(The following blog post first appeared in October, 2018, and is being reposted due to public interest. See also two student blog posts from Oct. 8 and Oct. 9 about the SSV Robert C. Seaman’s visit to this new island.)

Greetings from the Robert C. Seamans in the middle of the South Pacific.

Over a number of days in the past week the students, faculty, and staff of SPICE 2018, Class S-282, have been extremely privileged to spend time on Hunga Tonga Hunga-Ha’apai (HTHH). The students have done an excellent job of summing up our time there so far, but what we have been doing here is as close to the original explorers of old as you get in the modern day, so here is everything we’ve done all in one place.

After sailing through the day on Friday, the SSV Corwith Cramer anchored in Francis Bay off the island of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, during the late afternoon. During nautical science class, students then got their chance to demonstrate how well they knew the ship’s lines via a relay race called the “Line Chase.”

Thursday began with students conducting a Science Super Station, including deploying a carousel in order to collect samples from throughout the water column, with the deepest from nearly a mile below the surface. As detailed in an afternoon class presentation by Angus from Middlebury, Dayana from Williams, and Charlotte from Wellesley, this information can be critical in understanding oceanographic processes, such as the way temperature and salinity change as the ocean becomes deeper and deeper, and in turn helps us trace the origin of such water.

SEA Semester in the News
NASA Blogs
NASA Earth Expeditions
Land Ho! Visiting a Young Island
By Ellen Gray

Excitement was in the air when research scientist Dan Slayback of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, approached a small trio of islands in the South Pacific island nation of Tonga. It was October 8th, and Dan had joined the scientists and students with the Sea Education Association’s SEA Semester South Pacific cruise to visit a three-year-old island he’d only seen from space.

Scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will join this spring’s SEA Semester: Marine Biodiversity and Conservation (MBC) program on a special collaboration to explore the ocean’s mesopelagic or twilight zone, further augmenting one of SEA’s most advanced scientific undergraduate programs.

Greetings from SSV Corwith Cramer!

On Sunday, January 27, the Williams-Mystic S19 class 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.

SEA in the News
Air Force Veteran Inspired by Moby-Dick
The Maritime Executive

“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas…” ? Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

In 2014, Ger Tysk of Houston, Texas, was recently out of the U.S. Air Force and ready to take on a new career. An avid reader, she picked up a copy of Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by the American writer Herman Melville. This story of a notoriously elusive white whale that sinks the whaling ship, Pequod, pivoted Tysk’s imagination towards a career at sea. Tysk was glued to the pages, yearning to see whales and wildlife while sailing the open ocean.

SEA Semester in the News
ESF Student Participates in SEA Semester Program
Aquatic and fisheries science major sets sail in Lesser Antilles
ESF For Earth (SUNY ESF College of Environment Science & Forestry website)

This past fall, Maria Alfaro, a senior at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF), sailed on an ocean research vessel to study human impact on Caribbean coral reef ecosystems.

Read the full story.

Coming in, secure in the harbor as we are now, generates a comfortable feeling for mariners. We are no longer subjected to the whims of the ocean, the motion of the vessel and other associated voyaging challenges.

I began to write this multiple ways. This beginning paragraph I write the dawn of the 22nd, having watched the orange moon set and the sun slowly become lighter, because I needed to take pause last night. I have so many tangents running in my mind, so many things I want to say about today, yesterday, and every day since I showed up late one night in Woods Hole that I can’t keep them straight and my tired eyes are making matters more blurry.