Warm thoughts on a cold day: The Bowdoin Marine Science Semester (BMSS) didn’t slow down upon return from the Kent Island Field Station. Biological Oceanography, taught by Coastal Studies Scholar Bobbie Lyons, was the first module undertaken. Closely on its heels, Marine Benthic Ecology followed, where the classroom shifted to more distant field locations. The first Benthic stop was the Sea of Cortez and Baja California, Sur. BMSS students and faculty spent 10 days in the field learning how to identify tropical fish and invertebrates to collect abundance data on newly installed transects. The data collected renders the first season of a long-term monitoring effort focused on reef communities. After the tropical adventure, the BMSS had a quick turnaround – back in the States only 24 hours – and swapped out shorts for warmer gear to head to Hurricane Island in Maine’s Penobscot Bay. Over the 4-day duration on Hurricane, the BMSS students and faculty conducted transect surveys of the rocky intertidal, took a lab practical focused on rocky intertidal organisms, and started an introduction to molecular ecology.
