SEA Semester in the NEWS
Exploring ‘Mars on Earth’ and Spending the Semester at Sea
By Nicole Militello
Denver University News, Feb. 25, 2020

Olivia DeWitt remembers anxiously waiting in the University of Denver’s Magness Arena to find out where she would study abroad. After months of dreaming, interviewing and boosting her GPA, it all came down to a little luggage tag in her hand, her destination hidden inside.

There was a fair amount of excitement in the air this morning as everyone got up to the deck to check whether we are still anchored or already on our way. Today we are setting the sails to depart Grenada and head north towards St. Vincent and the Grenadines, to our next port stop – Bequia.

Every place, whether a city in New Zealand or the average grocery store, has its own unique culture, notable features, and general vibe. One of the many aspects that made me so drawn to SEA Semester was that it allowed us to visit and experience many different cities and regions of one country.

Howdy folks!

For those who don’t me, my name is Henry and I have never sailed before. Any previous experience I’ve had with sailboats or ships in general was very much limited to my neighbor’s pool, trying to sink their toy boats.

Hello! My name is MJ Fernandez and I am the teaching fellow for C-290 and today I have been tasked with what I would consider trying to summarize a lifetime. The students often mention this, but on program especially when we are out sailing time becomes very abstract.

I’m not going to lie, I was supposed to write this blog post yesterday, even the one for today has been written already. I am really out of touch with deadlines and real world timing, which I think is a good thing? Yesterday was Starboard watch group’s first day off since we started our Journey on the Corwith Cramer on Feb 10th.

Greetings from the Bay of Islands! My name is Tom Rubino, and I am a junior at Carleton College. We have been at anchor in Kororāreka Russell Harbor since Friday at our first port stop. Consequently, this also marks the first time in 72 hours we have walked on a surface that doesn’t sway. More than once, I have had to remind myself not to anticipate and brace myself for a swell!

It is so hard to contextualize and transcribe this experience. How do I describe the ephemera of events transpired? The excitement of witnessing a whale breeching at sunset? The feeling of leaning over the bow to watch dolphins at 1:00 AM? These are the thoughts racing my mind as I type this entry while we begin to pull into our anchorage in the small town of Kororareka Russell, our first stop since our departure from Auckland roughly four days ago.

For their Conservation and Management elective course, S-290 students have continued a long range study in which they are tracking usage of the ports we visit regularly, a project Professor Erin Bryant has termed the Human Uses of Ocean Space Census. We photograph the location each time we visit and quantitatively record what we observe.

WOODS HOLE, MASS. — 25 undergraduates from a variety of U.S. colleges and universities recently arrived aboard the research vessel SSV Robert C. Seamans to continue their Winter/Spring 2020 SEA Semester program sailing through the waters of New Zealand. Their goal is to study one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century: human impacts on the environment.