Last Friday brought a close to our second full week of classes at the Woods Hole Campus. The theme for last week—marine populations—led us to a wide range of topics and discussions. Whether it was leafing through the pages of whaling logbooks filled with intricate illustrations of whales, flying fish, and porpoises at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, or discussing the complexities of the policy that regulates fishery management, our studies gave us a deeper understanding of the integral role marine populations play in our lives.

Former SEA Scientist and Alumna Skye Moret Wins Nat Geo Award

Skye Moret, C-190, has a passion for using data visualization and engagement to bridge the gap between design and science. Recently, that passion took her to a remote beach in Bali where she created ‘Perpetual Plastic,’ a 46-foot diameter data art installation that’s also a flow chart illustrating the transformation and fate of plastic waste.

Time certainly does fly when you’re having fun, and SEA Semester’s on-shore component has proven this to me and my fellow class and shipmates. With a mere 17 days left in Woods Hole, Class S-290 has begun to curate plans for our trip around New Zealand. During our pizza lunch with the President of SEA, Peg Brandon, we discussed our hopes for the upcoming voyage. I’ve compiled a list of things each member of our class wants to accomplish, witness, or avoid. You could call this Class S-290’s bucket list.

We are now beginning our third week of our land portion at SEA Semester in Woods Hole. Our days are packed with classes, guest speakers, research, and cooking for 8 others. We have begun to find the rhythm of what it means to be a student at SEA and that means diving into our studies. Last week our classes’ main focus was Marine Populations.

Q&A with Liz Maloney, W-162, Administrative Assistant for the Dean and Faculty. Liz helps manage the remote shore components that play an important role in many SEA Semester programs.  She recently returned from two weeks on the South Island of New Zealand, where she worked with students of class S-289 as they participated in a shore component prior to their voyage.

For a few weeks this past fall it wasn’t unusual to see students in the hallway attending to an “injured” classmate, or practicing the proper use of an inflatable life raft.  It’s all part of SEA’s mission to provide professional development and training for SEA crew and others. Such training is required for Coast Guard licensing of able seamen, mates and medical officers.

One of the first things I learned in acting school was the concept of a liminal space, or a place of being in-between.  As an actor, my entire job consists of navigating various liminal spaces. See, that’s all a play really is. It’s a state of being in-between.  What we are “in-between” is a set of two different stasis—periods of equilibrium.

Today concludes our first full week of classes onshore. Many of us feel that we have simultaneously been here forever yet feel like we got here just yesterday. This is probably due to the mass amount of information we have already learned and the still-new connections we are making with our future shipmates.

SEA Semester scientist Emily Burke has been selected as the recipient of the 2020 Armin E. Elsaesser III Fellowship Award.  Emily will use her award to explore the rugged coastline of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, described by the National Park Service as a place “where the ice age lingers.” Her proposal is titled “Canvas and Ice: A Sailing Study of Alaska’s Changing Fjords.”

SEA Semester in the NEWS
“Lancaster native studies human impacts on coral reefs”
by Holly N. Lipka, Editor
Lancaster Bee

Coral reefs have existed on earth for millions of years, but many of them may not survive much longer.
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, roughly one-quarter of coral reefs worldwide are already considered damaged beyond repair, with another two-thirds under serious threat.