Programs Blog

This group of students, currently studying for six weeks on campus here in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is learning and preparing for our field expedition to the eastern Caribbean, where we will travel by plane to four different islands to spend over a week in each place to survey reefs, learn from local experts, work collaboratively with community conservation leaders, and understand the complex historic and modern-day relationships between island communities and their marine environments in this part of the world. 

We will be visiting coral reefs and local communities in St. Croix, Anguilla, Dominica, and Barbados. “Coral Reef Conservation: Caribbean” focuses on learning about tropical coral reefs around the world, especially under the harsh light of the climate crisis. We examine restoration programs and their varied potential and how the loss of these reefs has been impacting human communities, both of which require a historical perspective. We have several partners along the way that represent a range of stakeholders—academics, conservationists, tourist agencies, and cultural organizations. 

My name is Richard King. I teach “Environmental Communication,” one of the program’s four courses. This blog is part of our classwork. I’m writing this first brief entry just to kick things off, but the majority of the entries, on shore and filed from the Caribbean, will be written by the students and other faculty. The other classes include “Marine Environmental History,” taught by Dr. Craig Marin; and two marine science classes taught by Dr. Heather Page: “The Ocean and Global Change,” which provides the oceanographic and ecological context for our studies out in the field and “Directed or Practical Oceanographic Research” in which students design and conduct original studies during our work snorkeling and surveying these different reef sites. Our student group is also supported in Woods Hole and in the field by Program Assistant Sydney Lynch. 

The student researchers for this field expedition include seven students. They are in alphabetical order: 

Sara Abraha, Carleton College 

Katie Hallee, Wheaton College (MA) 

Jeremy Kaufman, Pitzer College 

Keegan Kukucka, Syracuse University 

Claire Lee, Macalaster College 

Leandro Nuckols, Grinnell College 

Cayla Ossen-Gutnik, Mount Holyoke College 

Our first week of classes and first weekend have been a whirlwind of orientation, tours of our small campus, and of Woods Hole proper, including a visit, led by Professor Marin, 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. With Professor Page we toured and met coral scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic. One sunny afternoon we went out to journal, sketching and writing beside Buzzard’s Bay while we considered the community choices made to complete a major construction project to buttress a public access trail against erosion and storm damage. On another day we visited with the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Reserve, meeting with a research manager on the reserve (an SEA alumnus!) and with a Mashpee Wampanoag culture bearer who kindly spent time with us teaching about Indigenous relationships, historic and current, with this coastline. 

This “Coral Reef Conservation Caribbean” program is starting off exceptionally well and the student group is inspiring in their dedication and enthusiasm for this globally crucial topic. I hope you’ll keep checking in to read this blog to keep track of their adventure and how all of us are processing what we’re seeing and learning. With this blog we will compile a unique record of the 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 blog: because of the nature of busy schedules out in the Caribbean 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 status of the students in the Caribbean or our daily communications with the faculty for the purpose of logistics and student health. In other words, if you don’t see blog entries posted for a while, it’s no reflection on everybody’s safety. There are also two other SEA programs happening this fall, who will also be blogging. They are in Woods Hole right now, too, and then will be going aboard our SEA ships for their research: “Oceans and Climate” will be aboard the Robert C. Seamans in the Pacific and a high school group from Proctor Academy will be sailing aboard the Corwith Cramer in the Gulf of Maine and along the East Coast.   

Thank you so much for reading! 

Rich