Unforgettable

Although the Semester at Sea Program was an intensive educational experience for Renee Reilly,
there were lighter moments aboard the research vessel.

For most students, a typical study-abroad experience entails living in a new country for a semester and absorbing local culture, but Renee Reilly's time studying abroad was far from typical.

As a senior majoring in Environmental Resource Management last spring, Reilly took part in Sea Semester, a program developed by the Sea Education Association aimed at giving students the chance to sail to the deep ocean to study various aquatic topics.

In March of 2006, the Brooklyn, N.Y., native headed to Woods Hole, Mass., to begin the six-week training and research aspect of the program onshore. Along with learning basic navigation, meteorology and sailing techniques, students planned research projects that they would investigate on the sailing portion of the trip.

"I developed a project to study marine gastropods, which are just little sea snails, and their composition and distribution along our sailing path," explains Reilly.

After her first six weeks at Woods Hole, Reilly and her fellow Sea Education Association classmates took to the open ocean. Making no stops, the students sailed from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Tahsis, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island. That took about six weeks. While on the trip, students studied various aspects of the ocean, learned how to manage life on a traditional sailing vessel and had unforgettable adventures.

"My favorite, and probably the scariest, part of the whole trip, was having control of the helm during a storm," says Reilly. "At first, I thought I was going to die, but everything turned out okay in the end."

While Reilly's experience was mostly positive, she remembers that not everything was fun and games. "We had to clean a lot! Every single day, we had to clean the ship. There was also a point where we didn't see the sun for 12 days which was depressing. But other than that, it was amazing."

In terms of educational benefits, this trip provided Reilly with firsthand experiences on how to respect and care for the environment, which she hopes to use in her endeavors in biological oceanography.

"Overall," says Reilly, "I would really recommend this program for students of all majors. It was just such an amazing experience."