The excitement is growing as Harbor SEALs packs to leave for the now-annual winter Cuba Field Expedition! Twenty young science scholars accompanied by Marine Biology teacher Mauricio Gonzalez and English teacher Rosie Teverow is packing to embark on three-part scientific testing in the waters of Cuba, working alongside scientists at the Universidad de Habana’s Centro de Investigaciones Marinas, with Dr. Randy Calderon Pena and his students to compare the marine debris in Havana Bay with that of Hudson-Raritan Estuary (a data set compiled since 2012 by Harbor SEALS) measuring contaminants and physical-chemical parameters. This year, under the director of SUNY StonyBrook’s distinguished professor Dr. Henry Bokuniewicz, SEALS adds another exciting project, on SGDs (submarine groundwater discharges) deploying two drum-sized devices designed to collect seepage data as part of a Pan-Caribbean study the Professor is headlining. The devices were constructed in Harbor’s own Welding CTE (thanks to Clark Dennis and students!). This is an exciting opportunity to participate in important international research with an outcome of a possible published paper (a signal honor for our hardworking students.) The third component is a coral reef project to calculate the percent cover of live, sick, and dead coral in order to determine the health of a reef.
SEALS takes our collective hat off to our partners at The Wanderers Club for their tireless support organizationally in making this experience better each time! And to Special Projects (SEA Chair) at Harbor Nan Richardson who originated the trip as a parent (2020 to Colombia, scuppered by Covid), directed it administratively since, and to the students and their parents who worked so hard to fundraise the needed subsidy of $20,000 through bake sales, raffles, funding campaigns–the grassroots team that makes the dream happen each year!