SEA

As Rick made perfectly clear in my last post, I am unable to embed this nice little video from Sea Education Association. So instead, go check it out on their own site and see what a cool program it is.

"...set an open course for the virgin sea"

2008 - 2009 ANNOUNCEMENT SEA is now accepting applications for the 2008-2009 academic year. Sea Education Association now offers three unique opportunities for undergraduates to spend a semester studying the oceans in the world-renown oceanographic community of Woods Hole, MA and aboard one of our modern sailing research vessels during an oceanic passage in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. SEA Semester: Ocean Exploration - This long-standing, innovative program offers students of all majors a multidisciplinary approach to studying the world's oceans from scientific, maritime cultural, and modern seafaring perspectives. Celestial navigation, meteorology, seamanship, oceanographic sampling techniques and research, and maritime history, literature and policy comprise the core curriculum. SEA Semester: Documenting Change in the Caribbean - Humanities, Environmental Studies, Geography and Social Sciences students are prepared for an extraordinary project-based academic experience. Few regions have seen such enormous changes in the last five centuries as the islands in the Caribbean Sea. Today, there is a dynamic mix of cultures and biota in the islands that bears little resemblance to the world encountered by Christopher Columbus. Students explore how we can document these changes using maps and charts, historical documents, commercial records, harbor pilots, species surveys, and the literature of Caribbean people from both the Colonial and post-Colonial periods. SEA Semester: Oceans & Climate - For advanced science students. This program focuses on the importance of the equatorial Pacific to the global carbon cycle, and culminates in a trans-equatorial research cruise from either Mexico to Tahiti or Tahiti to Hawaii. SEA faculty and visiting researchers from across the country engage students in oceanography, ocean policy and the operation a sailing research vessel. www.sea.edu

Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vexed and tired, Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;

Sea Education Association's SEA Semester is a program that I fully support and am happy to promote. Beyond a top-notch, hands-on education in marine science, I learned more about leadership, teamwork and self-confidence while working and living on one of their sailing vessels than with any other experience I've had. I suggest all undergraduates with even a remote interest in the ocean look into SEA and strongly encourage any that are able to participate in SEA Semester to sign on tout de suite. As it so happens, there is still room on board their Fall "Oceans & Climates" cruise. So all you undergraduates, go check it out. And all the rest of you, spread the word.

Sea Education Association is pleased to announce our

Fall 2008 SEA Semester: Oceans & Climate Distinguished visiting lecturers & student-research advisors

Joining us for this year's semester program will be:

Dr. Cynthia Pilskaln, University of Massachusetts, SMAST
Dr. Christopher Sabine, NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory
Dr. Jorge Sarmiento, Princeton University

SEA Semester: Oceans & Climate is a specialized program for advanced science majors that focuses on the marine carbon cycle and global climate change and takes advantage of a repeated equatorial Pacific transect (Mexico - Tahiti) to observe regional and temporal phenomena. For detailed information (pdf)

NOTE: Some spaces are still available for undergraduates to enroll in this special fall program. We encourage you to talk to interested students as soon as possible, as admission is on a rolling basis.

(PS: the title of this post is from On the Sea by John Keats)

SEA Photos; part 1

Finally, as promised, some photos from my brief, but oh so wonderful, trip aboard the SSV Corwith Cramer. Four days of sailing and oceanographic adventure with Sea Education Association. This wasn't so much a scientific cruise as a chance to relive my days weeks months with SEA as an undergraduate and reconnect with a great organization. We sailed. We scienced. We kept a 24 hour watch. We even set the fisherman (sorry, can't find a link to help you with this one). If you ever get a chance to do this, you must. Encourage all your undergrads to look into SEA Semester as well - from a life experience point of view, its one of the best things they could do. Beyond hands-on, practical oceanographic research, SEA Semester builds leadership, self-confidence, teamwork, responsibility, problem solving, physical endurance, and plundering. Well, maybe not plundering. Anyways, on to the photos...be sure to check out Part 2 and Part 3.

The Corwith Cramer awaits


My bunk...and my hairy legs.

Couldn't find A through D

Ship's compass

"Steer a course for others to follow"

Just in case

Topside

Just in case, take 2
(AKA Gumby suits)

What good is a ship without her bell?

Had to (re)learn the ropes


How better to end the day?

Part 2 and Part 3

SEA Photos; part 2

Shipek sediment grab waiting to be deployed
(one of my favorite no-frills, old-school, bruiser of a scientific instrument)

the Shipek coming back onboard

Mmmm...mud from Menemsha Bight

I've been over this bridge about a billion times.
First time going under it.

Any guesses where we are?

Aloft

Sailing through the night.
Red over Green; Sailing Machine

Sunset via porthole

Peeking in the doghouse.

Night lab work.

Not a bad office view, eh?

Part 1 and Part 3

SEA Photos; part 3

Furling the jib out on the bowsprit

Compass by night

Even Associate Deans have to swab the deck

This is what happens when you don't help swab the deck

Furling the tops'l

The carousel waiting to be deployed

12 Niskin bottles and a CTD headed down 50 fathoms

Anti-scurvy agents

Don't know who Louie is, but he's probably a bosun if I had to guess

Ship's lab

Coming home to the Hub

Part 1 and Part 2

Green flash at last

Back on land after a quick, but extremely good time on board the SSV Corwith Cramer. I have tons of pictures and will post some of them with a recap of the experience early next week.

For now though, I wanted to share that I finally saw the elusive green flash at sunrise Wed. morning while on dawn watch (more on that later too). For those who don't know about the green flash, it's a rare optical phenomenon (a small, brief, green flash of light on the horizon, "on top of" the setting/rising sun) that occurs the instant before sunrise or after sunset. It is best viewed where there is a clear, straight horizon, so it mostly associated with sunrises and sunsets over the ocean.

The green flash occurs because the sun's rays are refracted by the earth's atmosphere, separating the light into its spectral colors. When the sun is below the horizon, the shorter, blue wavelengths tend to bend more and get scattered before they reach an observer's eyes, thus there is no blue flash. The longer red and orange wavelengths bend less and do not scatter, but by the time they reach an observer's eyes the sun is just above the horizon and so get washed out by the sun's own brilliance, thus there is no "red flash". Green light waves sit in the middle of the spectrum and are refracted at a good angle and just the right time so that they reach an observer's eyes without being overwhelmed by the sun itself. Thus, under appropriate conditions, the observer sees a green flash.

I have well over a 1000 hours at sea and until this week had never seen a green flash. Some people deny its very existence because they've never seen it no matter how long they've spend on the ocean. Seeing this brief, but brilliant emerald green flash was certainly one of the highlights on my trip. I was in the right place, at the right time, under the right conditions. Definitely worth the lack of sleep.

Stay tuned for more details about the whole trip...I think I'm going to go sleep for a few days now.

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UPDATE 8/31/07 - A reader, Priscilla B. from South Africa, emailed me about how the San people of South Africa call the Green Flash the Green Python and believe it to bring good fortune to those who see it. Apparently, I was supposed to make a wish when I saw it, but alas, I was too excited about actually seeing it to wish for anything, like world peace, universal health care, or a bitchin' 72" plasma, HD TV. Maybe next time.

Down to the sea

Avast ye landlubbers. If ye be needin' me, ye be out o' luck for I be ridin' on the se'en seas. In the meantime, keep your scurvy hands off me treasure. I be countin' it when I return.

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking.

the SSV Westward

So wrote John Masefield around the turn of the 19th 20th century. And to me (and countless others I am sure) it still rings true to this day.

It's hard to put into words, but the ocean has a power over me. I've always enjoyed the ocean in all its mystery and power and wondrous life. I grew up spending summers exploring the beaches and jetties of Cape Cod, collecting "mermaid's purses", whelk egg cases, scallop shells, and sea glass, searching for hermit and sand crabs, picking helpless periwinkles and dog whelks off the rocks, and shining flashlights into the night waters looking for blue crab and comb jellies and pipefish. I tried fishing for blues and stripers, but was never very good at that (apparently my brother, Carl, got all the fish-catching genes). Though I did catch my fair share of spider crabs.

For all that though, most of my connection to the sea was shore-based. Sure, I went out on my uncle's Boston Whaler on occasion (the best was going out to Monomoy), but really never spent that much time on the water and never more than a few miles from shore. All that changed however in my junior year at Bowdoin when I had the opportunity to take part in Sea Education Association's SEA Semester. It was during that experience that I contracted Masefield's sea fever.

Instead of going into all the salty details here, I'll send you over to the website I designed to celebrate my and my shipmates' experience. (don't laugh when you click over there - it was the first website I ever put together - 10 or so years ago - no digital cameras, no CSS, no Photoshop - and though I keep saying I am going to redo or delete it, I can't bring myself to do it).

On top of the science of the ocean and of sailing, SEA Semester teaches you more about teamwork, leadership, and your strengths and weaknesses than any other experience I've encountered - you deal with real problems in real weather in real seas. Torn mains'l in the middle of a squall in the middle of the night? Work together and deal with it. Seasick in twenty-foot seas? Help each other out and deal with it. One of your watch members not pulling their weight? Figure out how to motivate them, teach them, encourage them or deal with the fact that you're just going to have to move forward without their help.

Ever since my SEA experience, I've jumped at any feasible opportunity to get back on a sailing ship - afternoon sails at SEA alumni events, my wife's and my honeymoon on the Grace Bailey, our Galapagos adventure on the Sea Cloud. Why am I posting about all this now? Because in a couple of weeks, I'll be rejoining SEA for a 4-day cruise on the SSV Corwith Cramer and that sea fever is flaring up again.

I imagine it won't be nearly the experience my original trip was - it's only a four day "Colleagues Cruise" - but I'm counting the days till I climb aboard (even if it's not on the Westward, which was retired a few years back). I plan on bringing my camera (digital now!) and will share my photos when I get back.

Yes, I am a pirate. Born 200 years too late.