July 2, 2020

This is SEA’s second statement on Black Lives Matter.  We listened to many alumni and staff who told us that our first statement failed to rise to the level of the crisis engulfing our nation. Thank you to those who reached out for helping us do better.

In response to travel restrictions and health guidelines related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sea Education Association (SEA) has revised fall programs, shifting all operations to coastal U.S. Atlantic waters aboard our flagship vessel, the SSV Corwith Cramer with no international travel or port stops required.

SEA Semester Assistant Scientist Emily Burke, the recipient of the 2020 Armin E. Elsaesser III Fellowship Award, has begun exploring the rugged coastline of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula for her Elsaesser project, “Canvas and Ice: A Sailing Study of Alaska’s Changing Fjords.” She has created a website and will soon begin posting updates.  We encourage you to follow her progress!

When they visited the island of Kanton in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) two summers ago, SEA Semester students of Class S-281 quickly became friends with the schoolchildren there, playing frisbee and soccer after dinner, dancing, and taking pictures.

As we are rapidly approaching San Diego, a lot of us are trying to figure out what this voyage means to us and what things will be like when we arrive. When you sail a lot, you are used to missing out. I’ve been at sea for elections, friend’s weddings, several births, a death in the family, the events in Charlottesville in 2017, the Pulse massacre in 2016, and now, in 2020, for both COVID and the George Floyd murder and subsequent protests.

Normally, at this time of the year, SEA’s campus would be welcoming the incoming class of college students enrolled in the Woods Hole Partnership Education Program, or PEP, for short. But this summer is different.  Instead of welcoming students in person, on Monday afternoon, they received a warm welcome via Zoom!

I bet you are thinking to yourself. “Self, after 55 days on board (most of them at sea) what could the crew possibly be talking about at this point?” (Copyright @ Chris Nolan)

As the Robert C. Seamans sails from Hawai’i to California, we’re telling the story of the Pacific through ArcGIS Storymaps. We’re reposting some of the entries here, in our SEA Currents blog, but we encourage you to follow regular updates by going directly to Pacific Crossing 2020 StoryMaps.

Today started for me by waking up around 0930, finding some leftover breakfast on the hutch, and then going back to bed to do some reading and some more snoozing. When I reappeared around 11:30 I saw that it was flat calm and we were going to have a swim call in 15 minutes. The water here is slightly colder and saltier than near Hawaii, about 24 degrees Celsius and salinity is around 34 parts per thousand. It made for a refreshing swim and some great floating.

As the Robert C. Seamans sails from Hawai’i to California, we’re telling the story of the Pacific through ArcGIS Storymaps. We’re reposting some of the entries here, in our SEA Currents blog, but we encourage you to follow regular updates by going directly to Pacific Crossing 2020 StoryMaps.

As Captain Rick Miller described two days ago, there is an atmospheric high pressure located over the Seamans. He also described a pattern of winds rotating clockwise around the center of this high, resulting in a pattern of northeast trade winds in the low latitudes (equator to about 20˚ N), and the common northerly winds on the west coast of the US. Since the Seamans is a sailing vessel, we pay close attention to winds, but winds do far more than move the ship – they move the whole ocean!

After the SEA Semester’s Colonization to Conservation in the Caribbean program (C-290) ended in St. Croix in March, a professional crew returned the SSV Corwith Cramer to Woods Hole, where it arrived April 18th.  Since then, the ship and a small crew have been alongside at Dyers Dock, making the ship ready for its next voyage, when the time is right.  Captain Kevin Murray is the master of the ship.  We asked him about daily life aboard the Cramer.