Programs Blog

Date: March 2, 2025 

Time: 2200 

Location: Our campus, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA 

Weather: A very chilly 30˚ F, with winds gusting over 20kts 

Welcome to the blog of the Sea Education Assocation program, “Marine Biodiversity and Conservation!” This crew of undergraduates will study for over five weeks on campus here in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, learning and preparing for our voyage aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans, one of two of SEA’s oceanographic sailing ships. Our group is also known as “S-321,” which is the research cruise number for this voyage. The “S” is for Seamans. (SEA’s first voyage, W-1 aboard the ship Westward, was in 1971.)  

In April we will be sailing east and downwind from Aotearoa New Zealand for a long ocean passage at the edge of the Southern Ocean before we head north to Tahiti. We will then spend two weeks ashore at the University of California Gump marine station in Moorea. During this second shore component, we will process our data and work on our final projects. This program focuses on open ocean marine ecology and speciation using the most modern molecular tools and methods to promote our ability to make good, informed conservation management decisions, both coastally and on the high seas.  

My name is Richard King. I teach “Environmental Communication,” one of the five courses within this program. This blog is part of our coursework. I’m writing this first entry just to kick things off, but nearly all of the entries to come, on shore and at sea will be written by the students. The other courses are “Nautical Science,” taught by Captain Rick Miller; “Ocean Science and Public Policy ,” taught by Erin Bryant, JD; and two oceanography classes taught by chief scientist and program organizer Dr. Sarah Kingston, who is assisted by Dr. Kayla Gardner. These courses are “Advanced Topics in Biographical Oceanography,” which lays the academic groundwork for our research out at sea and “Directed Oceanographic Research” in which students design then conduct original studies during our voyage. Our student group is also fantastically supported in Woods Hole and aboard the ship by Program Assistant Grace Stein. The student crew of the voyage includes seventeen students from across North America. They are in alphabetical order:  

Georgia Akins, Macalaster College 

Aimee Bousquet, U. New Hampshire 

Gabi Carttar, Barnard College 

Patricia Diaz-Bian, Cornell University 

Britney Durward, Brock University 

Zachary Flagler, U. of Washington 

Olivia Hines, U. San Diego 

Ana Hoffman Sole, Cornell University  

Elle Lansing, Lafayette College 

Jaimie Lin, Washington U. in St. Louis 

Resh Mukherjee, Claremont McKenna College 

Robin Muse, Boston University 

Andrew Patterson, Hamilton College 

Henry Penfold, Bowdoin College 

Ella Skonieczny, Eckerd College 

Charlotte Subak, Mount Holyoke College 

Brigitte Walla, Smith College 

Our first couple days of classes and first weekend have been busy with orientation, tours of our small campus and of Woods Hole proper, including a visit to the Rachel Carson statue and a tour of the library and special collections of the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.  Our academic courses have begun in earnest and students are choosing topics and beginning to make plans for research in all their classes. Woods Hole has been cold and is still poking its head out of winter, snow on the ground still in tiny patches, some small coves still with cakes of ice, but that hasn’t stopped us from hiking, going for jobs, and even a couple students have taken a couple polar bear swims! Our little campus is on a southern peninsula of Cape Cod. About one mile to the northwest is the sandy and rocky coast of Buzzard’s Bay and one mile to the southeast is the beach of Falmouth and Vineyard Sound.  

Every student group and each voyage is extraordinarily different. This group, “S321” seems, quite genuinely, just spectacular and so enthusiastic. They are as my teenaged daughter says, fully “locked in!”

I hope you’ll keep checking in to read this blog to keep track of the adventure and how all of us are processing and interpreting what we’re seeing and learning. With this blog we will compile a unique record of our semester and hopefully share a bit of what we’re learning along the way. Many of the following blog entries will also be revised for an issue of SEA Writer, which we will publish soon after the semester. 

One last note about the “Marine Biodiversity and Conservation” S-321 blog: because of the nature of busy schedules at sea and office schedules here in Woods Hole, you might not see entries for a few days, and then you might see a couple entries posted all at once. The blog is no reflection on the safety of the ship or the status of our daily communications with the Robert C. Seamans for the purpose of logistics and student health. In other words, if you don’t see blog entries posted for a while, it doesn’t mean that things are not okay! Family and friends, please feel free to reach out to the office with any questions at all, anytime! 

Thank you so much for reading!