One of my favorite hobbies that I’ve picked up from my time at Olin is spinning poi, which I was pleasantly surprised to find had Māori roots. Poi are a set of two weighted balls at the end of strings with handles on the other end, and at Olin, poi are one of several different props people could choose to learn how to spin.

Tucked away in the Bay of Islands, Russell and its port have a layered history, from Māori settlement to whaling and debauchery to more recent recreation and big game fishing. The town’s first Māori-given name, Kororareka, translates to “sweet penguin,” after a tale about the sweet meat of the local blue penguin.

Every place, whether a city in New Zealand or the average grocery store, has its own unique culture, notable features, and general vibe. One of the many aspects that made me so drawn to SEA Semester was that it allowed us to visit and experience many different cities and regions of one country.

Greetings from the Bay of Islands! My name is Tom Rubino, and I am a junior at Carleton College. We have been at anchor in Kororāreka Russell Harbor since Friday at our first port stop. Consequently, this also marks the first time in 72 hours we have walked on a surface that doesn’t sway. More than once, I have had to remind myself not to anticipate and brace myself for a swell!

It is so hard to contextualize and transcribe this experience. How do I describe the ephemera of events transpired? The excitement of witnessing a whale breeching at sunset? The feeling of leaning over the bow to watch dolphins at 1:00 AM? These are the thoughts racing my mind as I type this entry while we begin to pull into our anchorage in the small town of Kororareka Russell, our first stop since our departure from Auckland roughly four days ago.

For their Conservation and Management elective course, S-290 students have continued a long range study in which they are tracking usage of the ports we visit regularly, a project Professor Erin Bryant has termed the Human Uses of Ocean Space Census. We photograph the location each time we visit and quantitatively record what we observe.

WOODS HOLE, MASS. — 25 undergraduates from a variety of U.S. colleges and universities recently arrived aboard the research vessel SSV Robert C. Seamans to continue their Winter/Spring 2020 SEA Semester program sailing through the waters of New Zealand. Their goal is to study one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century: human impacts on the environment.

When I was younger my dad, an alumnus of SEA, would tell my siblings and I one of our favorite bedtime stories. A story about the time when he was at watch on the quarter deck of SEA’s Westward somewhere in the Caribbean when something magical happened. In the dead of night, he and the other crew saw two lights approaching the side of the Westward. The lights moved with immense speed and were making a beeline for the vessel. My dad describes the

Today, as I write this, it’s our third day underway aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans and things are going very well. Sometime during the night, we were even able to turn off our engines and now we are moving only by the power of the wind. Despite only having been on the move for a few short (but wonderfully long-feeling) days, we have already seen creatures I only ever hoped to see on this trip. Among these animals are sharks, penguins, and dolphins.

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.