tell she was smiling and that her eyes were lighting up, and she described the experience of exploring stalagmites in Mexico. Gabi Serrato Marks F’13 speaks with contagious enthusiasm and a warm openness.
Gabi recently earned her Ph.D. in marine geology from the MIT-WHOI joint program, where she studied Mexican stalagmites to understand past climate change. She is currently working as a science writer and communicator, along with doing advocacy work to increase accessibility in the sciences.
Gabi is deeply passionate about research, “What’s really cool is being the first person in the whole world to know how old that stalagmite is. And maybe not everyone cares how old it is, but it’s cool to be the first person to know that.” She said that “Williams-Mystic was what drove me to research. I was an undergraduate at Bowdoin and interested in the liberal arts aspect of Williams-Mystic and its interdisciplinary nature. It worked really well because I am now mostly working as a science writer, so I’m applying those same interdisciplinary lenses to writing.”
F’13 was a part of the only semester that traveled to Hawaii on a field seminar, and it ended up being more of an adventure than the program bargained for because they went during a government shutdown. The Williams-Mystic faculty and staff were actively reorganizing and replanning while already in Hawaii. Still, Gabi said the trip was exceptional, “Especially coming from a geoscience background, Hawaii is the dream.” Though F’13 did not go to Louisiana, Gabi was still able to experience the culture of southern Louisiana on a trip to LUMCON during graduate school.
Fall 2013 in Hawaii
Gabi, like I, noted that visiting Louisiana reshaped how she thought about climate change. Before going, she wondered “why people would stay in southern Louisiana if they keep getting hit by hurricanes,” but after a few days at LUMCON, realized that these issues are much more complicated and nuanced than they may first appear.
Gabi discussed the importance of increasing diversity in the field of Geosciences, noting that she perhaps does not fit the traditional stereotype of a geoscientist, “I was definitely not always interested in earth sciences. I’m not super outdoorsy. I’m outdoorsy in the ‘nature is pretty’ way, not the dig in the dirt kind of way. So I think that breaking the idea that a geoscientist has to be a certain way or do a certain thing would be helpful.” People from cities or people from flat areas without much topography cannot explore geology and the outdoors in the same way as people who live in the countryside. Gabi explained that making “geoscience curriculum relevant to students wherever they are” could be a crucial way to increase the field’s diversity.
In her second year of graduate school, Gabi was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which has significantly impacted her life through chronic pain and fatigue which “makes it difficult to pursue a typical academic path” She is no longer doing fieldwork because it is too physically intensive and draining. Gabi does advocacy “to show how it’s possible to be a scientist with a disability,” but also grapples with the fact that due to her disability, she was unable to make a research-driven science career work for her.
While the coronavirus pandemic has increased the accessibility for some people, it has added burdens to others. “It depends on the type of disability. It’s all about access needs. For my friend who is deaf, she cannot lip read when people wear masks. So working in-person for her is impossible. But for me and people who have migraines, staring at a screen all day is really hard. However, not commuting is better.” It’s all about “balancing access needs and prioritizing accessibility and having open communication.”
Gabi reflected on her Williams-Mystic experience, “Being on the SSV [Robert C.] Seamans [for the offshore field seminar] was amazing and I learned so much, and I don’t think I’d be able to participate now. I don’t think my doctors and my captain would say that it’s safe for me to be on a ship. Ships are a place where it’s accepted that you have to be physically fit. And I don’t know how I feel about that. I can see how me being on board would be hard for me, but not having those experiences is also detrimental.”
Gabi and I agreed that we love science, but recognize that the field can be improved. Gabi explained the value of integrating various forms of knowledge into science. She says that we should shift away from what her friend calls “parachute science” in which scientists go to a location to conduct research “for a week or a month and you leave and you are the author of the paper and maybe put local guides in the acknowledgments.” She said, “I think that is frustrating and wrong. I think it’s important to put everyone who contributed to the knowledge as authors: cave guides, locals who helped collect water as researchers, as authors on that specific publication. This helps add their expertise to the scientific records in a way that gives respect.” Gabi said that the best advice she’s received was that regardless of what we do in life, people will always have things to say, whether it be positive or negative, but that “We should try to still make the changes that we think are important.”
Gabi researching at MIT
I asked Gabi how we can improve science, and who needs to be the driver of change. She said that “Undergrads are an important place [for sparking change] because it’s where people begin to build their careers.” Gabi loves “helping people connect the dots” such as “working with people who realize they really love research and didn’t think they could do it.” She fuels this passion by mentoring undergraduate students and high school students.
Gabi believes that resource sharing partnerships between big universities and small universities “could help the excellent students have more opportunities and see themselves as researchers.” “Some people say that science doesn’t care where you’re from or what you look like, but that’s a naive look at the world.” The reality is that there is often an underlying privilege to being a part of the scientific community because of the cost of equipment, fieldwork, and tools. We must all recognize and acknowledge that truth, so that we can all be more intentional about creating accessible, welcoming, diverse and encouraging work and school spaces.
My conversation with Gabi made me think about all of the ways in which we can all work harder to be more understanding of people with disabilities and to work towards increasing accessibility in our respective disciplines. We should weave options into academic curriculums, trip-planning, and social events, accounting for diverse student experiences.
“People don’t understand how I went ‘abroad’ to Connecticut, but it was a great choice and shaped how I think now.”
This interview was conducted by Alex Quizon. Alex is a Spring 2019 Williams-Mystic alumnus and a member of the Class of 2021 at Williams College. He is writing these blog posts as a way to connect students in STEM with the opportunities at Williams-Mystic. Learn moreabout the opportunities available at Williams-Mystic.
Alex Quizon S’19: So how did you come to decide to apply to Williams-Mystic?
AllyGrusky S’20: Yeah, so I knew about Mystic before I came to Williams and it was one of the things that drew me here! I’ve always been interested in marine biology in particular – I did a science research class in high school and an independent project on fish and oyster aquaculture, so I’d already had some experience. When I was looking at colleges, I knew that the program was something I wanted to look into. On the other hand, by junior year I was still undecided about it: I knew I wanted to go away, but I didn’t want to go abroad to somewhere like Europe or Australia, but instead somewhere I could study both biology and history (since I’m a double major) as well as some other interdisciplinary courses. In my mind last fall, I realized that [Williams-Mystic] was a good combination of an away program, a little bit of a break, and classes that count towards both majors.
Alex: Wow, that’s awesome! [side conversation about classes and requirements for different departments] Could you talk a bit more about these independent projects you’ve done in the past and what else spurred your interests in marine biology?
Ally: I wanted to be a marine biologist since I was very, very young. But I’m also a swimmer and I loved biology, so the running joke in my family is that I combined the two! I used to go to oceanography camp up in Acadia National Park in Maine, and actually my classmate Emily Sun (S’20) and I both went to that camp in middle school – so we had a lot of fun reminiscing about it. That kickstarted my interests, and then later in high school I did a summer internship with NOAA (National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration) where I hauled some traps off the boat and did some data analysis for them. It was a really great introduction to the field, and I actually wrote and submitted my paper to a bunch of competitions!
Alex: That’s so cool that you started a lot of this so early on, and the swimming thing’s really funny!
Ally: Yeah – and then I sort of just kept going with it. I moved to Florida and so my freshman year of college I worked at the Smithsonian, essentially looking at invasive species around the area – a lot of field work. And then last summer I ended up taking classes in Seattle on marine invertebrate zoology, ecology, and conservation of marine birds and mammals out on the San Juan islands at Friday Harbor – a really cool marine biological laboratory. There I did a project on marine kingfishers (birds) and their energetic dynamics. So I had a bit of experience going into Williams-Mystic, but I’ve now since 180’d and now I work with bugs and plants.
Alex: It really does sound like you’ve had a bunch of great research experience going into Williams-Mystic! Given all of this experience, I’m guessing you had a fun time with research at Mystic – what was the topic of your independent project and how did you decide what you wanted to study?
Ally: My partner was Dominick Leskiw (S’20), who is now a senior at Colby, and we took marine ecology with Tim [Pusack]. I was really interested in marine invertebrates, coming off the marine invertebrate zoology class and having done a lot of identification work. So we looked at abundance, diversity, and distribution of benthic invertebrates in Quonochontaug Pond – the pond right next to Weekapaug Point. There are some anthropogenic influences since the middle of the pond has several water sources going into it, and by looking at benthic creatures in mudflats we expected to see different organisms in places where there’s more runoff from the nearby inn and areas that are more inhabited. We expected to see more organisms capable of withstanding changes in pH, salinity, and nitrogen concentrations, and we had ~16-18 phyla that we were looking at. And then we left (due to COVID)! So we never actually did the project, which was really sad and I was pretty disappointed. But we did have 2 sampling days and had some fun playing in the mud!
Alex: Oh no, I’m so sorry you weren’t able to finish the project – but I’m glad you were able to work on some parts together! Was your lab partner also generally interested in marine invertebrate zoology?
Ally: Sort of – he comes from more of a science-writer background and worked with a professor back in California on white abalone. He’s a really good illustrator and writes for a bunch of magazines – I don’t know if you remember from reunion, but Tom [Van Winkle] was showing everyone the notebook he designed with all the sketches on the front cover.
Alex: I remember someone showing them to me – those were so good! The wide variety of talents and skills that people bring to Williams-Mystic is just fantastic. In terms of the project, were you able to do any data analysis together, or was there just not enough?
Ally: I did do some data analysis, but not for that project. There’s this group called the LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research Project), which is a national/international organization of long-term ecology projects, so 20, 30, 40 years old. So basically you choose a site – I chose the Northeast Atlantic shelf – and you can download the data as CSV files and do data analysis. I looked at forage fish feeding habits to see if there were any patterns, and I made some pretty cool conclusions out of it. They ate more and had more diverse prey (e.g. copepods) in the spring versus the fall, which they don’t think is historically accurate and is only a trend that developed in recent years. It’s likely caused by large phytoplankton blooms in the spring caused by increased pollutants and runoff into the ocean combined with warming temperatures. There’s an earlier bloom of phytoplankton and zooplankton, so fish are eating more earlier, but that also means that fish in the fall are not having as much of a varied or abundant food supply in their diet.
Alex: Did you get a chance to present your results?
Ally: In class we did do a big presentation and went into the data analysis and food web, which was fun! Do you remember making LOOPYs in class?
Alex: Oh yeah, the diagrams to model different systems and how the parts interact!
Ally: I decided to put like every single species and Tim was like there’s a thousand different species of copepods on your figure! And I said, “Sorry Tim, the copepods are important!” (laughing)
Alex: Haha, love that! And I’d love to ask more specific questions off the record, but what you were able to do given the circumstances is amazing. I guess this would mostly apply to the offshore trip since you were unable to go on the other field seminars, but what were some of your other favorite science experiences at Mystic aside from the independent project (e.g. offshore, class trips, etc.)?
Ally: I had a lot of fun offshore. Since I had a lot of experience, they put me to work identifying different sargassum species along with my science officer Olivia. I remember one night, past 2AM during dawn watch, sorting through miniscule sargassum pieces on the [Corwtih] Cramer and looking for different identifying markers. It was also really nice to work with Lisa [Gilbert] before I moved over to Tim (for class) because she’s really cool. I had taken oceanography my freshman year but of course not with her, and I wish I could’ve taken every single class at Mystic!
Alex: Can definitely relate to that. How did your interests and skills as a scientist change from before to after you had done the program?
Ally: I loved that I could do hands-on research at Mystic when we went to Weekapaug Beach, when we went to the river and estuary environments – that was just amazing. It was a change from just doing work over the summer to being in the mountains during the winter here. I’d been in a genomics lab working with cyanobacteria, so it was nice to go back to working with marine creatures. Tim is really good at working with data analysis and breaking down common statistics, so it was really useful for me going into my thesis this summer since I had a refresher in statistics using tools like R (programming software) and Excel. And I did switch my interests, partly because there isn’t much marine ecology work done on campus – I applied to Prof. Joan Edwards’ lab for a thesis working with plant pollination networks.
Alex: Any other comments or things you’d like to add?
Ally: No, not really – I think you got my whole life story!!! You’re focusing on reporting science research, but I do think that the other research aspects are really important too, for the history and policy. Putting yourself into that interdisciplinary mindset is a unique experience, and all the disciplines play into each other. That’s the beauty of Mystic: you can talk about clams in history because they were important to the history of New England and whaling history, and then there’s the policy behind it as well. I’m thankful for being able to go to Williams-Mystic, as short as it was!
If you are interested in interdisciplinary education, our oceans and coasts, and doing research across disciplines, Williams-Mystic could be the place for you!
Learn more about how you can request information and apply to the program.
Chief Parfait-Dardar offers a traditional Native proverb, “The land was not given to us by our ancestors, it was loaned to us from our children.” There is a moment of silence between us and then she says definitively, “If more people understood that concept, we wouldn’t be in the state we are in today.”
By Ruhamah Tess Weil
Ruhamah is a junior at Middlebury College and a proud member of Williams-Mystic F’19. She is majoring in Film and Political Science and hopes her academic experiences will inform a future career in socially-impactful storytelling. She was born in Washington, D.C. and moved to Switzerland when she was five. There, on the banks of Lac Leman, she discovered a love for nature and all things water. She is unabashedly obsessed with dogs and books and Netflix and tacos and art (of any form) and coffee. While at Williams-Mystic, she became a yoga fanatic and much, much more determined (than she already was) to learn how to surf.
This piece is one of several examples of research conducted in the Williams-Mystic Marine Policy class. Ruhamah conducted her research in collaboration with Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw. Chief Parfait-Dardar is one of our main hosts and co-educators on the Louisiana Field Seminar.
Click here for more example of how Williams-Mystic students engage in research on timely, real-world issues.
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There is nothing noticeably blue about a cooked Louisiana blue crab. Lying belly up on the table, its legs curl inwards like the talons of a raptor, its prey having just slipped free of their grip. Boiling water has turned its formerly indigo carapace a feverish orange. Against the milky white of the abdomen, this vibrance appears to bleed, as though something beneath the shell is still alive, trapped and fighting to break through its confining armor. To anyone unfamiliar with the dish, the blue crab is a formidable opponent. If not removed correctly, exoskeleton cracks and splinters, blurring the line between edible and inedible. Buttery meat hides unpredictably within claws, easily overlooked. Internal anatomy unrecognizable to the common inlander—stringy, spidery, sometimes green—challenges the desire of eyes sanitized by pre-prepared foods. Eating the blue crab is not intuitive, is messy, is delicious. But it is not something a fork and knife can dissect. It is not something you can simply figure out as you go along. You have to be shown how by those who know.
“That’s what’s so unique about us: our cooking.” Shirell Parfait-Dardar, Chief of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, does not sound like someone who’s had a hard week when she says this. She laughs, and it sounds genuine. “It’s just so unfortunate that we’re losing what we cook with, you know?”
Southern Louisiana is one of the most popular fishing destinations of the United States and is the nation’s second largest seafood producer, with an output of over 850 million pounds of seafood per year. The cuisine that characterizes the Gulf of Mexico has never been associated with restraint or subtlety. This is the home of Mardi Gras, of “Slap Ya Mama” Cajun seasoning, of the Po’boy, of the deep-fried, sugar-smothered, steaming beignet. And yet, with every passing year, the plates of coastal Louisianans are growing just a little smaller, just a little emptier.
The term “food desert” seems unusually cruel when applied to Terrebonne Parish in southeastern Louisiana, for of all the things the region is lacking in—funding, healthcare, social justice, and higher education, to name a few—water is not one. It is an uncomfortable truth that the bayou has become the butt of many a morbid joke. “I’ll be traveling south next week—that is, if it’s still there!” Land loss is not a debatable issue in this place. It is happening, happening visibly, and happening at rates that would seem astonishing in most other regions of the country. The popular fast fact is that every one hundred minutes, a football field’s worth of wetlands disappears into the ocean. Here, houses live on stilts. You don’t park your car at the very edge of the road—that is where ditch becomes moat and sinking mud masquerades as solid ground. Prized possessions sit well above those belongings you don’t mind gifting to the flood. Tall rain boots are kept within reach.
Flood control and water diversion projects all along the Mississippi River’s path have narrowed and sped up water flow, directing it straight out into the Gulf. Mark Twain, that authorial embodiment of the Mississippi, once described his relationship to its geography as altered by his becoming a steamboat pilot. “Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river!” Although his attitude towards the waterway is clearly a tender and loving one, it equally echoes the belief that emerged in accordance with the systematic engineering of the river’s path in the nineteenth century: that the basin was a sedentary fixture of the landscape, that it could be tamed, confined, and memorized, that it wasn’t an evolutionary body subject to interminable change. This myth has resulted in the robbing of Louisiana. Sediment amassed in each state the Mississippi flows through should be deposited in the delta, where river becomes ocean. This sediment would, if left to nature’s own devices, be incorporated into the wetlands of Louisiana, strengthening and aiding the retention of a land that is at the constant mercy of erosion-causing wave energy. But this is no longer occurring.
In state, the structures impeding this process are there as urban protective barriers, keeping New Orleans dry. And after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, even those who now are holding the short end of the stick repeatedly say it’s okay, we get it. But Dr. Craig Colten, professor of geography and anthropology at Louisiana State University, is not surprised by the sociopolitical parameters of this dynamic, explaining that the flipside of the understandable choice to protect the city is also a historically charged decision to ignore those rural communities on the southern coast. “Most of these people came in various diasporas, came in less than ideal circumstances, pushed out to the margins of society as well as to the literal edge of our continental land.” For that reason, he’s determined to shift the public perspective of the issue. It is not merely an environmental crisis, but a crisis of society too. “There’s lots said about coastal restoration,” he says, “but nothing is said about coastal culture restoration.” However, in order to restore something, it has to have been lost first.
“My mother remembers community gardens down in Dulac. She remembers when you really didn’t go to the doctor: you went to my great grandmother. She was a healer, and she did it all naturally.” Chief Parfait-Dardar is speaking of recent times—of her own lifetime. Today, because of a lack of space for gardens due to acute land loss, because of saltwater intrusion as a result of wetland destruction, traditional foods and medicinal plants can’t grow. “We’re an oil and gas state. There’s tons of pollution of the water, of the environment.” Although she would be the first in a room to stand up and decry the death of vegetation in her town, she isn’t ready to say that it has been lost. That’s thanks to her kids.
“We teach [the next generation] hands-on how to plant, protect, preserve, and then utilize. We teach them that everything works together.” The order of those lessons is crucial to proper stewardship. Even if there is no current planting or harvesting happening on the lands of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band, they are hopeful and perseverant. They keep the knowledge alive through sharing.
On the other hand, the tribe is realistic. Careers are no longer expected to be in the fields that have traditionally supported them. Subsistence living is totally out of the question too. Not that long ago—until Hurricane Andrew of 1992 pushed environmental stressors over the edge—families could raise livestock, chicken and goats, could hunt for meat, deer and rabbit, could fish and grow produce. Today, you need an income. You need to pay for your flood insurance and for your groceries and for your electric bill so you can freeze most of the groceries (to hold you over until you can spare the time for another shopping trip) and for the car that you need to drive to get to the groceries and the bank and the doctor and the pharmacy at least fifteen miles away.
If you worked in the area in 2010, you remember the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. “Pardon my language,” Chief Parfait-Dardar warns, “but Deepwater kicked our asses and it’s still kicking them today.” Many of the local fishermen don’t even break even because of how steeply catch and quality of catch has declined since the disaster—and they certainly can’t afford to keep any to feed their own.
The chief, like Dr. Colten, argues for the young to migrate north. But critically, she does not envision this as a permanent move. She wants the young members of her tribe to go and educate themselves on things that have not yet found a place in southern Louisiana, such as green energy. “You may need to leave the state to get the proper training but bring it back. Just because it’s not here doesn’t mean you can’t bring it back.” Over and over again, Dr. Colten warns against disaster dispersal: unorganized migration north following disaster. However, due to the dire living conditions and degrading environment of the present, virtually any migration could be defined as disaster dispersal. According to Dr. Colten, NGOs working for the area despise the idea of migration. They call it “retreat” and they “spit it out like the term is toxic.” Dr. Colten underscores how geographic mobility, coupled with the transportation of culture, is key to the very character of the people of Terrebonne Parish. Many residents here came from elsewhere and recreated their communities in the bayou.
Chief Parfait-Dardar acknowledges her adaptive roots and stresses once again the role formal training has in future evolution. As the bayou fails to support careers, people head to the nearby city of Houma for business opportunities. But those aren’t common for Native Americans, who often lack access to the formal business training needed to succeed.
“Right now, the adaption hasn’t worked,” Chief Parfait-Dardar says. “We’ve had to turn to grocery stores, and we can’t pay for organic diets. ‘Yucky’ foods are the least expensive, are what we can afford.” This has led to rampant cancer, diabetes, and heart disease in her community. Relying on the safety net that is currently in place hasn’t meshed with her community’s way of life either. SNAP benefits, the food assistance program many in the area partake in, come with stringent work requirements. For many tribal community members — the elderly, those who lack GEDs, and those who were trained in fields that are no longer viable due to environmental devastation — these work requirements are nearly impossible to fulfill. While adaption is accepted as the way forward, it won’t save them if only Chief Parfait-Dardar’s tribe evolves. Serious rethinking and adaptation of local, state and federal efforts is needed too. The first step towards this goal may simply be a shift of mindset.
As inspiration, Chief Parfait-Dardar offers a traditional Native proverb, “The land was not given to us by our ancestors, it was loaned to us from our children.” There is a moment of silence between us and then she says definitively, “If more people understood that concept, we wouldn’t be in the state we are in today.”
Today, Eric Laschever (F’77) is an environmental attorney and law professor who recently contributed to a landmark federal climate lawsuit.
When he participated in the very first Williams-Mystic semester in Fall 1977, Eric was part of an educational experiment.
“It was the hardest semester I had at Williams,” Eric says. “[Founding director] Ben Labaree had to prove to the College that this was going to be rigorous.”
For Eric, Williams-Mystic proved to be the beginning of his career. Eric conducted marine policy research on the Law of the Sea conference, then ongoing in New York. In the course of his research, he visited the United Nations, where a staffer at the treaty negotiations recommended an interdisciplinary master’s program in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington.
Eric ultimately attended the program. Afterward, he worked for the State of Alaska for several years before landing in Washington, DC, where he earned his law degree from Georgetown.
From there, Eric pursued a career in environmental law and land use law. It was through this work — and through his former advisor at University of Washington ‚— that he developed an interest in how the law can address climate change. Beginning in the mid-2000s, Eric remembers climate change-related issues cropping up around statues throughout his field: The Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, and more.
At around the same time, Eric and his wife, Eulalie Sullivan, became involved in sailing education. They began volunteering with a science under sail program geared at middle– and high-school students. The program was founded by two Williams-Mystic alumni, Ellie Linen Low and Sophie Johnston.
Near the end of the decade, Eric proposed a course on climate change law, which he taught at Seattle University Law School for several years. Eric resumed teaching again in 2018 — this time in the same University of Washington program where he’d gotten his master’s degree.
As Eric renewed his focus on climate change litigation, he encountered Juliana v. United States: a major climate lawsuit to which he would ultimately contribute.
Juliana v. U.S. began making its way through the federal court system in 2015. In the case, 21 youth plaintiffs (including Kelsey Juliana, for whom the case is named) assert that the federal government, through its affirmative actions in creating a national energy system that causes climate change, has violated the constitutional rights of its youngest citizens to life, liberty, and property as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources.
In the five years since it was first brought, the case has been wending its way through the federal courts system. During that time, Eric became involved with Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that is advocating on behalf of the defendants in Juliana. In fall 2019, Eric arranged an introduction to one of the lead lawyers on the case.
Early this year, Eric wrote and filed a brief on behalf of the expert witnesses in the case.
As Eric describes it, Juliana draws on two areas of law: constitutional law and public trust doctrine. The public trust doctrine stands for the idea that the government holds certain resources in common for everyone. Attorneys drew on constitutional law, meanwhile, to argue that the government had a special duty to protect these resources on the behalf of children — a group both uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change and unable to act to protect itself from these effects.
Neither area of the law has historically been applied to climate change. That’s a common theme, Eric says, in legal actions brought to address climate change.
“We talk a lot about climate change adaptation and it’s not only the natural world that needs adaptation if we continue on our current trajectory. All of the institutions that we have created to deal with other issues are going to need to adapt” as well, Eric says. In most legal action addressing climate change, he says, “lawyers [have] had to come up with novel legal theories” that expand the scope of existing environmental legislation to include climate change.
It’s a valuable strategy, Eric emphasizes. But as he sees it, this need for adaptation also highlights the lack of any federal regulatory framework specific to climate change. The private sector, he says, could play a crucial role in changing that. With enough climate change-related legal action brought under a variety of regulatory frameworks, he suggests, industry may well decide it is preferable to be regulated under “a federal scheme that actually is tailored to address” climate change and its effects.
When it comes to Juliana v. US, the fight continues. On January 17, the most recent panel of judges to hear the case issued a divided 2-1 ruling to dismiss it. The brief that Eric wrote is part of the latest round of efforts to urge the federal courts system to reconsider the case.
For Eric, a journey that began with Williams-Mystic’s first semester has led to the front lines of climate litigation. It’s a journey, Eric reflects, that also has to do with his connection to the ocean.
Eric and his classmates about the Westward during their Williams-Mystic semester. From left to right: Carrie (Green) Yardley, Eric Laschever, Deborah Costa McKew, Andrew Mitchell, and (above) Lani Peterson.
“The thing that brought me to Williams-Mystic in the first place,” he says, “was that I had grown up in New Jersey, and spent a lot of time at the New Jersey shore. I had salt water in my veins, as it were. I’d grown up sailing, and I’d really had that connection to the water.”
In Williams-Mystic, Eric saw an opportunity to retain and strengthen that connection. He participated in a boat-building lab where he and his classmates built a dory. In the back of his mind, he dreamed about “sailing off” in a boat like that.
In 2010, he got the opportunity to fulfill that dream. He and Eulalie bought a sailboat: the Elizabeth Jean, named for their daughters. Together, they spent four years sailing from Seattle to Maine via the Panama Canal — a trip that included a stopover in Mystic, Connecticut.
“It reconnected me to my first loves of sailing and the ocean,” Eric says.
His recent experiences with sailing and sailing education have given Eric a new perspective on his own memories of sailing at Williams-Mystic.
“When you are taking other people out on sailboats,” Eric reflects, “you’re taking a risk that you think is justified because the educational experience is going to be something that you could not provide them without taking the risk.”
This lesson applies to Eric’s own education.
Even now, Eric’s Williams-Mystic offshore voyage stands out as his “most memorable college experience.” He recalls standing under floodlights on deck at night, pulling sharks out of the Atlantic Ocean as part of a shark-tagging experiment. They brought a tuna on board, too, feasting on tuna steaks later that night.
They couldn’t have been far, Eric now realizes, from the waters where they’d swum earlier that day. It was thanks to the Gulf Stream that the class could swim in the Atlantic in mid-October — the same system that sustained the organisms that the sharks fed on.
The memory seemed so incredible that Eric questioned whether it was accurate. On a recent visit, Founding Director Ben Labaree confirmed that Eric’s recollection was correct.
“Professor Labaree took a lot of risks in setting up the Williams-Mystic program,” Eric now realizes. “For one thing, he had to give up his tenure at Williams College … But it was also risky to take a bunch of students out to sea” — to allow them to swim in the Gulf Stream by day, then pull sharks from those waters at night.
“And I’m sure that that’s how Ben approached not only the sailing component of what we did but the whole thing. I think he concluded [that], unless he took the risk that he did to set the program up, he couldn’t provide the educational experience that he thought was needed at that point in time. As a nation, and really internationally, we were putting this renewed focus on the ocean and on ocean resources.”
For Eric, the result was an experience that not only launched his career but also helped sustain a lifelong connection to the ocean.
As Eric remembers Ben Labaree advising him: “‘It’s not what you remember that’s important. It’s what you do with what you remember.’”
Before I attended Williams-Mystic, I was stressed, unsatisfied, and wanted to do something new and fulfilling. I didn’t know where my path was headed, what kind of career I was looking for. But Williams-Mystic — through all the random, fun, and new experiences — changed all that, giving me the inspiration to explore and discover my true passions and interests.
By Alex Quizon (S’19)
Alex is a junior at Williams College studying chemistry with a concentration in maritime studies. Alex participated in Williams-Mystic during the spring of his sophomore year (spring 2019), and now serves as one of Williams-Mystic’s alumni ambassadors.
How awesome the field seminars are.
Alex during a swamp tour on the Louisiana Field Seminar.
Everyone at Williams always asks about life on the tall ship, and although that experience is amazing in itself Williams-Mystic is not just that. Some of my favorite moments were the smaller ones in California and Louisiana: Watching a classmate eat an In-and-Out burger for the first time in San Francisco, casually hiking the redwoods on a beautiful morning, Cajun dancing in Louisiana at night, and listening to Pitbull, Kesha, and Taylor Swift classics from our childhood in the vans going from place to place. When I was applying, I was nervous about maintaining and making friendships. These moments are joyous friendship-building memories I’ll never forget.
How freeing the campus feels.
Everyone has their own conception of ‘college’ based on the institution they attend: a small isolated campus in the rural Berkshires (me at Williams), a medium-sized campus in a Midwestern suburb, an enormous campus in the heart of New York City. Once we settled into the town of Mystic, I realized that learning doesn’t have to take place on a traditional campus. I don’t have to spend most of my time studying inside Spring Street Market or Sawyer Library or a Schow study room. At Williams-Mystic, I could do policy research on the docks near the drawbridge, or read poetry with friends for English on the lawns facing the Mystic River. And, I have to admit, I indulged in far too many treats from Sift Bakery and Bartleby’s Cafe for my “study breaks.” It was so nice truly being part of the hometown community.
How everything fits together and just “makes sense.”
There’s no type of enlightenment that matches reading about Emily Dickinson’s “divine intoxication” upon traveling to the sea in English class and then actually sailing on a tall ship, feeling this exultation for yourself. I thought the interdisciplinary aspect would be sufficiently captured at “liberal arts colleges” like Williams, but Williams-Mystic takes it to a whole new level with experiential learning. One day you’re reading John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row for English and the next week you’re actually walking along Cannery Row in California and discussing the novel. Or you’re learning about coral reefs in Marine Ecology and then you’re actually in St. John’s (Virgin Islands), walking on coral and snorkeling with them. There’s no feeling like it.
How you can make your own interests fit with the interests of the Williams-Mystic program.
Many of my classmates at Williams have a hard time differentiating the “water” component from “maritime studies.” You do not have to be interested in marine science or marine policy to find this program fulfilling; my classmates had majors in Classics, Math, Biology, History, and many other subjects.
For my history final research paper I learned more about my cultural identity, writing about the movement and subsequent treatment of Filipino immigrants in America. For my English final project, I incorporated my musical expertise by writing a Broadway-esque original composition inspired by Moby-Dick. Whatever your interests and passions are, there’s a way to make it work.
How there will be so many delightful surprises and new experiences.
Alex and sailing partner Jonna recover from some minor capsizing
I learned some sea chanteys. I not only went sailing in the Mystic River for my first time but accidentally capsized at the very end of the regatta. I ran out of the van in a pouring thunderstorm with Stephen and Lisa at Grand Isle Beach to collect seashells for our science project. And I got to steer a tall ship at 2AM with the compass light turned off, guided only by the stars in the night sky.
Before I attended Williams-Mystic, I was stressed, unsatisfied, and wanted to do something new and fulfilling. I didn’t know where my path was headed, what kind of career I was looking for. But Williams-Mystic — through all the random, fun, and new experiences — changed all that, giving me the inspiration to explore and discover my true passions and interests.
How loving and understanding the community is.
This cannot be overstated. Everyone — faculty, administration, Mystic Seaport staff, Mystic residents, classmates, etc. — is cheering you on through this program. There is an unparalleled amount of overwhelming support. Your professors are right across the street and they’re more than happy to chat and help. You can always pass by Laurie’s office (Lab Manager) and say hi, you can talk to Tom (Director) about any of your problems, and if you ever want to see sunshine in its purest form you can pass by Mary O’Loughlin (Deputy Director) for a warm smile and piece of chocolate. Everyone is there to help you learn and succeed, and I’m forever grateful for this love and support.
Many of my classmates at Williams have a hard time differentiating the “water” component from “maritime studies.” You do not have to be interested in marine science or marine policy to find this program fulfilling; my classmates had majors in Classics, Math, Biology, History, and many other subjects.
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