By the time this blog posts, all of the students and instructors will have left Discovery Bay Marine Lab, our home away from home for the past two weeks. Prof. Peterson and myself would sincerely like to thank the staff and personnel of DBML for facilitating our experience here. We come back here every year because it’s a great place to run a course and we’ve developed good friendships here. Last year was the 50th anniversary of Discovery Bay Marine Lab (which interestingly enough was established (in part) by a scientist from Stony Brook University – Dr. Thomas Goreau !), and the Adminstration of DBML presented our group with a plaque celebrating our more than 10 year relationship of running the course here.

I asked, but unlike my local coffee shop punch card, coming to DBML for 10 years does not get us a free visit next year! We sincerely appreciate the recognition from DBML as part of their 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2018.

But even more importantly, Brad and myself would like to thank the students of the 2019 MAR 388 course for joining us in Jamaica to spend a lot of time underwater, learning lots of common and latin names, seeing how field science works (or sometimes doesn’t work), and learning more about each other’s lives. There’s been a little bit of rain and a lot of sunshine (both meteorologically and emotionally), but I think I can speak for all of us when I say, we’re not quite ready to leave Jamaica yet. Most of us also need to try to find where we stashed our pants as NY is about 60F colder than Jamaica so shorts aren’t going to cut it at JFK…

We started this year’s blog with a “before” group photo and we’ll end it with the “after” — same students but a bit more tan, a few sunburns, some scrapes and bumps, a LOT more knowledge about coral reef ecosystems and an ENORMOUS amount of fun memories.

Here’s the class after all the exams and nearly all the assignments are done (final due date is tmrw at 930am). I have no idea why Paul decided to stand directly behind Gillian for every one of the six photos we took…

Profs. Peterson and Warren