Programs Blog

Pre-College: Marine Biology

August 19, 2026

SEA Campus at Woods hole

Today at SEA Campus felt like a bridge between learning and doing. Our morning started
with two guest talks by Dane and Elle and the rest of the day we put that knowledge to work
preparing posters for tomorrow’s presentation.

Before today, we thought of “sustainable seafood” mostly as a label on a menu. The lecture
by Dane showed us that it is much more complicated. He broke it down into three questions:
where does your seafood come from, what even is it, and how was it caught? We also
learned that restaurants face almost no labeling rules, while grocery stores only have to list
country of origin — not always the correct species or fishing method.

We also heard from Elle, a guest speaker on watersheds and water quality on the Cape. She
explained how watersheds support freshwater, nutrient cycling, and habitat, and how
nitrogen, phosphorus, septic systems, fertilizer runoff, and rising temperatures can lead to
eutrophication and harmful algal blooms. She also shared local solutions like monitoring,
restoration, and innovations such as woodchip bioreactors — with groups like the Buzzards
Bay Coalition leading the way.

Yesterday’s trip to the Marine Biology Lab was extraordinary. We not only had the chance to
visit the laboratory, but we were also able to burn the samples in the furnace that gave us
real data to add to the poster today.

This afternoon, we reviewed our poster to make sure no information was missing. After that,
we practiced presenting and assigned each section to a group member. Overall, we felt quite
confident about our presentation tomorrow.

We are looking forward to presenting tomorrow and seeing how other groups interpreted
their data.

Dominic Zhu and John Zhang