(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.

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.

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.

SEA in the News
Year’s scariest statistic: 90.5% of plastic not recycled
CBS News

Britain’s Royal Statistical Society has selected an eye-opening statistic on the proportion of plastic that is never recycled as its “statistic of the year.” The stat - 90.5 percent - comes from a global analysis of plastics co-authored last year by Dr. Roland Geyer, University of California, Santa Barbara, Dr. Jenna Jambeck, University of Georgia, and our own Dr. Kara Lavender Law, Research Professor of Oceanography at Sea Education Association.

SEA Semester in the News
Taking the classroom to the sea
Sasha Nyary
Mount Holyoke News

The experiences of two SEA Semester students from Mount Holyoke, Sal Cosmedy and Mia Sigler, currently sailing aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans with class S-283, The Global Ocean, New Zealand, are described in an article on the college website.

Jonathan Harris, C-112, is the winner of the 2019 Armin E. Elsaesser III Fellowship. Jonathan, a geologist and former SEA crewmember, is an education and outreach coordinator at Mississippi State University. Harris was selected from a field of 13 applicants.

SEA Semester in the News
URI student joins SEA Semester to study coral reef ecology on tall ship ocean research voyage
URI Today

Woods Hole, Mass. - Dec. 4, 2018 - The Sea Education Association has announced that University of Rhode Island senior marine biology major Sharil Deleon is on an ocean research voyage this fall to study human impact on Caribbean coral reef ecosystems. Through SEA Semester: Caribbean Reef Expedition, which is offered by Sea Education Association, the Central Falls native, together with other students with a variety of academic interests, is conducting guided field research at sea sailing through the Lesser Antilles to St. Croix, US Virgin Islands.

Q: Kelsey, Congratulations!  Can you tell us more about what this means?  When did you apply, and how did you find out you had won?

A: Thanks!  It was a big surprise for me since it’s so competitive.  The Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) means that I have my own funding for graduate school so I can focus on my research.