Last night marked our entrance into the French Polynesian EEZ, meaning a point of land is just a short 200 nautical miles away. This is the closest we have been to land since leaving the Chatham Islands three weeks ago. Almost as if in celebration, the wind and the sea cooperated for a brief few hours last night and we were lucky enough to have what many of the staff called “the best sail the Seamans has to offer.”

Hello, blog readers. Tonight is the night of what feels like our biggest deadline to date for our research projects. By 2300 tonight, we are to submit a complete set of all the figures, tables, and maps that we intend to use in the results section of our papers. While the datasets for our projects are not yet complete, the figures that we submit for this assignment will give us a pretty solid idea of what our final results section will look like.

SEA Semester in the News
“Semester at SEA Offers Chance for Trinity Student to Embrace New Interest”
by Lexie Axon, Trinity College News

Jessica Duong ’19 Researches Human Impact on the Environment Aboard Ship off New Zealand’s Coast

​Hartford, Connecticut, April 16, 2018—During a memorable study away experience, Trinity College student Jessica Duong ’19 spent much of her spring semester sailing the waters of New Zealand’s North and South Islands while completing oceanographic research. Throughout the three-month program, Duong analyzed water samples and ocean life in order to understand the influence humans have on the environment. Duong—from Lake Bluff, Illinois—was one of only 23 undergraduate students from across the country to participate in this semester’s Sea Education Association (SEA) program called “The Global Ocean.”

Read the full article.

SEA Semester in the News
An Ocean of Learning
UNH Today
By Jody Record ‘95

Right now, Ella Cedarholm ‘19 is somewhere off the coast of Lyttelton, New Zealand, on her way to Tahiti. Sounds exotic, right? Not in this case; this is a sailing voyage that isn’t about the destination, it’s about the journey and the research that takes place along the way.

Cedarholm is aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans, a tall ship operated by the Sea Education Association (SEA), an undergraduate ocean education program based out of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. During the 40-day voyage that will cover 3,500 nautical miles, Cedarholm will share rotating watch shifts with her classmates, doing such things as being a lookout, steering, cleaning, deploying scientific instruments, even cooking. Of the 24-hour shifts, she is most looking forward to the hours between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m.

SEA Semester in the News
MetBob Weathergram
A blog post by noted New Zealand weather guru, Bob McDavitt

My good wishes to the University students who are crewing on Training Tall Ship SSV ROBERT C SEAMANS. The vessel visited Auckland last week and sailed to Opua late in the week. Captain, and Professor in Nautical Science, Elliot Rappaport invited me on deck. I especially like that the students manage a full-time marine lab and also are one of the VOS (Voluntary Observing Ships) that send in regular weather reports using properly calibrated instruments. These observations, around the planet, are part of what helps the global weather models in touch with the real world.

Read the full blog post

The students, faculty, and crew of S-277, The Global Ocean New Zealand, have all arrived aboard SSV Robert C. Seamans, docked in Auckland. Following two full days of intensive ship training, coupled with visits to a local Maori community and the Auckland War Memorial Museum, we will set sail for the Bay of Islands.

Greetings, folks,
     
Your friendly neighborhood salt-dog here again, reporting on one of the more beautiful and decidedly terrestrial days the Seamans crew has seen yet. We had a free day in odd, quaint Napier, a town about half-committed to its art deco history so it looks something like a forgotten Disneyland for adults.

Hello from Napier!

This morning was a busy morning as we arrived in Napier. It was the end of our mission and A watch was on duty when we struck all of the sails and motored in to dock at the Port of Napier. The Port of Napier turns out to be a largely commercial port and we are currently surrounded by large mounds of timber, piles of shipping containers, and cargo ships.

This morning I got my wake up with the news that we were starting our Anchor Watch (1 hour rotations instead of a full 6 hours), and that the anchor was just now getting dropped. I stepped out onto the deck greeted by a clear sky full of stars, dark masses of land bordering our ship, and the sound of 3 shots (each shot is 90 feet) of chain being let out as our ship tethered to the sea floor. It is a bitter sweet mix of feelings seeing land again.

Today is our last day at anchor before we set out for a three week sail to the Kermedec Islands and back! Both students and crew are taking advantage of land while we still can, heading ashore in groups to stretch our legs, buy back-up stocks of toothpaste, and explore the quaint town of Russell. Meanwhile, Conservation and Management students are looking for local Kiwis to interview. Our class has focused on studying the use of single-use plastics in the States, particularly Falmouth, Mass.