Goodbye Mama Seamans and Hello Papers

Starting where I finished up the last blog post—We made it to New Zealand! Again, I had wished we just kept going for at least another week, but sadly it had to end. It was difficult to finally get into the groove of things after two weeks at sea and then have it all be over. In addition, we all knew the upcoming week would be when all the real school work got done… so the temptation to just keep sailing was pretty great!

Yes, in case you forgot, this was a 17 unit semester abroad and we did have work to get done. Granted, some of our credit came from sail handling and such, but most of the credit is from several papers on a variety of subjects we completed. For those of you that have stuck around for all of these ridiculously long and often poorly worded blog posts of mine, maybe you remember what life was like back in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. There, all of us 19 students became friends and began to learn how to live together, but we also began our research papers we’d be completing over the course of the semester. Just a recap, my two large research papers were on the sustainability of surf tourism in Samoa and Fiji and the other was comparing waste management in Wallis & Futuna, Samoa and Fiji. 

Apia, Samoa

I ended up getting a lot of information for waste management and felt truly passionate about the topic… even considering heading back someday to help in some way (a pretty vague dream at the moment). As far as surf tourism, we were never really in the ideal location in  to get much research done on the topic. I don’t want to go into too many details about these papers, but if you want to hear more, I’d love to talk to you about them! 

Some of my classmates looked into Mormonism, shark finning, troca shells, rat eradication, eco tourism, Fa’afafine (oversimplified definition is a Samoan transgender), turtle fishing, traditional architecture, storytelling, aquaculture, and a lot more. All of us knew each others topics pretty well by the end of our travels. Despite the large variety of topics, all related to sustainability— whether that be cultural of environmental. Our class was a part of S.E.A. Semester’s SPICE program: Sustainability in Polynesian Island Cultures and Ecosystems. During most port stops we weren’t just running around the islands doing whatever (even though some pictures might seem otherwise), we usually were either trying to find people to talk to about our topics or helping a friend with their research. Some topics were definitely harder to get information on, especially for those that were kind of touchy subjects. For me, waste was a bit difficult to talk about, because people just didn’t understand why I wanted to discuss it. Imagine going to a small island where they are excited to meet you and show you their home… but all a lot of us wanted to talk about was the “shitty” stuff. 

A very good talk we had with a woman with a lot of answers, Bernadette, in Uvea.

In addition to those research papers, we also had oceanography work to complete. As mentioned in prior blog posts, the Robert C. Seamans is a research vessel that has pretty snazzy wet and dry labs. Every watch period, part of our groups were in the lab running samples or "doing science" on deck such as towing small nets to collect zooplankton. I won’t bore you with too may details because I’m assuming most of you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about when I say neuston net or copepod. All you need to know though is it was pretty damn cool, and we were getting to see things and examine parts of the oceans few people ever see. Also, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the coolest things we saw at night aboard the Seamans, was bioluminescence. This is where certain small organisms at the ocean surface light up when agitated. Thus, when you were on bow watch and looked down at where the water hit the boat, it was full of bright sparkles. In addition, when we took nets out of the water at night and sprayed them down, they would sparkle from the leftover bioluminescent organisms. Although I found all the science stuff fascinating and working in a lab kind of fun… it’s definitely not my thing. I’m happy to stick with the humanities side of environmentalism, but others found they really thrived with science— so it was a great learning experience for everyone. 

yep, that's me.

Anyway, back to New Zealand. After a couple of days staying on the ship and exploring Auckland, the time came to disembark. The night before we all left, we had a “swizzle” where there was a little bit of talent showing, trivia, and thank yous. It was great to have everyone together one last time for something fun like this, but it was definitely a little surreal. The following morning, we had to get up early to stuff our bags and clean our bunks.

It was crazy to see everything the way we found it that first night in Pago Pago. More so, it was crazy to think a new group of students would be boarding the ship in the next week. It’s hard to leave a home like that, where you shed blood, sweat and tears on the daily and would leave no trace of yourself in the end. I definitely left the ship that morning feeling like I wasn’t done with it though. To come back as a deckhand someday would be a dream come true at this point, but I know I still have a lot to learn to compare to the amazing deckhands we had on our trip.

From Auckland we headed to Leigh Marine Station at Goat Island, about an hour and a half north. This is a small campus of the University of Auckland that is used for researching the surrounding marine reserve. We had absolutely no idea what to expect, but the place ended up being absolutely gorgeous. The plot of land alone was 5 star, but the facilities happened to be great too.

probably the most exciting thing there.

Also, we got wifi… everywhere! It was glorious, but a little difficult to keep most of us focused on what we were there for. The week at Leigh was to wrap up all our papers and start/finish some other papers. Nevertheless, several of you got FaceTime calls and Facebook messages, because connection to the world felt kind of great. It was so exciting for pictures to get posted and for us to be able to talk to our family and friends without feeling rushed for time. By the end of the week however, it was definitely crunch time. I think I ended up spending 4 days sitting in the same room, in the same row, in the same chair, and next to the same sleepiest cat I’ve ever seen. Every time I looked at this cat, I envied its lack of papers it had to write.

cat out of sleeping mode, looking mischievous as ever. 

Although there was a lot to get done, we were in a beautiful hiking area and even went snorkeling one day (it was ridiculously cold though)! I think we all got everything done though? ;)

One of the hardest papers to complete for me was our oceanography paper— I had no idea what I was doing. I was assigned to look at CDOM, pH and turbidity results from our water sampling around the island of Alofi (the smaller island that makes up Futuna). By the end of the week, my paper was put together with 4 others (all having different topics) to comprise a 30+ page paper on Alofi’s waters. I was impressed, and honestly surprised we all did it!

The greatest part about all the science we did aboard the ship and the analysis after, was that these results will be used by various people, governments and organizations of these islands (and the world!) to have a better understanding of these waters. The Pacific Ocean is a huge place and so much of it goes unstudied— so to be a part of filling in some gaps of analysis for this ocean was truly incredible.