Greetings from Appledore Island!
The magic of Appledore continues, and I am struck by the many things that haven’t changed (or haven’t changed much) from the founding of the lab. As is our tradition, our new students arrive at the dock, form a fire line, and pass the luggage up the rocks to be taken to their dorm porches. They begin with an orientation to the island, an updated version of our traditional fire and water talk, which now focuses on community and sustainable practices on the island. Our fire lines are recreated on Wednesday afternoons to unload all of our food for the week. Swim calls provide students and faculty the opportunity to rinse off, especially after dissections or field work, without using one of their precious showers.
Our first class, field ornithology, has come and gone. Their symposium was a highly choreographed joint presentation in which each student contributed to explaining the class project studying different factors that might affect the level of aggressive responses by Herring Gulls. They ended their course with a final bird checklist at 04:45. Yes, that was in the morning to watch the sunrise from Broad Cove. Our current classes—Marine Mammal Biology, Sustainable Fisheries, Marine Parasites and Diseases, and R by the Sea—have been collaborating on numerous excursions and discussions that show students interconnections between different areas of marine biology. Those classes now are working on their projects and planning their coffee house presentations – poems, songs, skits, or other ways of celebrating their time on Appledore. This is the current iteration of the banquets that used to end the classes on the island.
This month I had the opportunity to join classes on a sunset tour of the island, a whale watch/seabird cruise, a seal survey at Duck Island, and a working session in Palmer-Kinne (PK) lab with the Marine Parasites and Diseases students collecting data for their final project. Our Summer Undergraduate Research Group (affectionately called SURGs or interns) is bonding quickly, and each student has begun an independent project and recruited others to help in data collection. It had been several years since I taught on Appledore, and these experiences have been a reminder of how quickly students learn, how collaborative they are in their work and sharing knowledge, how the Shoals program encourages and fosters curiosity at all times on the island, and how the community we create is supportive in a myriad of ways. I am in awe of the transformative and truly immersive programs we have created for the students.
Our first two Rock Talks excited the community by providing insight into the kinds of projects that students can do and have done on the island. Our third Rock Talk encouraged students to explore the history of the lab, the island, and the region. Students were thrilled to learn about Jack Kingsbury’s book, Here’s How We’ll Do It, and many of them are now proud owners of that book about the early history of the lab.
It's hard to believe that we are already saying goodbye to some of this summer’s students. However, it is also exciting to see how much they have learned, how tightly they bonded to each other and the island, and how passionately they speak about their Shoals experience. Some things should never change.
Wishing you all beautiful summer sunsets like those I get to see from K-House on Appledore.
Sara
John M. Kingsbury Executive Director
