Good morning New York! After making it through the rollie pollie waters off the coast of New Jersey, we woke up to beautiful blue sky and the skyline of New York City in the distance. Right after breakfast as we passed the Statue of Liberty in all her glory, we got to the fun stuff: trawling on the East River (Bay Ridge Flats to be exact). The trawl brought up a bunch of cool critters: crabs, flounder, fish, conches and even a big skate! The students spent a chunk of time ID'ing the critters to put into our official logs so we can report the species and species count numbers back to the state. After ID'ing all the critters and learning a bit about their biology from Sarah, we let them all go back to their watery home of the East River.

The students checking out what we caught in the trawl and ID'ing the critters!

Welcome to Summer 2016!

And they're off!  The students had a good night on campus, getting to know each other and repacking for their Lady Maryland adventures.  After being picked up from College of Notre Dame, they spent the morning dockside getting oriented to their new floating home and starting to learn about life aboard.  Just after lunch they cast off the dock lines for their north bound trip. Check back in a day or so for tales from the high seas!!


Students boarding Lady Maryland.


Drawing numbers to determine who gets which bunk.  Hope everyone likes where fate chose for them to sleep!



Starting to get settled in and oriented to life below decks.



While 1/2 the group is below getting moved in, the other students are topsides getting oriented to where things are on deck with mate Rebecca.


Carmen, LP and Emily spend a little time getting to know some of the students.