COA 2024 Maine Sea Grant Undergraduate Scholarship in Marine Sciences – Student Profiles Part 2

This is a continuation of a previous post, with student profiles of the six current COA students that have received Maine Sea Grant Undergraduate Scholarships. This post has two goals, first to advertise this scholarship to COA undergraduates, which comes with a $500 award from Maine Sea Grant and a matching amount from COA, and second, to give the students a chance to talk about what work they have done and are doing at the college. This year’s application is due again later this spring (May 20th), and the application information can be found here.

The second goal is to highlight some of the work that COA students are doing. This post focuses on the recipients who have done their shore-based marine science work on the mainland, either in Maine or in the Yucatan, or both, and all three happened to have spent a term shipbound as part of a Sea Semester program. All three are graduating this year: Massimo Hamilton, Emily Rose Stringer, and Katie Culp.

Massimo Hamilton ’24. I love fish, fishing, and seafood. I grew up by a beautiful stream that gave me my passion for fish. In my first year at COA, I was fortunate to be given a job working on the college’s waterfront as crew on Osprey, which encouraged my further explorations of marine opportunities at COA. I have taken classes such as Marine Biology, Blue Food Systems, and Fisheries Fishermen and Fishing Communities. For my final project in the Yucatan Program, I spoke with fishermen, documented their stories, and painted watercolor portraits of 15 species of fish that I ate during my time in a coastal community. I was fortunate to take part in Sea Education Association’s Climate and Society program. On this voyage, I completed a research project on traditional community fisheries management practices in Polynesia. I interned for the Bar Harbor Marine Resources Committee, where I worked on a project to understand the local recreational shellfish fishery better. I also spent the summer working on a local oyster farm, experiencing the grueling hands-on work of a practice that provides a positive opportunity for coastal communities and the natural environment. 

For my senior project, I am making a recreational fishing guide and cookbook on the seafood of Mount Desert Island and the Maine Coast. I am illustrating it to make a beautiful book that clearly explains the fishing and seafood opportunities in the area. The book is organized by species and includes personal opinions and experiences, the biology and ecology of the fish, the history of the fishery, fishing methods, advice, fishing regulations, local fishing locations, how to gut and clean the species, and a few recipes or cooking techniques for each. Some recipes are from my family and childhood, and others will be ones I have found or invented in my time at COA. My book is a way to share the knowledge of and appreciation for the recreational fishing experiences that I have so enjoyed in my time at COA. The book celebrates the seafood of MDI. 

I chose this project as one that combines many of my passions, interests, and skills. In my time at the College of the Atlantic, I really enjoyed fishing and harvesting in the waters of Mount Desert Island. I have learned much and would like to share the information with others. I am also interested in visual art, communication, and design, and really enjoy painting fish. My senior project combines these two in a way that gives back to the community.

Images clockwise from the top: Lures and fish, mussels, Massimo harvesting mussels, quahogs and pasta.

Emily Rose Stringer ’24. I love the ocean, so naturally I took Marine Biology during my first term at COA. Our marine biology course broadened my science background and encouraged me to pursue marine studies and research. As an in-person course during the pandemic (Fall 2020) this course provided me with much-needed connection. For me, marine studies have since proved to be all about connections –ecological, biological, and social. For the next two years I was a teacher’s assistant for the course. In this role I shared my knowledge of and passion for our local marine environment, and supported the course’s research efforts – primarily clam recruitment surveys and invasive green crab surveys.  

Left: Cruising the South Pacific as part of Sea Semester. Below: River herring swimming upstream to spawn in lakes in Maine in the spring

Over the summers I have had three amazing internship and employment opportunities here in Maine. My first summer in 2021, I spent the season at the college’s Alice Eno Research Station on Great Duck Island. I assisted another student in her research on the regeneration and health of the spruce forest. and also helped with research and learned about the biology of Leach’s Storm petrels and gulls.  The next summer I worked for a local tour boat company in Frenchman Bay. I was a naturalist on seabird and lighthouse tours, and I crafted a narrative to introduce tourists to our marine ecosystems, cultural history, and local seabirds and marine mammals. I also was a deckhand aboard a fishing tour boat out of Bar Harbor where I spent time fishing (see the cod picture below), educating tourists on our local fishes, and cleaning the catch.  The majority of my work has been conducted in the Gulf of Maine, I also did a semester with Sea Education Association (SEA) in the South Pacific Ocean. I sailed on a tall ship and conducted baseline climate and oceanographic research between Fiji, Tuvalu, and Aoteoroa New Zealand. This experience broadened my knowledge of marine studies and global systems and contextualized my work at COA. 

Last summer I worked as an intern for the River Herring Network (RHN) and was based downeast in Machias. I conducted zooplankton tows and went night seining for juvenile alewives on the Bagaduce waterway and helped to create an interactive RShiny portal application to visualize east coast fish runs. This app is a collaboration between the RHN and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council. The overall goal of the app is to allow visualization and sharing of east coast river herring and shad run fish count data, and to serve as a communications tool to build a greater shared understanding of the status of river herring coast-wide. 

An Atlantic cod caught during a tourist fishing trip, me driving the boat and a 4-cell larvae of a orange footed sea cucumber (about the size of a head of a pin).

While at COA, sea cucumbers have been the primary focus of my research. Orange-footed sea ucumbers (Cucumaria frondosa) are a commercially important marine invertebrate present in our local waters of Frenchman Bay. Each spring the sea cucumbers spawn and the developing larvae are dispersed by current movement before settling. One cold spring day during my first year, I helped Chris and a few other marine studies students take a plankton sample at the Bar Harbor Town Pier. We were looking for sea cucumber larvae. I didn’t know what to expect, but after seeing the first sea cucumber larva I was hooked! Sea cucumber larvae are approximately the size of a poppy seed, bright orange in color, and lecithotrophic, meaning they are fatty and non-feeding larvae.. During my second and third years I assumed responsibility for the spring plankton tows and collection of larval data, and now the analysis of the entire ten-year data set is the focus of my senior project, I am currently visualizing and analyzing our project’s data. 

Katie Culp ’24. My path through Human Ecology these past four years has mostly revolved around studying coastal communities, coastal resilience, and maritime anthropology through the lenses of work, food, and language. I am fascinated with storytelling and memory as they relate to people and water. I am drawn to the concept of water holding memory, culture, and traditions, and these interests have guided much of my educational path. Through my future work I wish to emphasize storytelling as a tool for preserving cultural heritage and coastal community resilience while underscoring local knowledge and lived experience on issues affecting coastlines.

Right: In Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska with the Williams-Mystic program exploring the rocky intertidal. 

I have had the great privilege of hearing individual perspectives from a variety of different coastal community members through the oral history projects I have been fortunate to work on during my time at COA. These projects were the Frenchman Bay Oral History Project, an offshoot of the broader Mapping Ocean Stories Project (a collaborative project through Maine Sea Grant, COA, Island Institute, and The First Coast) and my senior project, an oral history collection of San Crisanto, Yucatán, MX. Through working with Mapping Ocean Stories I learned valuable tools for oral history collection and community interaction that I was able to apply to my senior project. Both of these projects aim to document the lived experience of people who have spent a significant amount of time working on the water or (in terms of my senior project) with coastal and marine resources. The Frenchman Bay Project also included a mapping component that identified historically and currently relevant places on the bay for working waterfronts and fisheries. These projects have allowed me to gain confidence speaking with a variety of people with different backgrounds and have increased my knowledge of various issues and dynamics at stake in various coastal communities. Through my experiences working in San Crisanto and on the Frenchman Bay Oral History Project, I have realized my passion for recording the stories of coastal community members as a way to learn from perspectives that are grounded in a place-based and culturally-rooted understanding of an area.

I am also interested in studying coastal communities from a policy perspective. While participating in an interdisciplinary study-away program called Williams-Mystic, I worked on a Marine Policy project where I interviewed stakeholders in the state of Maine regarding current policy measures pertaining to the North Atlantic right whale and the Maine lobster industry. I loved working on this project because I had the opportunity to learn from a variety of stakeholders about their perspectives on a critical marine policy issue for the area. I would love to continue grounding my study of coastal communities in vital conversations about the intersection between marine policy, blue food systems, and cultural heritage. I also just returned from the Sea Education Association’s Climate Change and Coastal Resilience Program in Aotearoa New Zealand this past term with four other COA students.

Left: On the beach in San Crisanto marking a hawksbill sea turtle nest. I was volunteering with Club de la Tortuga Telchac Puerto, a local sea turtle conservation non-profit. I fished octopus with my host family as part of the oral history collection I did for my senior project in San Crisanto. I interviewed community members about their connections to the ocean and to the community/place, and talked to people about changes they have witnessed to the ecology of the area, as well as to their jobs and ways of life. I went octopus fishing to get a feel for what is currently the main fishing industry there. 

edited by COA faculty member Chris Petersen

COA Maine Sea Grant Undergraduate Scholarships in Marine Sciences – 2024 Student Profiles Part 1

For over a decade Maine Sea Grant has been collaborating with several colleges in Maine to provide $1000 scholarships for undergraduates doing work in Marine Sciences. This doesn’t just mean students doing research, but also students working in communication, education, policy, advocacy, and just about anything you can imagine marine related. This year the application period just opened, and you can see the announcement and the link to download an application here. This scholarship is available to any second and third-year students enrolled at COA (and several other colleges) and the deadline is May 20th. COA and Maine Sea Grant contribute equally to funding the scholarship.

I’ve asked the six current students that are recipients from past years, Wriley Hodge from 2022 and Marina Schnell, Ellie Gabrielson, Katie Culp, Massimo Hamilton, and Emily Rose Stringer from 2023 to give a short student profile and talk about what they have been up to below. The profiles into divided into two posts – this first post focuses on the three students that have been doing work on the school’s island research stations – Wriley Hodge on Great Duck Island, Marina Schnell and Ellie Gabrielson on Mount Desert Rock. Part 2 can be found here.

If you are a COA student and interested in applying for this scholarship, you can talk to any of the current student recipients, or me (Chris Petersen). You can read about the 2021 recipients here, and the marine studies at coa blog has several other posts on past recipients here, here, and here. – Chris Petersen, soon to be retired COA faculty member.

Wriley Hodge ’24. My love for the Gulf of Maine started from a very young age. I spent my summers with my grandparents in Jonesport, a small fishing town in downeast Maine; I remember those summers of exploring tidepools and islands with a very deep fondness. When I came to College of the Atlantic, this love took a new form. I took as many place-based ecology classes as I possibly could, and during the summer of 2021, I began doing seabird research at the Alice Eno Research Station on Great Duck Island.

In 2022, I returned to Great Duck and I began working on an original research project looking at the factors impacting nesting density and distribution of Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus). This research morphed into my senior project at COA, and I continued field work through the 2023 field season. My research is primarily concerned with why we see differences in nesting density and distribution within a single colony. My data collection involved mapping nest locations, recording habitat data, and observing individual birds nesting in different habitats (if you want to learn more about this research, check out this story map!). In 2023, I also had the opportunity to work with Acadia National Park on their seabird islands, and me and a team of fellow students mapped a series of seabird colonies, and worked to band and attach GPS tags to breeding Herring Gulls. While seabird data on Great Duck goes back 25 years, data on Acadia’s seabird islands is relatively scarce; this project is an attempt to expand our understanding of seabird dynamics in the Greater MDI region. It also allowed me to expand the scope of my own research by mapping additional islands. You can learn more about the research on Acadia’s islands here.

Photos above, left to right: An adult herring gull, putting gps tag on a gull, and mapping a gull colony on a Maine island.

I love working in the field, and I think islands are a fantastic place to conduct research. I have really enjoyed being able to mix natural history observations, and modern data analysis techniques to answer interesting questions. I am deeply thankful for Maine Sea Grant, Maine Space Grant, Friends of Acadia, Downeast Audubon, the Barry Goldwater Scholarship for funding my research, and to and numerous professors and mentors, without whom none of this would have been possible.

Marina Schnell ’25

In my very first class at COA, I got tangled in the seaweed, and the intertidal has not let me go. I spent the summer of 2023 at the research station on Mount Desert Rock (MDR) as a student co-manager and continued the intertidal work I began in 2022. I created paintings of 20 intertidal invertebrates and seaweeds, which I will eventually include in a field guide. I also continued recording observations about the overall ecology and species composition in the MDR intertidal, and I found an incredible diversity of organisms, from sea spiders to nudibranchs to brittle stars. I focused on hydroids, a type of marine invertebrate related to jellyfish and sea anemones.

Hydroids are a cryptic and under-studied group of organisms, so my central questions are simple: how many species are there on MDR? How much of the morphological variation I observe is due to differences among species, and how much is due to morphological plasticity within species? MDR is a high-energy environment, constantly battered by waves, but some areas are more protected than others. What might seem to be three different species could actually be one species in three different microhabitats on MDR. Throughout the summer, I scoured the intertidal of MDR for as many types of hydroid as I could find. I recorded details of their habitat and morphology in the field, sketched and photographed each colony under a dissecting microscope, and preserved samples of each colony.

Left to right: Photograph of a hydroid colony taken with the microscope at the MDR field station. A magnified version of another campanularid hydroid, taken with the help of Dustin Updike and Noah Lind at Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory. A small dorid nudibranch, which are typically specialized carnivores, crawling over and probably consuming a different small hydroid species from the family Corynidae, in a MDR tide pool.

Art has been an important part of my life for many years, sometimes as a respite from my scientific endeavors and sometimes as a complement. I started as a potter, and during my time at COA, I have developed my field sketching and scientific illustration skills. Drawing organisms from life allows me to more fully understand their structures, and it is a way for me to share my appreciation for their incredible beauty and complexity.On the more quantitative side, I’m also looking at overall intertidal community structure on MDR which is focused on the abundance and distribution of the common intertidal animals and algae found there. I’ve been delving into the archive of 7 years of MDR intertidal survey data from the Northeastern Coastal Station Alliance (NeCSA), a collaborative data collection project from multiple field stations throughout the coast of Maine. From 2017 through 2021, the survey on MDR was conducted by Tanya Lubansky and a group of students from the John Bapst Memorial High School, and I organized the survey in 2022 and 2023. I am presenting these results at conferences, summarizing both what we are learning and to summarize the challenges for these types of long-term and citizen-science projects.

Some paintings of intertidal organisms from Mount Desert Rock. An aeolid nudibranch, the most common brown algae in the intertidal, knotted wrake (Ascophyllum nodosum) and rockweed (Fucus spp.), and a sheet of periwinkles (Littorina spp.).

Currently I’m working with my advisor Chris Petersen to try to identify some of these invertebrates, in particular the hydroids. In a Winter 2024 independent study, I took my hydroid specimens from MDR to the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL), where I was able to photograph them under a high-powered microscope. I had hoped that this would allow me to distinguish species using morphology, but this proved difficult, so I worked with Chris to begin genetic analysis of the specimens. The ultimate goal of this process, known as barcoding, is to compare a section of each hydroid’s DNA to a database of known DNA sequences, which will hopefully allow us to identify each sample to the species level. This is an ongoing project!

Pictures below: A common summer behavior – leaning over and staring into tide pools. The reward, a pycnogonid, or sea spider, carrying eggs. Sea spiders are unusual as one of the few groups where male care is the common mode of parental care. In this case the male is carrying small groups of developing eggs, probably from several different females. Below: A mixture of periwinkles (Littorina spp.) and an aeolid nudibranch.

Ellie Gabrielson ’25. I’ve loved the ocean for as long as I can remember. I grew up digging through the mud flat next to my house and spending time in both the frigid Maine and warm tropical waters of Costa Rica. When I arrived at COA, I took every opportunity to spend time at, on, or with the ocean, including taking Sean’s Intro to Oceanography class, joining Osprey crew, etc. The TA for my oceanography class happened to be in charge of the longitudinal copepod study on Mount Desert Rock (MDR) at the time, and boy, that piqued my interest! I decided I would do anything to get out to The Rock. I’m not a field researcher; I do not have the relevant background nor want to pursue it as a career.  But I love the ocean, including all the creatures in it, and I also love examining questions of place. I love contemplating how locations become parts of our identities, how living and working on the ocean impacts lives (both human and others), the complexity of island living, and much more.

So, although I’m not a scientist, I was given the opportunity to continue the copepod project with another co-manager, and I was ecstatic. Copepods are microscopic zooplankton essential to all life in the Gulf of Maine. They are a vital source of nutrients for other animals, and some species around the Rock are the favorite snack of the North Atlantic Right Whale. I wanted to know if the status and health of the copepods had anything to do with the Right Whales’ disappearance from the Gulf of Maine. This is surely not a question I can answer alone, but I pondered it frequently while identifying and measuring thousands of individual copepods. This study also involved collecting oceanographic data, such as water temperature and salinity, something I didn’t expect to have so much fun with!

A planktonic copepod under the microscope at Mount Desert Rock, a gull chick in hand, and doing some sampling as part of the oceangraaphy class.

Conducting a 10-week-long study was tedious, hard, and frustrating times. But it was also rewarding and fun, and I learned so much about the world around me and myself. Island living was similarly dynamic, but more than anything, it was purely vibrant with life. To hear the blow of a whale, watch their sleek backs cut through the glassy water, hold baby gull chicks, play the harmonica around a fire, eat pretzels, admire the most unique view of MDI, turn composting toilets, etc., all from 26 miles offshore is crazy. I cherished every second of my time on MDR.

On a more logistical note, the Maine Sea Grant was essential in ensuring I could do this research, as it was an unpaid position. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to do research as an undergrad and for Maine Sea Grant’s generosity, which will propel me through the rest of my studies at COA.

Drawing by Wriley Hodge

Co-Ops, Community, and Crustaceans: An Afternoon on Little Cranberry Island

Rosie Chader, Ben Capuano, Shreya Vinodh

Departing Northeast Harbor on our beloved Osprey, the College of the Atlantic Fisheries, Fishermen, and Fishing Communities class steamed south for Little Cranberry, also known locally as Islesford. We pulled up to the dock and lobsterman Dave Thomas was waiting for us. The public pier where we were dropped off is a permanent pier that is accessible year round. The mailboat which doubles as the Islesford Ferry shares this pier with fishing and recreational boats.

Left to right: View off the back deck of the Osprey midway to Little Cranberry as Natalie Springuel oreints the students to the Cranberries; The authors, Ben and Shreya walking behind Rose, arriving at Little Cranberry; View of Island Girl of Islesford, ME moored off of Little Cranberry.

After meeting Dave at the pier, he talked to us about the waterfront and the fishermen there. He explained how the Cranberry Isles Fishermen’s Co-Op is run, and how lobstermen operate the waterfront. The Co-Op is jointly owned by the fishermen that participate in the venture and is run by a manager that the fishermen hire to oversee the economics of the company. Lobster caught by Co-Op’s lobstermen are brought to the dockside facility to be sorted and consolidated before being brought to the mainland at Southwest Harbor where it can be distributed across Maine, America, and even internationally to nations across the globe.

The view from the town dock where we landed towards the coop dock and its boat, the Dividend

Left to right, top to bottom: Dave Thomas on the Islesford Dock introducing himself to the class and orienting the class. Traps along Islesford Dock photographed from the Co-Op Pier.

We left the public pier and waited for the bait truck to come in and unload some giant barrels. Making a mad dash past the patient forklift man, we slipped into the bait shed and gawked at barrels and tubs of putrid-smelling old mackerel, skates, and herring. Another few barrels were full of haddock racks–the leftover body and skeleton of fish that had been stripped of fillets. Bait is among the most capital-intensive investments that the average lobsterman makes over the course of a fishing season. Paucity of once locally abundant bait species like herring drives fishermen to purchase barrels of bait from all manner of distant sources. Thomas explained to us that he’s used rockfish from British Columbia, orange roughy from the south pacific, and most recently pogies from New Jersey in his traps. Lobstermen outside of a co-op often purchase bait from the dock that they fish out of. On Little Cranberry bait is the responsibility of the Co-Op.

Bait. Bait barrels with herring, mackeral, pogies, skates, haddock and redfish racks, and herring. Dave explaining the various baits, and patiently answering a lot of questions from instructor Chris Petersen.

Dave started as a teacher, and was more than happy to answer questions from the class, although in the end we decided that it would less smelly if we went outside and sat in the sun.

Bait. A wide diversity of species and condition, including some skates, so herring looking a bit aged, and some fresher herring.

Back in the fresh air, the class sat down in the meadow with Thomas and asked him all the questions bubbling in our minds. Thomas spoke stridently about his belief that his community relies on decentralized networks of individual owner-operators, for this reason he fears the consolidation that is becoming more common in the seafood business across Maine. He told us more about life on the island, how people learn to get along with each other, and how the school system helps keep communities between the different Cranberry Islands connected with one another. Before he was a fisherman, Thomas actually came to this island to work as a teacher in 1975. On a parting note, Thomas told us that he fully intends on continuing to lobster until it’s “not fun for him anymore!”

After our talk, we had some time to explore before our trip back on Osprey, which we took to walk up one of the streets through the neighborhood. We discovered the boat building school house which had an awesome life size cut out of Ben, which he posed next to nicely. There was a playground by the elementary school made up of whalebones on rebar. Megan found Dave again and bought a bag of two lobsters from him.

Left to right: Megan with one of her lobsters, Ben adjacent to replica cutout, whale skeleton lawn ornaments near a park in inner Islesford. Below: Ben next to the sign for the Cranberry Isles Fishermen’s Co-Op, and one of the lobsters we bought from the Co-op.

Then it was time to leave, just as soon as we arrived. We snuck past some lobstermen loading traps on the pier and slipped back on our favorite boat.

Fish, Fish, Fish: Fish Fry Field Foray!

By: Linnea Goh, Massimo Hamilton, and Katie Culp

A sign welcoming community members to the Smelt Fry (photo credit: Jess Bonilla)

The Downeast Salmon Federation’s (DSF) Smelt Fry and Fisheries Celebration is an annual fundraiser held in Columbia Falls, Washington County, ME. It is a large community event that celebrates more than simply the eating of smelt, but also the start of the spring smelt run. More importantly, it is an opportunity for local residents to engage with the efforts of the DSF and their partner organizations and vice versa. The smelt fry is normally held annually, but this was the first time, after a three-year hiatus, that attendees from all over Washington and Hancock counties gathered to eat a fried smelt lunch together. A total of 3600 smelts were enjoyed by around 600 attendees. The fish, locally caught and cleaned by volunteers, were coated in gluten-free batter and fried in batches of 30 right outside the kitchen.

Rainbow smelt are small, anadromous fish that typically live in estuaries and waters offshore, though each spring they swim up shallow freshwater streams to spawn (1). Rainbow smelt have historical significance in New England, with the first European settler smelt harvest recorded in 1622 (2). Rainbow smelt have historically played an important role in the Maine economy, and beginning in the 1800s, New England smelt was exported to New York and Boston (2). Rainbow smelt’s numbers were plentiful throughout New England, smelt were used as bait and fertilizer in addition to being eaten (3). Smelt are fished from ice shacks and are typically 5 to 7 inches in length and are enjoyed fried, smoked, broiled, or pickled. They are also an important part of marine food webs; smelt are not only consumed by humans but are also eaten by seals, striped bass, great blue herons, and codfish, among others (3). While data on the rainbow smelt population has historically been lacking, landings since the 1800s have rapidly declined, prompting NOAA fisheries to list rainbow smelt as a Species of Concern in 2004 (2). In 2012 Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire state governments constructed a regional conservation plan for rainbow smelt to gain an understanding of the threats to the smelt population and how they can best direct conservation efforts (3). This plan outlines water quality and smelt habitat among the three states as well as potential threats to the population, such as increasing ocean temperatures, spawning habitat degradation, potential overfishing, and/or smelt as bycatch (1, 3). The purpose of the plan was not only to identify these potential threats but also to create solutions to rebuild the population, such as working on streams and culvert systems to recreate a favorable habitat to allow for smoother fish passage and improved annual spawning (1).

Life cycle of a Rainbow Smelt from the hatchery (Photo credit: Jess Bonilla)

As students in College of the Atlantic’s Fisheries, Fishermen, and Fishing Communities course of 2023, we attended the event to volunteer, eat smelt, and mingle. As volunteers, we helped out in the kitchen serving meals that consisted of fried smelt, coleslaw, mashed potatoes, delicious Hannaford rolls, and blueberry crisp. The coleslaw and mashed potatoes were donated by Healthy Acadia, a non-profit community-building organization based out of Ellsworth that had a table set up in the gym.

Freshly fried smelt with sides of mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and a dinner roll (Photo credit: Delphine Demaisy).

As a multi-generational event, the DSF Smelt Fry strives to be accessible to everyone. Many groups attending this event together ranged from young children to their grandparents. The long tables set up in the gym also invited people to sit with community members that they may not have met before. During the event, Linnea sat with an older couple from Gouldsboro. As a spiny fish, smelt can be difficult for some older people to eat. As this couple ate, they were also making suggestions to other community members around them about how to eat the fish while avoiding the spines.

One strategy used to make this event accessible was the use of the Smelt Fry Shuttle. This small vehicle was used to transport people from their parking spaces to different areas of the event. As many of us were volunteering with parking, we also helped direct people towards this shuttle.

Additionally, there was a Troop of Scouts volunteering at the Smelt Fry. One of their main tasks was to help carry people’s food to the tables. This made it easier for people with mobility difficulties to attend this event. They also served people lemonade so that they did not need to get up multiple times. One area that this event could improve in terms of accessibility is the line to get food. As the smelt were fried fresh on site, the service was dependent on the amount of fish that could be fried at once. This resulted in a fairly long line to get food. For people with mobility issues, this could be especially challenging, as they would have had to stand in line for an hour. Some potential solutions to this challenge could include having a priority line for people with accessibility challenges, having volunteer representatives to stand in line for people, having a number ticket system allowing people to sit anywhere and then get food when their number is called, or having chairs spaced out throughout the waiting line.

The Smelt Fry serving table, showing the multi-generational attendance of this event, and a couple of COA students helping to serve (Photo credit: Chris Petersen)

Besides telling people where to park and eating smelts, we were able to sample needham (a chocolate, coconut, and potato desert and a classic Maine treat), and smoked alewives, enjoy memorable live music, pass time sipping a beer near the river with new friends with donated beer from the Airline brewery, and peruse the DSF informational table as well as tables of various organizations associated with the DSF such as Healthy Acadia, Smithereen Farm, Downeast Institute, Downeast Fisheries Partnership, Family Futures Downeast (FFD), Sue Van Hook and her  “myco-buoys” (buoys made from fungal mycelium), and the Maine Needham Company, among others. Most all the stands sported lively posters and informational fliers to involve community members in their organization and prompt folks to ask questions while they waited in line. Another popular attraction was learning to tie flies with the assistance of local anglers involved with the DSF, an activity that took place in the hatchery building. 

The fly-tying demo at DSF’s Columbia Fall’s office, where people learned how to tie soft hackles from local fishermen and DSF board member Joe Horn (Photo credit: Chris Petersen).

Additionally, we toured the Downeast Salmon Federation’s Pleasant River salmon hatchery, which was located just across town from the building hosting the fry. In this hatchery, local salmon stock are raised to help restore their population. These salmon are incubated as eggs and raised until they are fry and ready to be released into local streams.

The Smelt Fry is an event that brings the community together. Events such as these are important because of the wide variety of people they appeal to. Attendees were fishermen, community activists, families, 9 to 5 workers, folks from Columbia Falls and the greater Washington County, and also folks from all over Hancock County and other areas. Katie ate lunch with folks from Blue Hill, Somesville, and Gouldsboro, all of whom had attended the Smelt Fry before and were happy that the event was back. Not only does the event draw in a variety of people around their local blue food system but it is also a place for education and spreading awareness about work that DSF and other organizations are doing around fish conservation and habitat restoration as well as giving community members the opportunity to engage in this work.

At the end of the day, we purchased smoked alewives and smoked smelt from the DSF’s fish smoking truck, a truck used to smoke fish at community events. (Photo credit: Jess Bonilla)

Hosting a community event to be enjoyed by all is also a way for DSF to interact on-the-ground with the local community, one of the most important components of enacting any sort of environmental change. It is also a space wherein community members are encouraged to ask questions and speak face-to-face with people involved in these organizations. Therefore, the Smelt Fry is a space wherein productive conversations and mutual collaboration is encouraged between local organizations and individual community members. From the presence of the salmon hatchery on the path from the parking lot to the eating area, to the numerous tables advocating for clean water and fish conservation to visit while in line for fried smelt, it is an educational event that one cannot walk away from without learning a thing or two about fish habitat restoration, conservation measures, and the importance of resilient communities united around conservation, fish, and food.

References

• Smelt. Department of Marine Resources, 2022. https://www.maine.gov/dmr/science/species-information/smelt.
• Ecosystem Investigation Network. GMRI. (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2023, from https://investigate.gmri.org/project/smelt_spawning/
• Chase, Bradford, Claire Enterline , and Katherine Mills , eds. “Rainbow Smelt: An Imperiled Fish in a Changing World .” Maine.gov. Accessed June 8, 2023. https://www.maine.gov/dmr/sites/maine.gov.dmr/files/docs/pamphlet.pdf.

Swimming Upstream: River Herring in Somesville

By: Sophie Chivers, Megan Maloney & Delphine Demaisy

Earth Day at the nation’s greenest college is quite the celebration. While most of the College of the Atlantic (COA) community spent the day on campus learning about our environment and sharing food, plants, and music, we—the COA Fisheries, Fishermen, and Fishing Communities class—spent April 23rd in Somesville with Billy Helprin and Rusty Taylor from the Somes-Meynell Wildlife Sanctuary. Our main goal was to help prepare the river for this year’s alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and blueback herring (Alosa aestivalis) run. This work is part of a greater effort to restore the anadromous fish populations in Somesville and other Downeast Maine rivers. Our class worked on two of the three ladders, focusing on moving barriers to ensure that the fish would travel up the stream efficiently. We couldn’t think of a better way to honor our local ecosystem on our favorite day of the year. 

Somesville’s dam at the mill pond – the picture is taken from the fish ladder looking out across the stream and the dam.
Photo by Jessica Bonilla

We started at the first ladder, the one closest to the ocean on the mill pond. Here we heard from Rusty Taylor, an associate of the Sanctuary and a local elver fisherman, among other things. He told us about the skill required to elver fish, the challenges with regulations of the fishery, and elver biology. Elvers are juvenile American eels (Anguilla rostrata) migrating from open ocean to freshwater to grow and develop. When they are fully grown, they will return to the Sargasso Sea to spawn. Elvers are amazing—they can scale a dam over 100 feet even though they are only 1 to 2 inches long. They don’t have this kind of obstacle in Somesville, the dam there is only 6 feet high, but the feat is impressive nonetheless. We could feel Rusty’s passion for his work and it was clear that he has a wealth of knowledge about both the fresh and saltwater environments. Rusty fishes near this river—the elvers in this watershed are harvestable

A few elvers from the side of the dam. There were hundreds at the base of the dam. Photo by Jessica Bonilla

River herring, on the other hand, are not harvested from this watershed. They are managed jointly between the state and the towns, making them one of Maine’s few municipally co-managed fisheries. The town of Mount Desert, the municipality that Somesville belongs to, has decided not to harvest anadromous herring because they feel that the run cannot sustain commercial or recreational harvest. At the first ladder, we learned about how the cement ladder is carefully designed specifically for river herring passage—the wooden baffles that make up the steps are v-notched to allow sufficient flow even at low water levels. When the herring reach the top of the ladder, they meet a metal gate separating a deep cement pool from the abutting mill pond. For the fish to pass into the watershed Billy, Rusty, or other volunteers must lift the gate, allowing each fish to be counted before entering the river.

The fish ladder at the first dam. Photo by Jessica Bonilla.

The basin at the top of the fish ladder and the opening that fish have to pass through to move upstream.
Photo by Jessica Bonilla

Counting the fish is important because it gives us a picture of the population and allows the community to track how their conservation efforts are improving their run over time. Alewives and bluebacks return to their natal streams, so local conservation efforts are effective: if more fish get in and spawn, more fish will return in later years and the populations will grow. The count is also important for a town that wants to reopen a commercial fishery in their streams. The Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) requires that towns reach a certain population threshold, 235 fish per surface acre of spawning and nursery habitat, before harvesting (Maine Department of Marine Resources 2020). The DMR also analyzes scale samples from the town, 100 throughout the season, determining the average age and rate of return that a run has. 

The second ladder is more of a challenge. The fish ladder and the dam each have their own little channel, so the trick is making sure the fish swim up the ladder and not up the dam. Alewives will typically follow the channel with the most flow, so the first step was to reduce the water coming over the dam by putting sandbags over the top of it. The next step was to put mesh panels in to block off the entrance to the dam’s channel—we had to make sure that any outgoing herring could escape over the dam, but that most of the incoming ones would go up the ladder.

Students bringing heavy sandbags on the pond to narrow the waterflow over the second dam. Photo by Delphine Demaisy

Helprin, students, and Chris Petersen moving rocks and installing a mesh panel in the stream.
Photo by Jessica Bonilla

At the third ladder, the challenge was similar. The fish struggle to find the entrance to the ladder, so we restored a funnel-like structure made of rocks and cleaned out the ladder. This is where the fish enter Somes Pond and where most of them finish their journey. 

The third fish ladder that is the entrance to Somes Pond. Photo by Delphine Demaisy

The entire crew working to block routes for fish to swim upstream and miss the fish ladder in the middle of the stream. Photo by Delphine Demaisy

The Somes-Meynell Wildlife Sanctuary has been involved in this work since 2005, when the then director, David Lamon, noticed how few fish were making it upstream. He focused mostly on renovating the ladder, coordinating engineering studies and applying for grant funding to do the work. Since then, the Sanctuary has been working with partners like the College of the Atlantic, Acadia National Park, and local community members to keep passage clear and stable, count the fish, and coordinate with the Department of Marine Resources. The current director of the sanctuary, Billy Helprin, has continued this work. The run serves as a central educational piece where local students, and students from afar, of all ages can come to learn about anadromous fish, natural resource management, and hands-on conservation.  Taylor also echoed the importance of the educational work being done on the run—“One of the most important things about this small alewife run in this community is awareness. The fish are a great vehicle for education of all ages…This restoration program has brought so much of that vitality back to the community. From Osprey dropping alewife on top of a tourist’s car with a surprise thud, to groups of students from near and far having such a unique hands on-learning experience, I am really proud to be a part of it all.”

Rusty Taylor (center) speaking with COA faculty Rich MacDonald and Laurie Baker. Photo by Chris Petersen

COA students have been volunteering at the fish ladders every Earth Day since the first Fisheries class took place in 2016. We are incredibly thankful for Billy, Rusty, and everyone who has put effort into restoring this wonderful place. We hope that we may continue this tradition of service and share the joy of watching herrings swim up the river for years to come. 

For more resources on river herring: 

The Maine River Herring Network is a coalition of a broad range of stakeholders working to coordinate river herring restoration, research, harvest, and management. 

The Downeast Fisheries Trail website’s Fisheries Then—by Natalie Springuel and Julia Beaty—and Fisheries Now—by Julia Beaty. 

The Downeast Salmon Federation for all things fish passage!

And Maine Department of Marine Resources for their river herring facts, regulations, and more. 

For more COA adventures with River Herring see this article by Emma Ober; this one done by Katie Clark, Melisa Chan, and Meret Jucker; this one by Savannah Bryant and Emma Kimball; and these videos done by Annaleena Vaher and others. 

2022 Maine Sea Grant Undergraduate Scholarship in Marine Sciences

For about a decade (really nine years), Maine Sea Grant has been collaborating with several colleges in Maine to provide $1000 scholarships for undergraduates doing work in Marine Sciences. This doesn’t just mean students doing research, but also students working in communication, education, policy, advocacy, and just about anything you can imagine marine related. This year the application period just opened, and you can see the announcement and the link to download an application here. This scholarship is available to any second and third-year students enrolled at COA (and several other colleges) and the deadline is April 29th. COA and Maine Sea Grant contribute equally to funding the scholarship. I’ve asked COA’s two recipients from last year, Bailey Tausen and Sneda Suresh, to give a quick summary of what they have been up to below. If you are a COA student and interested in applying for the scholarship, you can talk to me (Chris Petersen) or any of our current recipients from 2021 (Bailey and Sneda) and our 2020 recipients that are still on campus (Hallie Arno, Camden Hunt, Kiernan Crough, and Jillian Igoe). You can read about the 2020 recipients here, and this blog also has several other links to past scholar recipients including here and here.

Bailey Tausen ’23

When I first started at College of the Atlantic, my passion for the Chesapeake Bay and marine conservation quickly sparked a love for the Gulf of Maine. I had a good background in science communication, specifically in marine biology, and loved the idea of interdisciplinary ocean studies. After building myself from a background of little scientific exposure, COA introduced me to a community that helped me establish strong field and lab skills. I took every chance available to take marine-related courses and spent my weekends either in the intertidal or participating in the sea kayaking leadership program in the bay. I studied marine science, history, fisheries, and policy, and among those studies discovered my love for marine invertebrates. In 2020 I got the opportunity to adopt a project on Mount Desert Rock doing an oceanographic survey. A fellow student began the project in 2019 to examine the current biological productivity around the island. Copepods, a type of microscopic planktonic animal, are depended on by almost all life in the Gulf of Maine. But their sensitivity to warming water means that their health and numbers are dwindling. Last summer, I collected data on water temperature and copepod health and abundance trends. I also worked to ensure that this oceanographic survey will continue long after my time at COA so that we may see how years of rapidly rising sea temperature have affected these microscopic animals that life around the island is so dependent on.

I love exploring the incredible world under the microscope and sharing that passion with others; this year, I’ll be working to pass that knowledge down to new students so that the project will continue while I carry on as the island’s station manager. I am also working for Allied Whale on photo identification for their humpback whale catalog. After graduation, I hope to carry my love for marine invertebrates and the ocean into new fieldwork.

Photos (left to right): a. My in-field laboratory setup at Mount Desert Rock, where I identified and measured thousands of copepods under the microscope, b. A slide of copepods, each of which will be counted, identified, photographed, and measured, and c. Calanus finmarchicus, a species of copepod depended on by the endangered North Atlantic right whale for its high-energy fat (in orange).

Sneha Suresh ’23. My interest in marine science revolves around Common Loons. As an aspiring wildlife veterinarian, I was searching for a research opportunity in wildlife health. I got in touch with a retired veterinary professor at Tufts University, Dr. Mark Pokras, and we crafted a project for summer ’21 that combined necropsies, wildlife health research, and animal behavior. I received loon cadavers from a wildlife biologist, Danielle D’Auria, at Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Department, and I took x-rays of them at Acadia Veterinary Hospital. Conducting multiple necropsies with Dr. Michelle Kneeland, Dr. Mark Pokras, and Laura Lyell, I learned about bird anatomy, physiology, and attempted to hypothesize their cause of death. Using necropsy tools from Allied Whale, we looked at numerous fascinating cases from a female that had 2 necrotic eggs inside her (uterus infection?) to a loon that suffered from a large puncture wound (from the bill of another loon?) and severe internal bleeding. From our loon necropsies, I collected their gastrointestinal tracts to analyze them for the presence of microplastics. With help from Shaw Institute and Dr. Reuben Hudson, I developed a method to extract microplastics from their gastrointestinal tract, and we found microplastics!

Photos (left to right). a. A dead loon being prepared for a necropsy. b. Sneha and fellow student Maggie Denison ’23 performing necropies. c. Radiograph of a loon. You can see the bright (dense) objects in the middle of the animal – these are lead sinkers that were swallowed and probably led to lead poisoning of the bird.

Simultaneously, I worked with Billy Helprin, the director of Somes-Meynell Wildlife Sanctuary, to monitor loon behavior primarily on Little Long Pond. It was wonderful to observe the 2 parents and chick on Little Long Pond over the course of 3 months. There was ceaseless drama with eagles and otters hovering around, intruding loons attempting to break familial ties, and, of course, the chick growing: he/she would molt feathers from sooty gray to dull brown fluff and later, a lighter gray juvenile plumage; he/she would dive for longer and longer lengths of time and learn to catch fish. It doesn’t get more exciting than this!

Photographs. Left- Loon chick and parent on MDI. Right- Parent feeding a substantially older chick.

Maine Sea Grant helped fund my loon project over summer ’21–a project that cemented my interests in pathology, wildlife health, and animal behavior and allowed me to build a community. With the involvement of multiple COA students, Allied Whale, local veterinarians, wildlife biologists, and community members, we are now trying to establish a loon necropsy program at COA that will be an extension of this 1 marvelously loony summer.   

You can learn more about loons on Mount Desert Island on the Somes Meynell Sanctuary Facebook Page.

R2061 and the Sea

This is a story from COA student Annika Ross ’23. Annika spent most of the summer of 2021 doing work at COA’s Edward McC. Blair Marine Research Station on Mount Desert Rock.

It was late July when the filmmaker and his crew arrived on The Rock. Having come to the island two years ago, he was returning to finish a wildlife documentary about the seal colony. He was a professional documentary filmmaker and we, the fourteen College of the Atlantic students housed in the old lighthouse keeper’s house for the summer, anxiously awaited his  arrival. “He’s famous!” we exclaimed. That, and we hadn’t seen anyone but each other in two months. 

The Rock is short for Mount Desert Rock, a 3-acre island twenty-five miles off the coast of Maine. While the island is small—formed mostly of barren granite and patches of dry, rocky soil—it is full of life. Whales and dolphins swim by, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, they’ll breach. Huge, massive beings expel themselves from the ocean’s surface for a small moment in the sun and splash back down with the sound of thunder. Seals snooze on the seaweed-covered ledges, arching their tails and their heads like bananas or laying on their backs for great big sun naps. Just before the sun sets, when the sky turns a light shade of pink, they sing. 

But besides the obvious mysticism of the marine mammals, are other things, also magical in their quiet ways. There are fish, weeds, periwinkles and fruit flies on the sticky brown traps we hung from the ceiling of the house, swirling like a sculpture. Seagulls are there too. Herring and Great Black-Backed gulls nest by the hundreds on the 3 acres of granite.

The filmmaker’s team came on a Thursday, otherwise known as boat day: the time when we took our week’s worth of food and water off of a Zodiac, up the boat ramp, and into the house. We laid out the crates on the pool table and unloaded bags of chips, boxes of pasta, and heads of lettuce, and packages of frozen meats. Fourteen sets of hands grabbed and passed and placed the foods into our two fridges. We whirled around each other in the way only fourteen people who had lived on a 3-acre island for two months together could. 

The Thursday the filmmaker arrived, we lugged his equipment up along with our food: drones, tents, blinds, and cameras so big they filled up rooms. We walked awkwardly around the visitors as they set up. Like children on Christmas Eve, we peeked around corners to get a glimpse of the excitement. The crew immediately got to work, heading to the center of the island to get aerial drone shots of the seal colony on the Northeast side. I was up the tower in the afternoon watching the Herring gull nests to the West when the drone flew up into the sky and the Herring gulls sent off their alarm calls. 

I recognized the calls because I was out there to study the birds. I was a part of what was referred to over the radio as “team gull”. Students would call “team gull, I see a dead chick”, “team gull there’s a fight over here”, “team gull a bird just ate a fish” and team gull would respond and head to the tower or a nest to write down what happened. 

My specific project I completed with another COA student, Izzy. It was a behavioral study of five nests on the west side of the island, recording how family dynamics evolved as chicks hatched and grew. I named the nests after the old flags I used to mark their location: P95 for the nest marked by the pink flag, B714 for the blue one, R2061 for the red, and so on. The names seem technical and heartless, and they started as such. The first day I ran up the tower to watch the parents sit on their eggs and spent half an hour drawing a map of each nest, trying to remember who was who. But soon, after the chicks hatched and started discovering the world and themselves, roaming and wandering, they became far more than technical terms. Each name represented a little family, a chick’s whole world. R23 was a tough family, B17 nuclear, P95 playful, and R2061 were explorers, spending their days in the intertidal as if waiting to transform into fish. 

There were a lot of teams out on the Rock. There was Izzy and I watching the chicks. There was the bigger Team Gull. There was Team shark, there was Team Seal, there was Team Boat Op. There was the team making dinner that night, the team doing dishes, the team turning the composting toilets. And then there was the team that was the 14 of us: three student station managers and 11 student researchers, from all different years and walks of COA life. All of us were young and excited, working together to run a remote island research station. It wasn’t until the filmmaker and his crew came that it sunk in how powerful our comradery was, the enormity of it all. It took an outsider to make us see that we had become a sort of family. 

That first day the filmmaker was there, the day with the drones flying and the colony of gulls soaring into the sky, was the first time I felt like a researcher. I sat in the tower that day with a kind of purpose and watched my chicks hide from the noise. Before the drone, I had never seen the whole colony mad, only ever a couple of birds at a time. 

As a part of my project, I tracked the weights of the chicks in my nests. To do so, we had to put on brightly colored raincoats and thick hats to protect us from the talons of the swooping parents and the guano they spurted. Checking the nests was my least favorite thing to do. I knew to be careful with the gull’s eggs and with their chicks, but I had no way to communicate that to the birds, and no way of completely ensuring that my best intentions wouldn’t lead to accidental harm. But there was also something about weighing the birds, about holding them in my hands and feeling how much heavier they got, how much longer their necks and their bellies got as they outgrew the bags we placed them in for weighing, that helped me appreciate the amount of energy and care that went into their growth. 

That night, we made room for the filmmaker and his crew around the dinner table. It was burrito night: a big pot of rice, beans, lettuce, salsa, guacamole, tofu, wraps, and, of course, Cha!—off-brand sriracha. We all thought the name was funny and it was a ritual to start our meals yelling, “pass the cha!” and the bottle would fly across the large green table in nonsensical patterns, barely missing the big bowl of apples or getting caught on a crack and rolling on its side. 

After the Cha!, the filmmaker got to talking about his work on other islands, where cool birds are nesting like boobies and puffins instead of just gulls. Later he would show us a film about otters. We all gasped and awed at his stories of swimming alongside whales, relaying what these animals taught him about himself and life as the common Herring gulls squealed and hollered outside: the background noise to all our meals and our days. 

It’s hard to describe what it’s like living in a gull colony. How they never stop squawking, not even in the middle of the night. How they’ll nest right outside your kitchen window. How a baby chick will steal a sheet you set out to dry. There is something that happens when you spend 24 hours a day listening to gull noises, when you have a baby chick growing up on your front porch. 

We started naming the nests closest to the house: there was Dani Devito, a big Black-Backed gull nesting in a rusty bicycle, and Petri Dish who lived by the back porch with Leicister and Winnipeg next door. After a week or so of living with them, rather than feeling relief when their “annoying” squawks ceased, you would feel shocked, and run to the window to see what’s the matter, the silence pressing on your ears. 

There was something human about the way the gulls interacted with their chicks. Maybe human is the wrong word. Who’s to say we have the patent on emotions and love? Because that’s what it was between the birds, a tenderness between parent and chick that you, as a fellow animal, could feel. I think it became most obvious in the moments when chicks went missing. The parents made this god-awful sound, a low, hollow, moan. They made it with their heads cocked down as they wandered around their nest. Whenever we heard it, whether at dinner or on the couch, whether cooking or reading or playing or laughing, we stopped for a moment of silence. We put our lives on hold for that sound to fill our ears and our minds. It was an emotional sound, it struck something in your heart. It was a sound of dread, a universal cry of sorrow. 

The second day of the filmmaker’s stay, his crew staked out near my nests on the West side of the island, getting shots of the seal’s bobbing heads in the water. I got up early, boiled water, and carried my steeping tea to the top of the tower. It was sunny, but the air still had a sharpness to it. The air was always like that on The Rock: air from the middle of the ocean.

The morning was quiet. The filmmaker and his crew were hidden under a blind and the colony was beyond the point of minding the intruder; the chicks stood and walked and sat. They had a way of laying when it was sunny, with their bellies pressed against the rocks and their feet splayed out behind them. Some flapped their wings and jumped into the air as an early attempt of flight, showing a little look of shock every time they returned to the ground. I saw the two chicks of P95 nibbling on bits of seaweed floating in a tidepool near their nest, B714 was playing with a stick, and the two chicks from R23 were snuggling in their nest. The only chicks not accounted for were the two from R2061. But this wasn’t necessarily unusual. Those chicks were wanderers. 

Two hours later Izzy came up to watch and I still hadn’t seen them.

    “But they’re probably just hiding under a rock,” I said.

I decided to go down to the boat ramp bringing a book and a handheld radio so people could find me if needed. The ramp faced South and its wood planks warmed with the morning sun. I was ten pages in when Izzy’s voice came over the radio. 

“I found R2061, they’re trapped!” 

They were hard to see from the top of the lighthouse, hidden behind a rock, heads just barely popping up from behind. But it was enough to spot the little dots of paint we had placed on their heads to mark them: one blue and one green. 

They stood on a slice of granite made island by the rising tide and farther from their nest than we had ever seen them. The chicks took turns jumping into the swelling water, attempting to swim back to the mainland, but each time a wave came and knocked them helplessly off course and back to the granite island. The path back home didn’t only involve this dangerous swim, but crossing through three other Herring gull territories. When a chick got caught in a different territory, it got its neck sliced by the parents defending it. R2061’s parents paced back at their nests, making that hollowing homing call. 

It was green who made it to land first, running free on the expanse of granite until it found a hiding place under two rocks. It wasn’t until blue made it off the island, that green emerged and the two chicks danced around each other deciding where to go: South towards home and rival birds or North to a tiny cove that seemed free? It was the latter they chose and slowly navigated their way to safety, never straying too far from the other, waiting for the other to hop a crack or jump over a rock. That was how the chick siblings were, beyond the occasional snapping at each other at feeding time, they went through the world as teams. Once on the edge of the cove, they found a hole to hide in and crouched down together. 

Birds in other nests had disappeared before. One morning the nuclear family of B714- with three healthy chicks the night before- had only one left. There weren’t even bodies to show for the missing siblings. Maybe they had wandered off like R2061, too far from home to return, too far away to be saved. 

Over lunch, we told everyone about the trapped chicks, and the two crew members scheduled for tower watch that afternoon said they’d keep an eye on them: we were a team. After lunch, we took a break from the sun, sticking around the house to enter the morning’s data. It wasn’t until someone called over the radio “Team Gull: a bird is swooping at the chicks in the cove!” that we dropped our data sheets and fled.

We ran so quickly to the top of the tower that we forgot our binoculars and had to use the bulky ones stored up there as backups. They were a little fuzzy no matter how hard you twisted and squirmed the fine adjustments, but they were enough for us to see the chicks crouched in that same place: a small indent in The Rocks edge officially named the Western Cove. 

It was a spot where we went fishing, standing by the shore and pulling in pollock to fry up for dinner. The heavy foot traffic between the house and the cove meant it was an area with few gull nests. The chicks could hide there without attacks from nearby parents. But, while safe from attacks from parents, they weren’t safe from Black-Backed Gulls, bigger gulls that also nested on the island. Getting their name from their silky Black Backs, they could be found eating stray Herring gull chicks. They had babies to feed too, and the tiny chicks were easy hunting. When we first heard of the swooping bird, we thought it must have been a Black Back. But, relieved, we found through the fuzzy frames only a Herring gull with a maroon band on its foot, placed there to mark it as the parents of R2061. The chicks were going to be saved. We pointed out the maroon band to the student who had called us and they took a break from their scan of the ocean for whales to spot it. We all sighed in relief, sitting down and slipping our legs through the rungs of the platform. 

But our giggles of relief soon ceased when we realized how hopeless the task of saving those chicks was for their parent. We watched anxiously as the parent swooped in with hollowing cries, a “come home please” cry, a “follow me this way!” cry, and the chicks looked up at their parents with a slight turn of their head and took a few measly steps away from the safety of their crack. The parent called again, moving further from the chicks, “yes, this way, this way.” But the chicks didn’t follow. They were young and brand new to the world and every single thing served as a distraction. 

They would start walking, but their sibling would bump into them or they would get distracted by a pebble, or they would start walking and stop to look at the sea, or they would both start walking together, obediently following the parent, and they would pass by a neighboring territory and get chased into a hole. To get home, they didn’t only have to get past one territory, but three. Watching them had all the tension of a nature documentary about a shark chasing a seal. It made me wonder about the filmmaker that morning, standing in the middle of the gull colony to film one frolicking. 

After a while, the parent got tired, flying up into the sky, soaring down, and landing back in its nest. It had given up. The chicks were alone. That was when Izzy and I started thinking about playing god. In our orientation days for our summer of research, we were let in on the realities of sharing a 3-acre rock with nesting birds and a colony of seals: there was a lot of death. We would see chicks get eaten, attacked by their own parents, by each other. We would see them freeze to death in the cold rain. It was easy to understand that we weren’t supposed to interfere with the wildlife negatively. We weren’t supposed to hunt the birds or scare away the seals. The hard part was understanding that we weren’t supposed to interfere positively either. If you saw a baby chick freezing to death, you let it die. If you didn’t you were playing god, choosing who gets to live and who gets to die. And you would be a naive god, one with all the power for change and a lack of understanding of what that change meant. There was always the chance you caused more harm than good. 

But how? How could we just sit and watch?

We thought about how we had watched the nests and gulls on the west side every single day for the past three weeks. We thought about how we knew where territories ended and began. We thought about how in this scenario we were slightly less naive Gods. We thought about how every day, when we went into the colony and weighed the chicks, we had the potential to cause harm and how now, that we had a chance to do good, interfering was wrong. We thought about our place in nature as human beings. And we thought about how the filmmaker had spent the morning staked out by R2061’s nest in the space where the chicks normally explored. What if the chicks going in the opposite direction that morning wasn’t entirely natural? We decided on a plan. 

Izzy went down the tower steps with a radio in hand, and I remained on the top of the tower keeping the chicks in the frame of my binoculars. As Izzy looped the tower and started to make the crossing to the Western Cove, they asked for an update. 

“Chicks are still in place,” I said through the tower radio. I watched closely as Izzy walked to the Western Cove and crouched a couple of feet away from the chicks. 

“Now?” They asked. 

“Still good.” The plan was for Izzy to sit with their eyes on the chicks ready to interfere at any sign of trouble. Izzy could scare a Black Back away from the vulnerable birds. They sat and waited and we prayed that somehow the chicks took it upon themselves to go home. It was right when we were debating further intervention when something exciting happened over at R2061’s nest. 

I heard the long call mates make to signal their arrival home, and turned to see R2061’s other parent flying home and greeting the tired out one. I watched as the tired parent got up from the nest and squawked at the incoming parent a couple of times before the parent flew directly to the Western Cove where the chicks hid amongst various rocks. To this day the movement astonishes me. Those few squawks acted as language, communicating both the need for help and the location of the missing chicks. And there we were moments before thinking the birds were helpless. Thinking we were gods.

The parent made that “come home” holler and the chicks came out to greet the bird, more eager than they had been earlier in the afternoon. They ran to the parent cooing and raising and lowering their necks, begging for a bite to eat. They must have been hungry. 

But the parent refused to feed them. Instead, they walked away from the cove and towards home, calling again for the chicks to follow. And the chicks did. 

The parent waited every couple of steps as it journeyed towards home, giving a few extra moments for the difficult crossings over large crevices. Izzy and I talked over the handheld as they went. 

“I lost them behind a rock!” I said. 

“They’re ok, coming around the corner now.” 

“Did green make it over that crevice?” Izzy asked. 

“Yeah, he’s right behind blue,” I said excitedly.

The chicks and parent troop made it past the first two territories without a scratch and Izzy and I waited in silence as the chicks approached the third and last territory. They were only a couple of feet from home when a defending gull ran at them, chasing them ten feet back. 

“Where’d they go?” Izzy asked. 

“I don’t know I can’t see them!” 

“Oh, there they are. Should I grab them?” Izzy asked. 

Before I could answer, the chick’s parent sounded an alarm call and attacked the bird, swooping in from above and nipping its bill. Interfering now, with all the angered parents, was too dangerous. The parent called for the chicks again, and they came bravely into the territory of the defending gull who showed no signs of backing down. The parent attacked again as the chicks attempted to cross, this time locking bills with the defending bird and arching its wings. There were louder sounds now, from further away in the colony. The fight had drawn attention from neighboring territories and the chicks were surrounded by angry birds, soaring in for a fight.

“What do we do?” I asked as I watched the chicks run towards the raging sea.

It was mid-tide, the seals piled onto the freshly exposed seaweed ledges for their naps, and the coming moments were as gut-wrenching and jaw-clenching as the climax of a blockbuster movie. R2061’s other parent soared in from its nest to join the fight. The two parents dove and arched their wings, battling the rival birds as the helpless young chicks ran through a battleground back home. Just like earlier in the day when they were stuck in the rising tide, the chicks never lost sight of the other as they ran. They waited to make sure they got to the nest together. Just like us fourteen on the rock, the chicks were a team. Izzy made their way back up to the lighthouse, and we sat together, hands balanced on the rungs of the tower, giggling as we watched the reunited family eat a regurgitated fish by the glittering sea. 

Now, on the mainland, twenty-five miles from The Rock, I think of the common gulls as the filmmaker thought of his puffins and boobies and whales and seals. When I see a gull on the roof of the dump, at the beach, or in a parking lot, I think about what that bird must have gone through to make it to where it is today. I wonder what kind of nest it was hatched in. I wonder if its siblings made it out. I wonder if they’re still a team. I stop and watch and remember how extraordinary a common, little bird can be. I think about R0261 and the sea.

izzy in the box we used as a blind to watch and film the birds

Izzy and Annika on the tower

Fire pit at MDR

Photo credits: All photos by Izzy Grimm and Annika Ross, except or ‘Fire pit at MDR’ by 2021 summer crew.

Spring in Frenchman Bay

Written by Chris Petersen, March 29, 2021

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Less than two weeks ago there was still quite a bit of ice along the shore. These photos are from Northwest Cove, Bar Harbor on March 17. Today I was able to walk in an ice-less intertidal and take pictures of barnacles.

Today is the first day of spring term at College of the Atlantic. It has been a surreal academic year, with both online and face-to-face teaching, and I’ll just say that it has been hard for both teachers and students as we have tried to make it close to a ‘normal’ experience. People have done an amazing job, but I am really looking forward to the fall, when I expect to be out in the field in the students without masks. The loons are still on the ocean, but the ponds are quickly starting to open up as their ice melts away. It’s a typical March day, in the 40’s, breezy, with clouds alternating with some bright sunshine. But spring is really beginning, even along the Maine coast, so i thought I show a couple of pictures that show the beginning of the next generation of young animals in the intertidal of Frenchman Bay.

On Saturday, I did my first plankton tow of the year to collect data on the timing of spawning of the local sea cucumber, Cucumaria frondosa, figuring I would not see any sea cucumber larvae. Sea cucumbers are all over the bay, in spring they release eggs and sperm into the water in synchronized spawning events, and the larvae take several weeks to develop and grow little tube feet and settle back on the bottom as juvenile cukes. On Saturday, on my first tow off the Bar Harbor town dock, I just happened to capture the first major spawning event of the year, that probably happened Friday, March 26th. I’ve attached a couple of pictures of the orange embryos that were taken using a microscope (the larvae are about a millimeter across). They are all in the early stages of cell divison.

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Orange-footed sea cucumber (Cucumaria frondosa) embryos. Left: 4-cell stage. Right: Three embryos in early development, from a 2-cell to about a 32-cell stage. The embryos are about 1mm in diameter.

Also on Saturday, a first-year COA student, Quinn Jonas, was at Anemone Cave at low tide, and saw rough-mantled nudibranchs (Onchidoris bilamellata) and their white ribbon egg masses. These nudibranch are the most common ones in the bay, and you can find them in lots of places at low tide.

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On the left is the adult rough-mantled nudibranch, Onchidoris bilamellata, with its exposed gills (top part of its body), on the right the white sheets of eggs, some flattened and some vertical in the picture that looks a bit like a white fish or snake. Photos by Quinn Jonas.

Finally, my favorite thing this time of year is to go down to the rocky intertidal at low tide and look for the annual recruitment of baby barnacles. After copulating with neighbors in the fall, the adult barnacles brood the young over the winter, and then in late winter release larvae. The planktonic larvae then go through multiple filtering-feeding stages before changing into a last stage, a cyprid larvae, that looks to me like a tiny grain of rice or a seed (only really, really small). These larvae land on rocks and then in a few days metamorphose into the volcano-shaped juvenile barnacles that we are used to seeing. I was doing some rockweed work Saturday and stopped by intertidal some rocks with a couple of students to see if they had started settling on rocks, and they had. These pictures are from today at Northwest Cove in Bar Harbor, but I first saw Saturday at the COA beach. On Saturday I might have seen one metamorphosed larvae, today I saw a bunch at a different beach.

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Northern rock barnacles, Semibalanus balanoides. On the left a small adult barnacle with a small cyprid larvae to its left. Center: More small cyprid larvae, withe a couple of metamorphosed into the juvenile ‘volcano’ morphology. Right: Small adult barnacles with dozens of young larvae that have settled above them on the rock, some of them have metamorphosed.

Thanks to the students that came out on Saturday to see some of this and help out: Quinn, Simone, Molly, Sil, and Emily Rose. Happy spring everyone, I did also see a tulip leaf starting to stick up out of the soil in our planter today, so maybe we will soon have some other signs of spring. I think I have already heard some wood frogs, and I expect the peepers to start going any day. — Chris

COA gets 5 Maine SEA Grant Undergraduate Scholarships for 2020

Editors note: This fall COA students were awarded 5 of the 10 Maine Sea Grant Undergraduate Scholarships for 2020, along with students from Maine Maritime Academy, University of New England (UNE), and Saint Joseph’s College of Maine. These students represent some of the variety that our students have in their projects and interests. I asked one of them, Kiernan Crough, to compile some notes from each of the awardees. Below is his compliation. – Chris Petersen

Olivia Jolley (‘21) Since arriving at COA, my interest in marine studies has grown in unexpected ways. My passion for marine species has grown from sharks and a few other groups to include invertebrates and algae, microorganisms and marine mammals, and the marine environment itself. 

Through courses like Fisheries, Fishermen, and Fishing Communities, I have studied management systems governing marine resources and the challenges they face as well as the value of marine life to the culture and livelihoods of coastal communities, especially here in Maine. I am intrigued by the relationships of people and places and species, and I have found new ways to explore these connections–oral history collection, museum curation, visual art, and more. I have continued to explore my marine pursuits through visual art on my own time and through opportunities at COA. In addition to marine-focused projects in courses like Illustration, I designed an independent study in Marine Illustration and completed an artist residency at Mount Desert Rock, one of the college’s remote island research stations. I became so enamored with the station that I spent the next summer at the Rock as station co-manager and experimenting with a film-based biological survey with my co-manager Annaleena Vaher.

This year I will be working on a history of Mount Desert Rock for my senior project, working with the marine mammal skeleton collections, and figuring out what my next step is after graduation. Currently, I hope to take a gap year (or maybe more) to acquire more field experience and explore, and then I plan to pursue further education and a career in a marine field that keeps me involved with the ocean and continues to provide new experiences and challenges. 

Camden Hunt (‘22) I’m researching the relationship between the ocean and human action, largely with regard to seafood processing. I recently completed an internship with Mapping Ocean Stories, focused largely on Maine’s historic sardine industry. I put together a large body of poetry, as well as created, wrote, and produced a radio show for Coastal Conversations on WERU. Recently, a different body of poetry related to herring smoking went on the Downeast Fishery Trail Website, and I was able to do some archival work at the McCurdy’s Smokehouse Museum in Lubec.

Through this work, I’ve been able to investigate the way history exists within coastal communities in a way I was never previously able – I’ve been able to do work that put me directly inside of seafood processing facilities that inspired art and writing.

Hallie holding up her prized sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima)

Hallie Arno (‘22) My interests in marine science are pretty far-reaching right now. I’m really excited about aquaculture research and the potential aquaculture has for Maine, but also skeptical of some of its limitations. I have been involved in aquaculture research and hope to pursue that to help make aquaculture more sustainable and viable. Right now I am working for Maine Sea Grant analyzing the patterns through space and time of Double-Crested Cormorants in the Penobscot River. I’m interested in the role they have in the ecology of the river, since they may be predators of anadromous fish such as salmon and alewives, and the management implications of that. Last summer, I worked at Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership doing field research on aquaculture scallops and kelp to try to answer industry questions. This fall I’ve been working on the COA aquaculture site and have been working with commercial wild and farmed seaweed harvesters to learn more about seaweed research and management.

Jillian Igoe (‘22) My studies in marine science aim to bridge multiple disciplines to research not only how ocean systems work, but also the cultures, policies and histories of people who live on coasts and islands relate to these systems. My main interest is in mobilizing biological and cultural frameworks in order to research the potential of an ecosystem such as the Gulf of Maine to adapt to ongoing environmental changes. In order to look into this potential, I would like to explore trophic relationships – specifically pertaining to the impact of biodiversity loss on phytoplankton-zooplankton dynamics. 

In the past, I carried out an independent research project assessing the impacts of temperature change on the northern star coral (Astrangia poculata) at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. I have also held an internship position at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute analyzing images and quantifying sediment motion caused by waves within the Vineyard Sound captured by a sonar device. Additionally, I gathered data on soft-shell clam populations with my Marine Biology class for the Bar Harbor Marine Resources Committee and the Maine Department of Resources.

Kiernan Crough (‘22) I’m a third year student hailing from the rolling hills of western Massachusetts. While at COA, I’ve taken pretty much every fish and ocean related class that’s been offered in an effort to create a well-rounded understanding into the aspects of not only biology, physics, and ecology of the marine environment, but also the communities of people who have historically relied on the ocean for their livelihood. 

Last year, I participated in the Caribbean Reef Expedition with SEA Semester which entailed studying a diversity of topics such as how fisheries are managed, how the global ocean currents circulate, how the whaling industry collapsed, and when we traveled to the Caribbean, how to sail. Aboard the 134’ SSV Corwith Cramer, we traveled along the Lesser Antilles, collecting samples from the coral reefs of each island we visited and learning about the histories and cultures of the communities who relied upon the reefs for food, protection from erosion, and their cultural significance. Throughout this time, a classmate and I conducted our own independent research on the effects of marine protected areas on local reef health and species diversity. In conjunction with the data collected from the reef, we interviewed local stakeholders in order to assess the level of local involvement in marine conservation and investigate the potential correlation between their involvement with the marine protected area and the overall effectiveness of that protected area. 

Kiernan oystering with MDI Oysters at low tide in Goose Cove.

Before I graduate, I hope to acquire more experience in the field and apply my knowledge to tackling real world problems. Specifically, I plan on conducting and participating in field research at the Edward McC. Blair Marine Research Station on Mount Desert Rock. My main interest lies with shark behavior and understanding how their territory is shifting in connection with climate change. The Gulf of Maine has been dubbed by some as the fastest warming body of water in the world, and I’m curious to investigate how that has affected the behavior and biology of the sharks who visit our coast. As a localized zone of high biological productivity caused by upwelling and home to a seasonal colony of seals, Mount Desert Rock provides a perfect location to monitor the presence of sharks and their impacts on the local ecology. 

Six years of Maine Sea Grant Undergraduate Scholarships at COA: Part 2

June 1 is the deadline for the Maine Sea Grant Undergraduate Scholarship.  In a previous post, I highlighted the first group of COA students to have these scholarships. I thought I’d focus again on the recipients of this scholarship, but this time look at the four current students that have the awards, Leena Vaher, Emma Ober, Aya Kumagai, and Aliza Leit.  For me, what I think they illustrate really well is the diversity of ways that students navigate our curriculum, and how they use their own combination of opportunities to produce a really strongly focused curriculum, even when that focus differs dramatically among students. 

Among the student summaries below, there are some common themes. All of them have spent time off campus taking classes , either on a boat (SEA semester) or in a different country (Mexico, New Zealand). All of them have spent time doing fieldwork, either at marine labs, one of our island research stations (Great Duck Island or Mount Desert Rock), or in the local mudflats or intertidal streams. Finally, all of them are working with marine resources and people, either fishermen, aquaculturists or tourists, and are trying to communicate their work to a broader audience.  It’s a great group of students and I hope you enjoy their summaries and pictures – Chris 

Aliza and Emma seining in Northeast Creek on Mount Desert Island attempting to get  silversides for a Cornell Professor studying their genetics (COA alum Nina Therkildsen)

Leena Vaher ’21. I am a third-year student and my interest at COA is to combine conservation biology with filmmaking in order to enhance communication between science and the public. I have always been interested in both of these subjects and COA has offered unique resources and opportunities that have helped me to draw connections between these two fields.

During the past two years, I have spent some time on one of the COA Islands,  Mount Desert Rock. During the first summer out there, I immersed myself in the wildlife and followed around harbor and grey seals, herring and great lack-backed gulls, various shorebirds, falcons who were rare visitors, and anyone really who moved. My goal was to capture the life that a small rock in the middle of the Atlantic ocean offers. It was an amazing opportunity since every day the Rock became larger and larger, as I found more interesting behaviors to capture and stories to document. Just a few examples could be seeing a Spotted sandpiper hunting down a fly or hearing male Grey seals hauling in dusk. Also, being surrounded by the ocean, one has to be creative with repairs or new ideas. It was a wonderful experience to be limited by resources and be creative with existing materials we had on the Rock in order to build something useful for my project.

The second summer brought me back to the Rock but this time into a slightly different role — I interned as a co-station manager of the research station. Together with a fellow station-manager, we pioneered an experiment to build an “underwater camera trap” which actually was a buoy with an attached GoPro camera. We tried to capture footage of predatory fish around the Rock and did manage to see Pollock, Haddock, and diving Cormorants. We never got footage of our “target” species, Great White Shark, but we saw it swimming further away. An exciting project to continue! The summer also offered several learning experiences in leadership and offered so many good friendships. (PS – We have included another short video of Lenna’s at the end of this post.)

Another opportunity to bridge science and media was in a class called Fisheries, Fishermen, and Fishing Communities where for my final project, I had a chance to follow a small segment of life of diadromous fish — elvers and Alewives crossing the Somesville dam. We were all connected with a local fisheries person and I met Rustin Taylor who taught me about the elver fishery and much more. It was really interesting to film elvers who had swam all the way from the Sargasso Sea and now climbed over a few meters tall dam wall, creating a mass that covered half of the concrete wall. I learned about resilience and dedication looking at these two species. (You can see the short video on Maine Sea Grant’s you tube channel or in a previous blogpost on anadromous fishes here).

Little did I know that a year later, I had a chance to sail in the Sargasso Sea and see eel larvae in a different stage. I participated in the SEASemester Study Abroad program and we sailed in the Caribbean Sea in order to learn about colonization, conservation and everything in between. Because of the COVID-19, the ship continued to sail instead of making port stops on Caribbean islands and we sailed over the Puerto Rico trench as well as in the Sargasso Sea where we did Neuston net toes. My individual research project focused on seabird foraging and I was lucky to continue sailing and to study seabird colonies near remote islands that one can only see from a ship.

I do not know what will come next but one is sure, I will continue to use film as a tool to communicate science with a wider audience since there are so many stories to share!

Emma Ober ’20.   Coming to COA, I started my education by exploring marine biology, something that I did not get a lot of exposure to growing up in Vermont. I found that I really loved the subject and have continued to delve deeper into ocean sciences throughout my time at COA. I completed an internship with Allied Whale during the summer between my first and second years. This involved working as a deckhand and research assistant on whale watch trips with Bar Harbor Whale Watch. I also got to spend half the summer on Mount Desert Rock, COA’s remote marine mammal research station. I loved living in the field and working with other researchers on ongoing studies as well as our own studies.

After that summer, I spent a little more time exploring marine mammal science before turning my attention to other areas. In particular, I became interested in studying fisheries science as I feel that it is an area of marine biology that can have a big impact on the lives of people around the world as well as on marine organisms and ecosystems. Over the next summer, I completed an internship at the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center (DMC) where I worked on a project that is attempting to develop a soft-shell green crab fishery to help control the growing population of this invasive species.

Left – Emma with her green crab poster from her summer at DMC. Right -Emma in Kino Bay with a mural she worked on while taking classes at Prescott College’s field station.

After leaving the DMC I decided to try to fill my craving for a study abroad experience by completing an ecoleague semester in Sonora, Mexico through the Prescott College Kino Bay Program. I spent six months at Prescott College’s field station in Kino Bay, along with two other COA students, Leah Rubin and Aliza Leit. Part of this was spent in a marine conservation field course where I worked with two other students to create an extensive report on small-scale fisheries in the area. I also spent a month in a Spanish immersion course learning beginner Spanish and living with a family in the town of Kino Viejo.

Young soft-shell clams doing well when protected from predation in screened boxes.

After returning from Mexico, I’ve focused on local fishery work for my senior project with a series of studies looking at different aspects of the soft-shell clam fishery in Downeast Maine. I am currently working on writing up a study we completed this past summer looking at predation of juvenile clams in different mudflats on Mount Desert Island – a project that I am handing off to Aliza this summer. This coming summer, I will be involved with a study analyzing data from annual reports submitted to the Maine Department of Marine Resources by towns in Downeast Maine to attempt to evaluate the strategies towns are using to manage their soft-shell clam resources.

Aya Kumagai ’21. I am currently in Hakodate, a port city that is located on the southern tip of Hokkaido (northern most of the four main islands that makes Japan). I am working in a seabird-researching lab at Hokkaido University as my internship. I am part of a research project that is looking at how seabirds might be impacted by offshore windfarms. My personal project is about the flight height of Black-tailed gulls. The plan was to leave for an offshore filed site late this month (April), but this has been postponed due to the current pandemic. If I do get to go to the island (which I really hope!!), I will be tagging two different species of gulls with GPS loggers that can give us information on where the gulls have been and how high they were flying. I will be analyzing this data to see what might impact how high the gulls fly, and I will also be learning ways to create a sensitivity map of Black-tailed gulls for offshore windfarms. The plan is to take these findings and experience back to Maine and see what applies to the gulls that breed off the coast of Maine. Both Maine and Hokkaido are areas with great potential for offshore windfarms, but also has many seabird breeding islands. I am very excited to see what might apply between these two places.

Great Duck lighthouse and the pier at Hakodate – pictures by Aya

My interest in seabirds started two summers ago when I visited Great Duck Island after my first year at COA. I was only on the island for a week, but I got to tag along with students that had projects out on the island. I got to see my first Leach’s Storm Petrel in Chole’s hand (a student that was on the island). It was like magic, and that moment, I decided that I wanted to spend my next summer on Great Duck Island researching petrels. The following summer that I spent on Great Duck Island was the best summer I have ever spent so far in my life. I investigated whether vegetation type influenced petrel burrow density and conducted a population estimate. Not only I got to practice filed-research skills (ex. using GPS units to map features, banding petrels, and taking field notes) and got the opportunity to present a poster at a conference, I also got to make many mistakes in a safe environment and learnt a lot of lessons (ex. data entry should happen every day while you can remember the details but also the importance of taking filed notes that you can read a year later and make sense out of it, string your field notes on to you so you don’t accidentally drop it when going through bushes, and more.) Sunsets were always different and beautiful, and I got to share those with friends and other creatures on the island. It was very special.

As you might be able to tell from this story, I enjoy fieldwork and my interest/passion is with ecology and conservation. These interests have taken me to many places since I came to COA. I’ve been to Eastern California in an Environmental-STEM field method course with COA geologist Sarah Hall.  I also had the opportunity to spend a term in Costa Rica with a Tropical Ecology/Conservation/Science through the lens of Art course that Stephen Ressel and Jenny Rock. We visited various field stations and conducted multiple field research projects.  It was a fascinating experience to find questions in the field and think about ways to try and answer them, but it was even more fascinating to be immersed with so many unknowns of the tropical rainforest and left with even more questions. We also got to interact with field station managers, guides, and entrepreneurs that made me re-think what conservation meant for Costa Rica and for other places on this earth.

Leena and Aya also took part in a 2-day workshop on facilitating meetings run by Maine Sea Grant (pictured above).  Left – Leena and Aya on the left with MSG staff and UMO graduate students. Right – Aya presenting and Lenna on the right listening.

I also have had the opportunity to work in Dr. Beth Dumont’s lab at Jackson Laboratory. The broad objective of this lab is to better understand the causes of various mechanisms that generates genetic diversity. I was fascinated by the idea of using genetics as a way to explore my interest in ecology and evolution. My personal project at the lab looks at the DNA satellite sequence variation in voles. The overarching goal is to assess the role of satellite DNA sequence turnover in the evolutionary history and speciation of voles. Through this experience, I was able to familiarize myself with the topics in evolutionary genetics (with a focus on microsatellites), gained skills in bioinformatics and coding (with lots of help from Dan Gatti and researchers at the lab), and had a firsthand experience of working in a research lab outside of COA. Just like the rainforest in Costa Rica, mechanisms that could be contributing to genetic diversity is full on unknowns! I hope to continue working at the lab once I am back at COA.

Aliza Liet ’21. Taking Chris Petersen’s marine biology class my freshman year at COA gave me the opportunity to explore my relationship with the ocean. After this class I became completely enamored by marine ecosystems and began seeking out other unique and exciting ways to learn about marine conservation, aquaculture, and fisheries. Through the Ecoleague program I studied at Prescott College’s Kino Bay Field Station in Sonora, Mexico on the Gulf of California during the fall of my sophomore year. This immersive and memorable experience deepened my understanding of  marine protected areas, the impacts of industrial fishing fleets, and community led marine conservation efforts (Image on left from a shrimp trawl in the Gulf of California). Throughout the spring of my sophomore year I collected, counted, and staged orange footed sea cucumber plankton from Frenchman Bay to assist Chris with an ongoing research project. I also helped install clam recruitment boxes to better understand predation and environmental stressors on soft shell clam populations for another ongoing research project.

In the fall of my junior year I left the U.S. once again to study abroad, this time in New Zealand through a consortium agreement. I studied aquaculture, biological oceanography, and marine invertebrate ecology and biology at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. This spring I am using each of these experiences to shape COA’s new Meat and Seafood Purchasing Policy which I am working on with two other students as a group independent study. In addition to working towards enacting policy change this year at an institutional level, I received a Maine Space Grant to work on a clam recruitment experiment and will be socially distancing on the mudflats this upcoming summer of 2020.

To wrap things up, here is a short video from Leena on a day at Mount Desert Rock