The last two weeks have been filled with a whirlwind of emotion. From leaving our cottages in the quiet town of Woods Hole, with the weird feeling of separation from some of my now closest friends, to getting on a Hawaiian Airlines direct flight from Boston to Honolulu, spending 21 hours in Hawaii, and then magically ending up the next day in Auckland, New Zealand.

Overnight we started our first watches. A watch had evening watch, followed by hour-long dock watches divided up amongst us. These watches were used to continue our training on boat checks. Boat checks are extremely important because they allow us to catch any problems that should arise before they are a threat. Boats checks involve going throughout the Robert C. Seamans, ensuring that everything is in order.

We’ve spent a couple nights on the ship and it still feels surreal to be on the other side of the world with the same people who were in Woods Hole with me. The ship may not look very big, but the amount of information that we have been learning about operations, sailing, and safety would make you think otherwise.

Getting to Auckland from Boston is not an easy task. My route was an 11-hour flight from Boston to Honolulu and then 9 hours from Honolulu to Auckland. Auckland, unlike Boston, is in the middle of summer so escaping a New England winter is much welcomed.

Students of S-290, The Global Ocean: New Zealand, board the SSV Robert C. Seamans in Auckland, New Zealand on Feb. 14th. The voyage ends on March 23rd in Christchurch, New Zealand, after post stops in Russell, Wellington, and Dunedin.

Our time in Wood’s Hole has come to an end, and we must say goodbye to the SEA campus. Over the course of the next week, we all will make our way to the other side of the planet to join the Robert C. Seamans in Auckland, NZ.

Things are wrapping up for the shore component of SEA semester, and there’s a lot of preparation we’ve been doing before we head out to sea. There have been countless conversations within the houses about watch groups and research topics and seasickness and the like.

“But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.” - Rachel Carson

As I’m writing this, we are halfway through our fourth theme week, on climate change, having just discussed ocean pollution last week. With every class we face a different, grim reality. In conservation and management, we learned that regulations are glacially slow to be approved compared to the pace and scale of pollution in the world.

Where to begin a description of our house on campus in Woods Hole? I could begin with our stadium seating couches and continue all the way to nerf wars, and, then, more importantly, how did SEA get such a diverse group that still blends so well? I am a shipmate of House B where I live with 8 of my now closest friends.