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!
For our final field seminar of the semester, we left for the land of lazy lagoons, bountiful bayous, and plentiful pelicans that they call Louisiana. To make our Monday 6 a.m. flight to New Orleans, however, we had to depart Mystic at 3 a.m. Thus it was not without a great deal of willpower and some choice words that would make a sailor blush that at 2 a.m. I pulled myself from the warm embrace of my bed and prepared my Williams-Mystic™ duffel bag. Leaving the house and joining the rest of my bleary-eyed, coffee-powered companions, we boarded the bus to the Hartford Airport.
We landed in New Orleans around midday and not wasting a moment, split up into our rental vans and headed southwest for Houma. We stopped along the way at our first of many levees along the Mississippi River. For decades, the levees were the pride of the US Army Corps of Engineers, shackling and controlling the river and preventing the regular flooding that had once characterized Louisiana. Unfortunately, that same flooding was the main mode of laying sediment and building back land in the state, and with these levees, all of that sediment was being washed out into the Gulf of Mexico. These paradoxical levees, along with rising sea levels, were the primary engines behind the coastal land loss we observed at all points along southern Louisiana.
Our first guided experience was at the Whitney Plantation, one of the few preserved plantations focusing solely on the experience of the enslaved people there. We learned how everything we saw, from the opulent house of the master to the rows and rows of sugarcane, were the product of backbreaking, inhumane labor. The names of the slaves and the interviews of former slaves, etched in stone around the plantation, told a history too terrible to be believed, but such is the truth of America’s history. We reflected on the day over dinner before turning in early for the night.
F’22 at the Whitney Plantation
Tuesday began with festivities for one of our classmates, and we celebrated their twenty-second birthday with all the pomp and circumstance one could find in a hotel lobby. Our celebration completed, we boarded the vans and set off for the swamps. Zam’s Swamp Tour was about as close as any of us could ever hope to get to live alligators, giant snapping turtles, and even more giant boa constrictors. Safe in our pontoon boats with cypresses and mangroves hanging over us, we motored through the narrow, murky waterways as our guide, ZZ Loupe, told us about the history of alligator hunting and local foodways. It was a spectacular tour that left us with more swamp smarts than the average bear—which was one of the few animals we didn’t see while we were there.
We made a new friend!
We returned to the vans for a shorter drive to the La Butte Mound, a cemetery and place of great significance to the Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw. It was hard to imagine that the mound, with its edges only a few feet from the rapidly encroaching waterline, had once been thought to be unassailable by flooding. Within a few decades, it seemed La Butte would only be visible at low tide. Continuing southwards, we arrived at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, or LUMCON, our gracious hosts for the remainder of our time in Louisiana. (Most gracious of all was Chef Michael Lloyd who returned to LUMCON just to cook for some of our meals, outdoing himself with every dinner and providing us with the food that powered us through our often packed schedules!) That night, we listened to local shrimper, alligator hunter, and LUMCON vessel operator Carl Sevin about life this far south and creative circumventions of the law. Some of us immediately retired to bed while the rest tried their luck at fishing to cap off the night.
Wednesday was once again punctuated by festivity, as yet another one of our classmates celebrated their twenty-third birthday. Before it could be properly celebrated, however, we first had to trek out into the marsh near LUMCON. In clouded waters that were just shallow enough to stand in, we paddled into the surrounding spartina. While kayaking was no problem, disembarking onto the muddy shores that swallowed some of us down to our waists like quicksand proved a more difficult venture. With some help (and, for one of us, a great deal of cursing,) we successfully clambered onto land, stood in the tall spartina, and took cores of the marsh down to sediment that was likely 6,000 years old. After showering off the inches of mud that coated everything we wore, we prepared our most flexible attire and shiniest shoes for a night of authentic cajun dancing at the Jolly Inn. There, we had a shindig fit for a king with enough spinning, two-steps, and waltzes to make the hours we spent there pass by in a whirl. When the band played “Happy Birthday” for our classmate, we were surprised to find that our classmate had a birthday twin! With such serendipity secured, we returned—elated but extremely exhausted—to LUMCON.
Dancing the night away with Prof. Rónadh Cox
On Thursday, we drove over elevated highways of rebar-reinforced concrete to Port Fourchon. The primary nexus of oil and gas pumped out of the Gulf of Mexico, it was here that almost all of the offshore rigs we’d seen at all points along our Louisiana journey depended on for transport to the greater United States. Guided by Thad Angelloz, we learned about the economic importance of the port to the state and the measures taken to ready the port for the oncoming effects of climate change. We then traveled to Grand Isle, a barrier island on the frontlines of climate change. There, we met Chris Hernandez, who for decades fought to safeguard the island against some of the worst hurricanes this country has seen. The industry of Port Fourchon seemed to pale in comparison to the years of tireless work he put in for nothing more than love for his home. After lunch in his home and a few hours at the beach, we returned to LUMCON for our final night in Louisiana.
We awoke early Friday morning for the long drive back to New Orleans. When we arrived, we were allowed to explore the French Quarter of the city for two hours. My friends and I spent those hours sampling traditional confectioneries, hot sauce shops, Harley Davidson stores, and Cafe DuMonde beignets. As we were waiting in line for Cafe DuMonde, a line band was performing “Down in New Orleans,” to which I had to bust out a few moves from the Jolly Inn. Returning from our escapades, we boarded the City of New Orleans riverboat for a riverside tour of the city and its parishes. After a lunch of red beans and rice with the sights of the Big Easy drifting by our windows, we disembarked the ship, embarked on the vans, boarded the planes back to Baltimore and Hartford, and finally bussed back to Mystic.
Yum!
Battle-hardened by our trials and tribulations throughout the semester, our 17-strong cohort was now as thick as thieves. The many hours we spent in the vans whisked by me as I sang, joked, and learned alongside the rest of my friends. Even as we were up and about from dawn to dusk, the entire field seminar seemed to breeze by. If I learned anything from my time in Louisiana, it was the overwhelming power of joy. Even in the face of a bevy of natural and unnatural disasters, most everyone we talked to spoke about the happiness they found in their work, community, and family. In our strange bunch of college kids from all walks of life, I think we found our own happiness-finding family.
In the great Venn diagram between Williams-Mystic and Ireland, I did not expect the overlap to be bagpipe music.
Having just come fresh out of a spring semester filled with spider crabs, oblong grapes, and flat sandwiches on Sunday (you just had to be there), going across the Atlantic felt like the farthest thing I could possibly imagine from the quaint seaside energy of Mystic, CT. It felt like I had barely moved out of Carr House when my lab group was packing up and hopping on a flight into Dublin. The aim of the journey? Assorted geoscience research under the incredible Rónadh Cox (say hi to her for me, F’22 and S’23), looking at subtidal boulder deposits and the encrusting marine organisms living on them. Me and my thesis partner were joined by her two underclassmen research assistants were headed over there to study coastal boulder beaches and their properties. A third underclassman researcher wrote music based on waves and boulders.
The actual research was mostly measuring boulders. Actually, it was almost completely measuring boulders, with the occasional foray into the tidepools – I got to find some European green crabs (C. maenas) in their natural, non-invasive, non-Weekapaug Point habitat! My personal highlight was finding an ovigerous green crab at Waterville Beach in County Kerry, after having found so few green crabs over the course of the semester. After being in the field all day, my lab group and I then got to discover our hidden passion for things like digestive biscuits, the TV program “Great Lighthouses of Ireland,” and unplanned caving expeditions. We didn’t get much time for sightseeing, but we did get to see Céide Fields (the oldest stone-walled settlement in the world), Doolin Cave’s Great Stalactite (the longest free-hanging stalactite in Europe), and the beautiful Cliffs of Moher.
On the last day of the trip, we wound up in Dublin for the afternoon to explore. After a pit stop at the Trinity College geoscience building and the sweetest boba I’ve ever had, we stopped to listen to a man who was playing the bagpipes on the side of the street. Almost immediately, I couldn’t help but be reminded of S’22’s spider crab release procession, accompanied by a bagpipe serenade from our own Declan Houlihan. I expected bagpipe music in Ireland, but I didn’t expect it to be the thing that made me feel so close to Williams-Mystic. It was then that I really started to realize: pieces of Williams-Mystic and Spring ‘22 are going to come with me wherever I go, no matter how far away from Mystic I am. Whether it’s Rónadh joking with her brother over the van walkie-talkies, cooking with my lab group at night, or my partner texting me pictures of the crabs we did our project on, my semester on Greenmanville Ave is going to stick. S’22, you have a death grip on my heart. You taught me to be adventurous, to embrace my inner weirdness, and to treat every place like it’s my classroom. They can take me away from the crab bagpipe procession, but they sure can’t take the crab bagpipe procession away from me. Long live Jomothy.
~ this blog post in memoriam of Diane and co, fly high our dear crabby friends~
Carlton is a Professor Emeritus of Marine Sciences and Director Emeritus of Williams-Mystic (Curriculum Vitae)
In September 2010, the Williams-Mystic class prepared messages-in-glass bottles on the Cramer to be set free in the Gulf of Maine as part of a large-scale drift experiment. However, the Cramer was never far enough offshore to release the bottles during the trip. Captain Sean Bercaw released F10’s bottles a few weeks later on October 6 when bringing Cramer down from Rockland ME to Woods Hole, in the middle of the Gulf during storm force winds and in 18-20 foot seas – enough ocean energy to send the bottles packing into the open North Atlantic.
On March 18, 2022, almost 11 ½ years later, British physician Dr. Ryan Watkins, on a visit to Windermere Island, Eleuthera, in the Bahamas, found F10 Nicola Klee’s bottle on the beach. Dr. Ryan kindly sent us (and Nicola) a picture of the bottle and her message. We’ve prepared a snapshot of the bottle to highlight that there were still living oceanic goose barnacles Lepas on the bottle, which tells us that the bottle had washed ashore perhaps a few hours before.
Where had Nicola’s bottle been all these years?
Well, if you reach over and grab your copy of the Williams-Mystic 25th Anniversary Book, and open to page 47 – we’ll give you a second – you’ll get a good sense of the journey that the bottle took, and for how long.
Bottles that were released in October 1984 by F84, off the coast of New England, landed in the Azores, Europe, Bermuda, and multiple times in the Bahamas until September 1991(Jim tells us that a few more F84 bottles were reported in subsequent years). The pattern of their discovery revealed that some bottles had gone around the North Atlantic Ocean perhaps as many as four or five times before landing!
We think Nicola’s bottle has been bobbing around and around … and around … the North Atlantic Ocean at least a few times – and the barnacles confirm it was recently out on the high seas. Finally, enough was enough, and the bottle followed its predecessors ashore in the Caribbean!
Emily is a recent graduate of Williams College. Her time in Mystic included long walks around the seaport, last-minute kayaking, and a wholehearted attempt at blacksmithing.
Katy Newcomer Lawson (F’12) has traveled far and wide. It’s one of the first things I notice in the About section of her website: the list of places where she’s worked spans coasts, countries, and even continents. In the course of her work as a marine scientist, Katy has been everywhere from the Chesapeake Bay to the coast of Maine, the Pacific Northwest to Panama, Alaska to Australia. When I give her a call one Thursday afternoon, I’m lucky enough to catch her while we’re both in the same time zone — I’m at school in Massachusetts; she’s working from home in upstate New York — and I can’t help but ask: which of those many places was her favorite?
“Favorites, that’s so hard!” Katy says. “There are so many good ones.” There’s the semester she spent studying abroad in Australia, just a hundred miles inland from the Great Barrier Reef. (“It was really immersive, because I took four classes on coral reefs,” Katy tells me. “I was like, if I’m going to be in Australia, I’m going to do it!”) There are all the times she’s gone scuba diving in the kelp forests off the coast of California. (As she describes the experience, I feel like I’m right there underwater with her: “It’s almost spooky,” she says, “but also very pretty, because the sun shines through and [it’s like] you’re swimming through a forest.”)
Then there’s the summer she spent in Florida, patrolling beaches for sea turtle nests. (“That was the hardest I’ve ever worked, walking on the beach in the morning every single day for miles.” “When you say morning,” I ask, “do you mean, like, 9 AM morning or 5 AM morning?” “5 AM morning,” Katy confirms, telling me she had to wake up at 4 to get to the beach on time. “But, I mean, I also got to see baby sea turtles that summer,” she says, smiling, “so pros and cons, really.”) There’s also the work she’s done in St. Paul and Sitka, Alaska, which Katy says might be her two favorite field sites of all time. (“It was so interesting to go there,” she says. “Very surprising ecosystems, very diverse — [with] starfish and giant urchins and all these fun invertebrate species.”)
Katy studying invasive invertebrate species in St. Paul.
And the next destination on her list is equally exciting. If all goes well, next summer, Katy will be headed to Fiji, where she’ll continue to work on her PhD with conservation biologist Joshua Drew. The focus of Katy’s PhD research is marine biodiversity; she’s particularly interested in the invertebrate species that call Fiji’s coral reefs and mangrove forests home. Though her trip to those very sites was originally scheduled for this summer and had to be postponed, Katy has still been able to make progress on her project. She’s currently doing mathematical and statistical modeling work from home, while also looking forward to getting back out in the field. “That’s the part I really like,” Katy says, “is how hands-on it is. [With] marine fieldwork, when you’re out on the beach or on a boat, you feel like you’re [having] a very tactile experience.” Not to mention, she adds, of her upcoming trip, “I really enjoy traveling for work!”
But before most of that traveling — before Fiji, before Alaska and California and Australia — there was Williams-Mystic. Katy came to Mystic as an environmental studies major at Williams who had been interested in marine science since high school and a self-described “ocean girl” since long before then. “When I was looking at Williams as a college, I [wasn’t sure] if I wanted to [take] the liberal arts route or do a very marine-heavy undergrad,” she explains, “so Williams-Mystic helped convince me that I wanted to go to Williams.” It’s something the two of us have in common; as a senior in high school, I had the same dilemma and made the same decision. Something else we share: both of us remember the field seminars as one of the best parts of Williams-Mystic. We exchange stories about the offshore trip, which Katy tells me was her favorite, “because it was the most unlike anything I’d ever done before.” I’ve never really been able to put the magic of that trip into words, but Katy does it perfectly: “To keep waking up at sea was [just] an amazing experience.”
“And then [the] Louisiana [field seminar] was [also] great,” she continues. During that trip, “we stayed at LUMCON,” the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, “which is a field site that’s also a lab. Basically, it was like a professional field location, and I’d never been to one before. [So] to experience that, where it was like — here are the scientists who work at this lab, and they do science for their job, 9 to 5 — I [just thought], that’s really cool! That’s a dream!” Back in Mystic, Katy had the chance to try out that dream for herself. She began working as a research assistant in the lab of professor emeritus (and former Williams-Mystic director) Jim Carlton. “Jim was a huge influence,” Katy tells me now. “You know, I still [study] invertebrates, which are his specialty. And I started [my career] in an invasive [species] lab that he helped found, so I’m definitely super thankful to have gone to Williams-Mystic and learned from Jim and everybody else there.”
Katy (left) at the beach with her Williams-Mystic classmates.
One especially memorable learning experience, Katy says, was the research project she did when she returned to Mystic the following summer, to continue working with Jim and one of his then-PhD students. “We’d found something in the field that was really interesting,” she says, “which was that anemones were producing eggs for a reason we didn’t understand, because they were asexual. And we were like, ‘Why? We thought you were asexual!’” So Katy used her histology skills — which she’d recently honed in Australia, studying corals (what else?) — to analyze the tissue of the anemones and “figure out if they had eggs, if they had sperm, what was going on.” She pauses for a moment here, and, enthralled, I ask: What was going on? Were they really asexual?
“Yes, they were really asexual!” Katy says. “It was a totally female population — there were no sperm-holding anemones. We think it’s because they’re invasive, and they probably haven’t lost the capability to reproduce sexually from their original population — but that only one individual was transported to Mystic, [and] it was a female. And so now every single anemone in Mystic is a female,” she explains. “Other researchers also discovered this around the same time, and found other populations that are only male, [or other] female-only populations. [But] there are [also] populations that have both, and so people are trying to see if they’re going to reproduce sexually. It’ll be interesting,” she continues, “because they’re so successful [as a species] without [sexual reproduction]. But if they recombine and are able to adapt and evolve as a [typical] population might, then they [could] become even more prevalent — who knows?”
The anemone project — which ultimately turned into Katy’s undergraduate thesis — exemplifies what she says she loves most about doing research: asking questions and finding ways to answer them. “I have a lot of fun designing research questions and thinking up what we want to test and why it’s important,” she says. “And going through the process of trial and error in the field — I really enjoy that part of it.” I’m curious about what that process is like, never having been through it on my own. Katy nods: “I think it’s hard to get experience doing that until either you have an independent project or you work on a project with somebody [else] from start to finish. But it’s definitely one of the most surprising things I’ve learned [about research], is that it’s very iterative. Because there are so many things in the field that can affect your project, like weather, waves, currents, other animals, other humans… So you have to kind of think of solutions on the spot and be ready for almost anything to happen.”
“And it can be really nerve-racking the first time it happens to you,” Katy tells me. “Like, [for] my first internship project, the animal I was trying to study didn’t come that year — they [just] didn’t settle in that location that year — so when I got there, [and] I saw barnacles instead of bryozoans, I was like, ‘Oh. Well, my study is now on barnacles!’” Katy laughs. Despite the challenges, it seems like everything worked out in the end. That barnacle project took place while Katy was an intern at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), where she later became a full-time lab technician. She gives credit to Williams-Mystic for helping her get that initial opportunity: “I definitely would not have gotten the internship at [SERC] without [my] experience working with Jim,” she says. “And then the research I did [with him] for my thesis” — the aforementioned anemone project — “turned into a paper, so that was my first big publication — which was probably [also] very impactful, [to have that] on my resume [when I applied] to grad school.”
Katy diving in Monterey as part of her work with SERC.
I ask Katy if there are other ways in which she thinks Williams-Mystic has shaped her life since. “I mean, I met my husband [there],” she says with a smile, “and I made really great friends [who] I still talk to and hang out with a lot.” (She remembers paddleboarding on the Mystic River in the summer, going to Clyde’s for apple cider donuts in the fall — the foundation for friendships that are still going strong, even now, years later.) Though some of her favorite memories are from time spent outside of class, Katy tells me she really enjoyed her courses, too. She admits to having a favorite — “as a science person, I was obsessed with the ecology class” — but says she also appreciated “the way all [the classes] intersected, how they all built upon each other.”
Looking back on her coursework as a whole, Katy says, “I think the immersion of [all] the different courses helped expand my view of doing marine science. You know, it can be anthropological; it can be community-based. It’s not just science alone — there’s this whole other huge part of knowing about the marine world that’s not based in the research, it’s based in the human systems. So I think that’s had a big impact on the way I think about things.” For example, Katy recalls, “When we went to Louisiana, I was always amazed at how close the connections were between some of the professors at Mystic and some of the people [we met] in Louisiana. I thought that was so impressive, to have collaborators who they’ve [known] for like twenty years, who they’re friends with and who live in that community.”
Today, Katy hopes to build similarly strong connections through her own work. For the ongoing Fiji project, she says, “we do a lot of collaboration with the local indigenous community. [We] try to focus on what they’re interested in studying [and] develop research questions that might further their own interest in the conservation process. For example, there are a lot of services that they value more than the Western community [does], like sustenance fishing or traditional uses of mangrove wood. So we want to try to develop study questions that support those kinds of values.” It’s important, she says, to focus on projects that are not only of scientific interest, but also of value to the surrounding community — and it’s equally important to work with local collaborators, to ensure they are involved with and invested in the research being done.
Katy’s belief that science should be accessible and inclusive extends even beyond the immediate community, into the wider world. “I think [doing] outreach is a really important part of any scientist’s job,” she says, whether that means giving talks, using social media, or finding other ways to share science with the public. In addition to keeping people informed, Katy also wants to help them join in research efforts themselves, as citizen scientists. “I really enjoy that, connecting people to projects and getting them involved,” she says. “I think people are more keen than we think. There are plenty of people who [want to] help, and it’s super beneficial for science [for the public] to have a [better] understanding of what we do.”
While at SERC, for example, Katy helped develop an online citizen science project called Invader ID. The goal of the project is to study fouling communities, which are made up of organisms that live underwater on artificial surfaces, such as docks and ship hulls. As a volunteer, you can access photos that SERC has collected of these organisms, then try your hand at identifying them. Katy says Invader ID “gets people interested in [species] that they would maybe never see,” like tunicates and tubeworms. “But also,” she adds, “it helps us track [these] communities through time. So we can put up [photos] from the early 2000s that we never got around to analyzing, and if the public identifies [the species in them], then we have a data point that we would have never been able to get [otherwise].” To date, more than 5,000 volunteers have contributed to the project. And Katy thinks that, in general, participation in similar citizen science efforts is on the rise. When I ask her how she sees the field of marine science changing, either in the present or in the years to come, she says, “I think more people are expressing interest, and I think more scientists are recognizing that it’s important to [reach out to them] actively.”
“And then with that,” she continues, “I think [science] is becoming more localized. People are realizing, like, to just go to a far-flung place, do research, and come back — and not learn about that place — is maybe a bad idea. You should be more aware of where you’re going, what you’re doing, and how that data is related to that place and those people. And [you should] really connect with the community there and the public in general.” It’s an area where Katy acknowledges that scientists, on the whole, have lots of room for improvement — but she’s optimistic that things will change for the better.
To me, it’s clear that Katy herself is at the forefront of that change, given how closely her work in Fiji is tied to the local community. In addition to the ecological fieldwork, Katy’s project also has a major sociological component. She says, “[One of the questions] that I’m asking is, in high biodiversity sites — assuming biodiversity is a proxy for healthy ecosystems — do people appreciate more ecosystem services, and do they value those [more highly]?” Through surveys and interviews, Katy will work to better understand the local community and its relationship with the environment, in order to make sure that local priorities are taken into account. When designing a research project, Katy says, “it’s important to make sure that you’re not doing [one thing] when the community thinks there’s something [else] that’s more important. So it’s a balance” — a balance she is working hard to achieve.
What’s next for Katy after Fiji? “I’m getting more into this idea of connecting the community with the ecosystem,” she says, “so I think I’m going to try to do projects that are more local to me. That could mean in the Great Lakes region, or it could mean coastal New York, [or even] up to Maine, where there are a lot of local towns that are really invested in the lobster, scallop, and [other] fishing industries. So that’s what I hope to do next, because I want to have that connection to place.” And at the end of the day, it’s that same connection to place that Katy emphasizes when she talks about her time at Williams-Mystic. One of the last questions I ask her is this: In just a few sentences, how would she describe the program?
“I think you just really live in that place,” she says. “You live in the world of [a] New England, ocean-based lifestyle, and you learn a lot about the ocean from the perspective of a coastal community, even if you’ve never been [part of that community before].” (Katy herself grew up in Georgia. “On the coast?” I ask her. “Nope!” she says, smiling. “Anywhere near the coast?” “Nope,” she says again, laughing now. “Central Georgia. My family went to the beach during the summer, but that was it.”) In Mystic, though, “you [really] experience the water,” she says. “You live there on the water, you learn all about the water, you go other places with water — and it’s great. I loved every minute of it.”
From how to steer or furl sail, to how to wake people up for class or sanitize dishes, we have been learning specific methods to allow 37 people to safely and happily travel, live, and learn together on a ship only 40 meters long.
Above: S’19 students Chris (Clark University) and Em (Vassar College) help recover sediment from the bottom of San Juan Harbor.
29 January 2019
19 N x 066 W, 30 nautical miles north of San Juan, Puerto Rico
S’19 Oliver (University of Cincinnati) and Jonna (Middlebury College) serenade the ship’s company.
Greetings from SSV CorwithCramer!
On Sunday, January 27, the Williams-Mystic Class of Spring 2019 joined SSV Corwith Cramer in San Juan just in time for lunch. For the last 48 hours or so, we have been busy learning ship operations, getting used to walking on a rolling ship, and enjoying being out at sea.
For many, of us, it is our first time out at sea. And as Melville wrote in Redburn, “People who have never gone to sea for the first time as sailors cannot imagine how puzzling and confounding it is.” Unlike Melville’s protagonist, however, we have watch officers who are kind and patient teachers, and who allow us to ask lots of questions. From how to steer or furl sail, to how to wake people up for class or sanitize dishes, we have been learning specific methods to allow 37 people to safely and happily travel, live, and learn together on a ship only 40 meters long with three heads and two showers.
During orientation, we got to know the parts of the ship and our responsibilities on board. Everyone participated in safety drills and we also conducted our first science deployments in San Juan Harbor.
Then we headed out to sea, into deep water north of San Juan. Two days in, spirits are high. We are getting used to the routine and the warm tropical weather. The food has been amazing thanks to our fantastic stewards and we have even enjoyed some entertainment thanks to some talented students.
Stay tuned for more updates from our Offshore Field Seminar!
Track the Cramer‘s progress by clicking the link below!
Important Note: Vessel tracking information isn’t updated continuously and the Cramer isn’t always able to provide updated location information. (Good reception isn’t a guarantee at sea!) If you notice that the Cramer appears to be in the same location for an extended period of time, it simply means the website has not yet been updated.
The last day aboard the Cramer is a microcosm of everything we’ve experienced aboard: science, hands-on learning, our duty to the ship, and team bonding via songs and puns.
Muscongus Bay, Saint George River, Maine
September 12, 2018
0445 h
After making our way north to Maine, we anchored at Muscongus Bay Monday evening. Anchoring brought a welcome reprieve from the watch schedule offshore; we’ve been keeping short “anchor watches” during our time here, which have allowed us to catch up on some much-awaited sleep.
Tuesday morning brought rain, but also some excellent poster presentations, as the students crowded into the main salon of the Cramer to share the results from their scientific research projects. Another highlight of the day: marlinspike seamanship class, in which students worked on knots — and “knautical” puzzles. (When you’ve been together on a ship for 10 days, your humor tends to take a turn for the punny.)
As part of the ship’s crew, our duty to Cramer has structured our days here. Tuesday, as our last full day on the ship, was no exception; our afternoon was designated a “field day,” a time to clean and care for every inch of this ship that’s been our home this week and a half. The rain stopped as we finished field day, and we were rewarded with a beautiful, final night aboard, full of poetry, conversation, and songs.
Isabella (Colby College, at left) and Morgan (Williams College) present the results of their study on light attenuation in the surface ocean.
Now, it’s early morning Wednesday. Everyone is still asleep but soon the ship will be abuzz as we prepare to get underway and head toward Rockland. Tonight, we will make our way back to Mystic as shipmates, ready for the next adventures of our fall semester.
Hi, I’m Audra. I am a born-and-raised Ohioan with a passion for handwritten letters and philanthropic initiatives. Currently, I am a rising senior at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio studying public relations and political science and hope to work in public affairs somewhere on the East Coast. It has been an honor and a privilege to write blog posts about the lives and experiences of numerous Williams-Mystic alumni over the last seven months.
I am an alumna of the spring 2018 Williams-Mystic class. In March 2017, I mentioned to an economics professor about how I had space in my junior year to do a study away/study aboard program and I wasn’t sure how I wanted to fill that time. She told me about Williams-Mystic and the rest is history.
Once I was accepted, I had almost a year to wait until it was my turn to be a student in the program. I read every blog, looked at every Facebook post, and watched every youtube video I could find to learn more about Williams-Mystic. I grew up going to Lake Erie every summer, so I knew a little bit about boats, enjoyed science, and was intrigued by policy pertaining to the ocean. I thought I would do okay.
I thought my Williams-Mystic experience would be purely academic. I would learn some pretty amazing facts in some pretty amazing places and head back to Ohio feeling accomplished.
Williams-Mystic was a challenge-filled, transformative, and emotional semester for me. As far as academics are concerned, I was pushed to my limits and completed work I am very proud of, but there is more to this program than hours spent working on projects and papers.
Going forward, I will remember my oceanography professor telling me it was okay to get seasick on the ship. I will remember standing over the leeward rail and my ecology professor telling me to be kinder to myself when I was, in fact, seasick and frustrated that I couldn’t help my shipmates complete our tasks. I will remember walking to the second floor of Labaree House to talk to my policy professor for the first time and being too excited about the fact that her door was covered with postcards. I will remember my literature professor’s passion for Herman Melville’s masterpiece, Moby-Dick. I will remember walking with my history professor through the Redwood Forest talking about the state of our country and how we could make it better. I will remember all the times my shipmates made me laugh, gave me a hug, or overcame a challenge with flying colors. I will remember jumping in the Pacific Ocean in March, singing at the top of my lungs in a car full of people I care so much about, learning from individuals facing unimaginable challenges, and seeing how a group of human beings can truly just be people, together.
Williams-Mystic was 17-weeks of being vulnerable and intentional. You only have so much time to get everything done, so you have to be smart about how you spend your time. I spent my time calling stakeholders about a controversial lock and dam project in Illinois, researching women, the sea, and the Cult of True Womanhood in the Victorian Era, kayaking for a science project centered around runoff in the Mystic River Estuary, and examining the different ways an author’s experiences affected how that person wrote about oceans and coasts. I also spent my time making as many memories as possible with my shipmates and working as a social media intern.
Interning for Williams-Mystic during the semester and this summer has deepened my appreciation for the program. I have been able to work on projects that matter to me and hopefully will help the program continue to positively affect the lives of undergraduate students. As well, I cannot begin to describe how awesome it has been to learn the stories of so many dynamic, driven, passionate, and kind fellow alumni. Every single person I have interviewed has given me a new perspective on how Williams-Mystic can change a student’s life and/or perspective, which has been crucial in explaining the program to prospective students.
In closing, I would like to thank all of the alumni, faculty, and staff who have supported me, listened to me, challenged me, and trusted me since January. I would also like to thank each and every one of my shipmates. I am so thankful for all the times we spent eating White Cheddar Cheetos and talking about topics that matter to each of us. I will always be thankful for the semester I took a break from studying the media to study the oceans and coasts of the United States.
Here is my advice to prospective students: jump in with both feet. Like everything else in life, you will get out of Williams-Mystic what you put into it. Hug your shipmates, go talk to your faculty members, and take time to pause and reflect on your walk (more like a timed sprint) through the program.
The Blog of Williams-Mystic 