Sea Semester: Life At Sea
PHOTOS ANNABEL WEYHRICH
by Annabel Weyhrich
There is nothing more exciting to a marine biology student than an abroad program that studies the ocean by sailing the high seas. Sea Education Association (SEA) Semester is a study abroad program that begins in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and finishes with 6 weeks of sailing on a Tall Ship, a large, traditionallyrigged sailing vessel. Woods Hole is a globally recognized hub for the marine sciences, oceanography, and scientific exploration. The town is situated on a ferry’s ride away from Martha’s Vineyard. Just sitting in a coffee shop, you can overhear conversations ranging from new fisheries management strategies to cutting-edge geochemical tools. The portion of the program in Massachusetts is spent bonding with your soon-to-be shipmates and studying in preparation for time at sea. I studied on the Global Ocean program which traveled to the waters off the North Island of New Zealand. Classes included Directed Oceanographic Research, Sustainable Ocean: Conservation and Management; Maritime History and Culture, The Ocean and Global Change, and Leadership in a Dynamic Environment. Even though these classes continued aboard the ship, time spent at sea was largely focused around developing leadership skills as well as working on directed research projects. At each port, we would go on field trips to immerse ourselves in maritime history and New Zealand culture.
We met our ship, the Robert C. Seamans, and crew in Auckland, New Zealand, and spent the first couple days literally learning the ropes and getting a handle on life at sea. As a mate-in-training, one must understand and be able to issue commands for sail handling, effectively navigate, and be competent in all safety checks. The students are split into three groups for the duration of the trip and a group must be in charge of the ship at all times. That means at 3 am you could be standing lookout in the middle of 45 mph winds with ocean swells peaking at 20 feet. You don’t know whether to be in awe of nature, terrified to be swept away, or delirious from sleep deprivation. After a few weeks into the voyage, the lingo starts to make sense so when someone shouts to strike the jib, you know what sail to lower and where to lower it. A majority of the trip is spent working to collect and analyze data. Aboard the Robert C. Seamans is a hydrocast, a meternet, a neuston net, and other fun gadgets. Training is conducted to be able to safely and effectively use these instruments.
The hydrocast is used to collect water samples at various depths and measures conductivity, temperature, and pressure. The water collected is used to test the pH and Chlorophyll-a contents at those depths. It is terrifying to run the pH test at sea because the instrument used is expensive and there is only one. If a swell rocks the boat and you crack the glass, no one can test for pH for the rest of the trip. The phytoplankton net is lowered 100 meters into the water column to collect plankton which are filtered and preserved to later analyze. The neuston net skims the surface of the ocean and collects larger zooplankton. With specimens collected from both nets, species composition was analyzed; to do this we measured total biomass and conducted identification for 100 species out of a random sampling. One night, a crew pulled up a plankton net filled with 57 Large Salps. In other deployments, sea slugs, crab and lobster larvae, lantern fish and more were sorted through and often preserved. At night, these net deployments take place with only the moon and its reflection off the water as a light source. Once the
You don’t know whether to be in awe of nature, terrified to be swept away, or delirious from sleep deprivation. FIELDNOTES / SPRING 2020 17
