by Gretchen Gerrish
While the CFL is best known for its freshwater focus, the salt, sun, and diverse coral habitats of Florida are now a welcome winter reprieve for instructors and students looking to explore the marine sciences.
Starting in 2022, associate professor Olaf Jensen and Trout Lake Station (TLS) director Gretchen Gerrish partnered with Integrative Biology assistant professor Robert Johnson to develop Field Marine Biology, a two-week Integrative Biology course during the January winterim session. UW students in environmental fields of study join the team of instructors off the Florida Keys as they learn about research that spans the marine tree of life.
Jensen studies the world’s fisheries, considering how cultural harvest and fishing practices drive dynamics at local to global scales. Johnson evaluates ecological interactions in seagrass meadows, emphasizing how sea turtle grazing and climate change affect these coastal habitats. Gerrish explores evolutionary questions about speciation and reproductive behaviors in a unique Caribbean group of bioluminescent marine ostracods who conduct firefly-like displays in shallow coral reef systems.
Week one of the course is a water-soaked launch into snorkeling. Students swim through all different types of marine habitats including seagrass meadows, mangrove islands, coral reefs, man made rock walls, and artificial reef structures. Students keep a daily field journal capturing lists and observations of all the creatures and behaviors observed. Artistic, eloquent, reflective, empirical; submitted field journals tell of personal learning journeys and demonstrate the value of experiential immersive hands-on course work.
Kymberly Coolidge, a recent UW graduate and CFL field technician who participated in 2024 reflects that “the course was a great way to dive deeper into marine biology and to get hands-on experience in aquatic field techniques. I met so many great people and was able to see the organisms we were learning about up close!”
In week two, students work in small groups to develop research questions, design methods, collect data, and report their findings. Things often don’t go as planned and students are often surprised. But they learn that scientific success is stepping through the process with an open mind, rejecting and supporting hypotheses, and letting the organisms and environment teach you through those interactions and outcomes.
“The Florida field course was by far THE BEST learning experience of my life,” writes 2022 participant, Jumana Tanner. “I not only got to see myself grow as a person, but also got to share the real excitement of field work with other peers and professors. From the luminous night creatures to the playful manatees, every second of it was an adventure waiting to happen.”
This January, NSF Postdoctoral Fellow Ray Allen, who is based at TLS, will join in the rotation of instructors bringing his expertise in sea urchins, developmental biology, and community-embedded research to a new crew of students. Combining team teaching with early and mid-career instructors is great for professional training and for the students, who receive hours of individualized interaction in this immersive setting. The Field Marine Biology course is one more way in which the CFL supports hands-on aquatic training that expands students’ problem solving, creativity, exposure to environments and leads them toward potential career paths.