Programs Blog

Thursday, 27 March 2025

Noon Position: At the pier in the port town of Lyttelton

Log (nm): 2401nm

Weather / Wind / Sail Plan: A beautiful day in Lyttelton with light winds and minimal clouds. Sails are struck and furled.

Description of location: At the fifth largest port in ANZ, just south of Christchurch

Time is funny when you are at sea. The days feel long yet the weeks fly by. Everyone is surprised we have reached the final few days of program. How did time pass by so quickly?

Twelve weeks ago, we started an academic journey to study climate change and coastal resilience using Aotearoa New Zealand as a case study. We met on campus in Woods Hole, not knowing the adventures that lay ahead or the strong community that would quickly form. As faculty, we often refer to this shore component in Woods Hole as ‘preparing for the sea component.’ We help students build a foundation of knowledge about the program themes, facilitate building community, develop research proposals, and equip them with skills that will come in handy while sailing for science. In addition, students learned about local culture, including Māori language, so they would be prepared to interact with people in Aotearoa during the field component which included several port stops.

Halfway through the program, we journeyed to Aotearoa New Zealand to board SSV Robert C Seamans to study how communities are preparing for climate change by building resilience through oceanography research and port stop exploration. Our cruise track included stops in Auckland where we visited the Auckland Museum and took a tour of their collections, explored the Maritime Museum and talked with their curators, heard about manta ray conservation led by Conservation International, DOC, and Manta Watch New Zealand, and chatted with Dr. Andrew Jeffs about his career pathway and our scientific research. Thank you to our incredible hosts for sharing your time and expertise; we are looking forward to continuing to work together to promote conservation and maritime education.

The next phase of our program was our longest sailing leg from Auckland to Wellington. These blogs paint an excellent picture of what life at sea was like during this sailing leg. We collected most of our scientific data for student projects on this passage, and we expanded our understanding of how we can use the ship to study coastal oceans. We did small boat sampling from our Zodiak to sample seawater closer to shore and at river mouths to examine sound and nutrient pollution. We set up a grid of sampling points within bays for ocean acidification monitoring which required excellent communication between deck and the lab to navigate to the tightly-bunched sampling points where we used our flow-through system to collect samples directly over each station. While in ports, we deployed a hydrophone for continuous recordings of sound, day and night. It was very cool to see just how much science we can do from this incredible sailing platform!

In Wellington, we had the unique opportunity to tour the scientific collections of the Te Papa Museum, building on connections we made with scientists last year. We also received an incredible tour of the Te Papa Museum itself from Dr. Conal McCarthy which provided more detailed information about the architecture of the building as well as the exhibits on display. We also learned the significance of Te Papa Museum’s mission, which is to collect and share culture and knowledge rather being a curator of objects. Our final day in Wellington, thanks to SEA alum Ashley Davis, we were fortunate enough to spend the afternoon at NIWA hearing from a panel of diverse scientists doing various climate change related research (and art!). To our hosts that gave us such a great inside look at conservation, climate change, and resilience in Wellington – thank you! This port stop would not have been as meaningful without your contributions.

Our next port stop in Lyttelton was just a few days later. This port town provided an idyllic setting for a study hall day for students to work on collating and analyzing their oceanography data from our cruise and past SEA cruises in Aotearoa. Thanks to the coffee shops and library for being excellent places to study. On the beautiful morning of our second full day in port, students and professional crew alike enjoyed the culturally immersive traditional Māori waka tour on the Avon River in Christchurch, adding paddling to our water navigation skills.  Our final excursion in port involved a day-long trip to Hinewai Nature Reserve coordinated by AUIP and facilitated by Angus Gourlay. This provided us an opportunity to see more of this incredible country that we haven’t had the opportunity to explore yet. At the nature reserve welcome center, we learned about the history of Hinewai and Banks Peninsula from our host, Hugh Wilson, and his small staff. Hugh then led us on a guided hike through a portion of the reserve. Our hike included stops to learn about the local ecosystems which included new and old growth forests. After the hike, we stopped in Akaroa to explore this seaside town. Finally, we were on our way back to the ship. Thank you to our hosts, including AUIP’s Angus Gournay, for providing these incredible opportunities to learn more about your culture and land.

After this port stop, we set sail for a few days with an overnight anchorage in Kaikoura. This last sailing leg has allowed us to provide students with the opportunity to take on leadership roles on the ship, which we refer to as ‘Junior Watch Officer’ and ‘Junior Lab Officer.’ Essentially, students lead their watches under the watchful eye of the pro crew. They have done an incredible job with these leadership challenges and supporting each other through the process. Our anchorage in Kaikoura gave students a more stable platform to complete their scientific research in calm waters. They devoted many, many hours to visualizing their data using a variety of programs (Excel, R, ODV), understanding statistics, and thinking about what their results mean (aka what story is the data telling?). Throughout our trip, we did 110 oceanographic deployments at 61 geographic stations along our cruise track. We also did 67 coastal deployments (i.e., sampling seawater for chemistry and sound) located in five geographic locations. So, there was a lot of data to sort through!

During our second day at anchorage, we held our first (and only) S320 Student Research Symposium! My favorite day of program! We had seven amazing poster presentations expanding our knowledge of climate change and human impacts on Aotearoa’s coastal waters. They found, while current carbonate chemistry conditions allow shellfish to thrive, monitoring should focus on coastal bays which have lower saturation states and pH compared to offshore. Ocean soundscapes were consistent in Wellington Harbor throughout a 24-hour period, despite more ship traffic during the day. We saw no evidence of nitrate pollution from riverine runoff from urban or agricultural regions. Zooplankton communities are very patchy throughout the east coast of Aotearoa, but this isn’t due to latitude or year sampled. Aotearoa hosts a variety of ichthyoplankton (larval fish) and their abundance may be linked to primary productivity. Primary production, in turn, does not correlate to seawater pH but shows a strong correlation to temperature, even in past SEA cruises.

As we head into our final port stop of the program, I can’t help but feel incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to not only have these experiences in Aotearoa and aboard Seamans, but also to share them with such an incredible community. I’m so proud of the knowledge we accumulated throughout this trip and the incredible work ethic shown by the students. I’m grateful for the amazing professional crew on board that fostered learning not just sailing and science but also leadership, confidence, and teamwork. And I’m humbled to contribute even the slightest bit to the incredible magic that happens at SEA when you bring together a group of strangers with a shared passion for the ocean for an immersive field experience.

Heather Page

Chief Scientist, SEA