SEA Semester in the News
“Semester at SEA Offers Chance for Trinity Student to Embrace New Interest”
by Lexie Axon, Trinity College News

Jessica Duong ’19 Researches Human Impact on the Environment Aboard Ship off New Zealand’s Coast

​Hartford, Connecticut, April 16, 2018—During a memorable study away experience, Trinity College student Jessica Duong ’19 spent much of her spring semester sailing the waters of New Zealand’s North and South Islands while completing oceanographic research. Throughout the three-month program, Duong analyzed water samples and ocean life in order to understand the influence humans have on the environment. Duong—from Lake Bluff, Illinois—was one of only 23 undergraduate students from across the country to participate in this semester’s Sea Education Association (SEA) program called “The Global Ocean.”

Sailors for the Sea’s Onboard Reporter Program, a special partnership between Sailors for the Sea and Sea Education Association, continues this spring with a new Onboard Reporter, Alex Merkle-Raymond. Alex is a student at Northeastern University and is currently aboard the SSV Corwith Cramer with the Marine Biodiversity and Conservation program (C-279).

Having a lookout on the bow is one responsibility of the watch on deck. While on watch, we need to be aware of any potential ships or submerged objects that might be obstacles in our path, so we have to keep a vigilant lookout at all times.

The students of C-279, Marine Biodiversity & Conservation, join the SSV Corwith Cramer in Nassau, Bahamas on April 18th.  They depart the ship in New York City on May 24th after a port stop in Bermuda.

Today was Field Day, a day where we clean the whole ship in two hours, which sounds like daunting task. But, it’s my favorite day of the week. In those two hours we get to listen to music from our phones, which results in singing and dancing all around! Other days the only way to listen to music is to make it - people sing and play guitars, ukuleles and banjos.

The past four days have been spent mostly hove-to, waiting for inclement weather to pass us to our east. Squalls have poured rain down on us, and rolling waves have turned our home into an obstacle course, but the weather we saw last night surpassed what any of my fellow students and I had anticipated.

SEA Semester in the News
The Problem with Plastics
By Robert Cassidy, The Middlebury Campus

On Thursday April 5, the Howard E. Woodin Environmental Studies Colloquium Series hosted a lecture by Kara Lavender Law, PhD, titled “Open Plastics Pollution from Sources to Solution.” Over the course of the lecture, Law presented findings from her decades-long career as a research professor of oceanography with SEA Semester and her expertise on ocean circulation and marine debris, addressing common misconceptions about ocean plastics pollution and providing her own insights into the causes of marine debris and the steps we can take to reduce it.

If you walk around below deck right now, everywhere you look you will see small groups of us bent over computers, either working busily on our first research assignment (revising the introduction and methods for our oceanography manuscript) or plotting sun lines for celestial navigation whenever we are lucky enough to see the sun.

Sea Education Association (SEA) will host a public lecture, “Hot enough for you? Recent warming of the New England continental shelf” on Sunday, April 29, at 2 p.m.  Dr. Ben Harden, Assistant Professor of Oceanography at Sea Education Association, and Dr. Glen Gawarkiewicz, Senior Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, will deliver the lecture. The lecture will be held at James L. Madden Center Lecture Hall, Sea Education Association, 171 Woods Hole Road, Falmouth.  It is free and open to the public.  Light refreshments will be served.

SEA Semester in the News
Brittany Hernandez ’19 Embarks on 3,000-Mile Pacific Ocean Voyage
by Tom Porter, Bowdoin News

Bowdoin junior Brittany Hernandez will be seeing little but the open ocean until the middle of May. The Earth and Oceanographic Science major recently set out on a six-week, 3,000-nautical-mile voyage, under sail, from New Zealand aboard the SSV Robert Seamans, a 134-foot research vessel operated by the Sea Education Association.