Programs Blog

Thursday September 26, 2024

Location: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 

Weather: light cool (and welcome) rain

We had an exciting field trip today. We went to the core laboratory at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Usually in the afternoon we are sitting from 1330 to an excruciating 1600 in a classroom listening to a lecture by our professor Jan Witting. I don’t mean to imply that Jan is a bad lecturer, far from it in fact; just the fact of the matter is that two and a half hours of class is by all accounts (including Jan’s) a long time. But this afternoon was different. Today while all the kids in the coral studies program sat in class, we packed into a strikingly new Ford E-series van and rumbled off to an adventure.

Our first introduction to WHOI was in a parking lot that seemed to be alone in the woods and had a mix of cars, trucks, and a large oceanographic equipment. We got a brief lecture on the importance and prestige of WHOI, which strongly contrasted the view of us (again) being in the literal woods, but the big words held up, as we marched to the location where we were to meet our guide, Mitchell. We walked over a nice wooden bridge that had no signs of rot, walked through a perfectly manicured garden of beautiful and healthy plants, which originated both from Cape Cod and from foreign lands such as Japan, and passed some large and clean buildings. This was clearly an institute where money was not in short supply. We entered a building through a pair of glass doors that lead right to the break room. This was an all too casual appearance and it really didn’t hit how casual it really was, because I just simply didn’t know how important this place was yet.

And by the way, it is the largest archive of ocean sediment samples in the whole US. There are huge halls full of core samples, tubes of MUCK and SAND piled high to the ceilings. There are wooden crates of odd rocks and coral that date back decades. This grand hall also notably doesn’t smell good. There was a pungent odor that hit me the second I entered it. I was told the odor was just on account of old samples and old shelves. Personally, I’m attributing it to rotting ocean life. 

After we saw the halls of the samples we were shown a CT scanner that could scan the samples, we also got to see some opened up samples that just looked like tubes of muck.

As someone who’s coming from physics and math, this whole world of oceanography is new to me. The casual comment from Jan about the time he did core samples of coral in Australia, not only got the reaction of “WOW” but also the reaction of “What? People do that? Why?”  I feel like I’m truly being submerged in a whole new world over here. On our last field trip to Mystic Seaport, I got a little too excited about models and real ships, and I thought damn, maybe I should seek a job that has something to do with ships. 

Thank you so much to my mom for giving me the opportunity to do this amazing program; I’ve learned many new things about stuff I’m super interested in everyday of this program! And a huge thanks to the Baumann family, especially Hannah who told me about this program and encouraged me to come here!

-Arthur Winslow, St. Olaf College