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.

A heartfelt thank you to Cramer, her crew, and old man Neptune for a successful and safe voyage thus far. A sincere thank you to all hands, especially the students, for their tireless efforts in the water during the many snorkel surveys and their meticulous efforts afterwards ensuring the quality of our datasets! 

Dear C-283,
       
I think this is supposed to be for the people back home, but I am completely unrepentant in saying it’s for you. People back home are welcomed, encouraged even, to read it, because I know the people reading this for me miss me fiercely, and I miss you too, fiercely enough to know that my heart is not completely in it when I say I never want to go home. Though I’m still not sure I’m ready to go home yet.

I’ll start with an apology: I offer no photos to accompany this blog post. I took none at sunrise this morning, and frankly, if anyone else had, they could not do justice to what we saw. “The fingers of God Scraping the Sky.”

Forming a community at sea aboard a ship like the Corwith Cramer is a magical thing that seems to take on a life of its own. Strangers become friends and shipmates, and now having been a month at sea with each other, and with the end date of our trip drawing to a close, these bonds between us seem to morph ever faster into something deeper. There’s nowhere I see this more than in the galley, where as the steward, I make 3 meals and 3 snacks a day for all 36 people aboard this vessel.

I’m not sure I’m cut out for this, I think to myself as I am buffeted by wave after wave, gingerly skirting the reef to avoid being knocked into sharp corals and spiny urchins. I squint through the turbid water, trying to identify fish whose names dance at the edge of my memory. I frantically flip through ID cards, looking for the pale, yellow-striped fish meandering below me, mocking me with its unbothered manner. Distracted, I fail to notice the swell that crashes over my snorkel, leaving me sputtering at the surface.

Hi Momma (and everyone else who’s reading this),

I know I’ve been able to talk to you a few times since boarding the Cramer, but I want to make sure you’re still reading all the blog posts! I hope everything is going well at home, I can promise you they’re wonderful here in the Caribbean.

A Reynolds number (Re) can be used in aquatic science to quantify the viscosity an organism experiences. An organism with a lower Re experiences more viscosity than an organism with a higher Re. Part of the Re formula includes the size of the organism, smaller sizes contributing to smaller Re (more viscosity) and larger sizes contributing to larger Re (less viscosity).