SAS Voyage Blog

Before every Semester at Sea voyage, students leave family, friends and familiar surroundings to join a shipboard community.  In the midst of the excitement and anticipation of an around the world adventure, every once in a while students miss the closeness of family and the opportunity to discuss a problem or seek advice from an adult. For 510 students on the Spring 2010 voyage, the Extended Family program helps fill that void.

Early in the morning, the MV Explorer slows to a 4 knot crawl and the breakfast crowd on the aft deck begins to speculate about the reason.  Then, off the back of the ship appear two small, cylindrical mesh nets, attached to stout cords that are being towed through the water-.  Someone remarks , “It’s Dan Abel and he is trolling for breakfast.”

Indeed it is Semester at Sea marine biology professor Dan Abel,  but he is dragging for plankton, drifting organisms that occupy the upper regions of open sea.  Within an hour, the samples from the nets have been placed under a microscope with the images  projected on a screen for the students in his 8 a.m. marine biology class.