An Ode to the Working Intern
workinginterns | 12:26 pm | August 9, 2009 | Uncategorized
You start your day by waking to the sound of the gulls
Long calling in chorus as the sun peeks through your window.
You roll over to check the time
And give yourself another ten minutes regardless.
You drag yourself to breakfast
Assuming bacon will be present in some form.
You enjoy the company of your fellow interns
Before you head back to start rinsing syrup from each plate.
Plates begin to grow and cups begin to stack
But you keep trudging on, working intern.
You finish in the kitchen and move to the bathroom
To see the carnage from the previous night’s showers
Sinks, mirrors, sweep, mop, get up all the hair
The bathrooms go by quick, but compost does not.
You pack up the gator, fend off the gulls, and get on your way
Trying to avoid running over a gull on bumpy terrain
You reach the compost bin, covered in maggots
And manage to step into the trench, now your shoes smell.
You start dumping each bucket, one at a time until finally
You get that one bucket that splatters everywhere, including on you.
You head back to rinse the buckets and your legs
But the bleach turns your black shirt poka dot pink.
Let’s face it, you need a break and settle yourself on the couch
Cause yesterday was trash day and turndown service at K-House.
The day before, you were busy early
Collecting maggot-infested trash, recycling, and compost from everywhere
Piling it all high in the truck and running down to the high tide dock
Cause high tide was at 10, it had to be ready by 9:45.
Next came K-House, The VIP-mini hotel on the island
Your fellow intern had just power-washed the deck a few days before
But you found yourself on your hands and knees scrubbing
Thanks to the explosive bowel movements of the gulls
Back to today, your fellow interns took on lunch duties
Giving you a well-deserved break, nap time perhaps?
But you don’t nap long before the Kingsbury sounds off,
Time for the food run!
You head down to the dock and find your place in the chain
And start passing on all the food, box by box, tray by tray
Until you empty the Kingbury’s hold, but no time to rest
Because you get to do it all over again in the kitchen, hooray!
Now that your arms are sore, you start on dinner prep
Which has its perks, particularly helping the chefs cook
And taking samples here and there, yummy cookie dough!
You then clean a few pans to get a head start on dinner clean up.
Dinner comes and goes and you find yourself rinsing plates, yet again
The pile of plates begin to grow and the cups begin to stack
But as you wash dishes, some people take the time to say thank you.
This may not mean much to your fellow interns, but to you it means so much.
You start to break up boxes and sweep the kitchen
The chefs even chip in sometimes
You really appreciate it when they do
Cause you’ve had a busy couple of days being short-staffed
You’re in the final stretch, mopping your way home
The floor is shining and clean, the day’s work coming to an end
But not 5 minutes after your done, you see your clean floor ruined
Muddy footprints everywhere, your triumph turns to defeat.
But it’s that perfect sunset, it’s breathtaking beauty that
No photo or painting can replicate, that brings you back.
No sunset is the same here; each one brings a certain peace
It’s colors are spectacular as it disappears behind the clouds or the city
But its not all work, there’s plenty of play
Whether its exploring island, visiting Transect 22 or the Shoe Tree
Or getting a soccer game going outside the Grass Lab
You can always kick back and take it easy
And at the end of the day, there are still more ways to play
Something as simple as jumping off the dock, so frigidly refreshing
Or heading up to Bartels to watch Supertroopers
To play Moth Darts and Bumper Pool, or simply hang
Whether you work one week or ten, your last day comes
You wonder where it all went, how fast it went by.
You reflect on all those experiences, the good and the bad
You walk away stronger and know you’ll miss every bit.
You leave with a greater appreciation for the hard work
The staff puts into keep The Shoals running.
You appreciate the time you spent there that much more
And lastly, you appreciate the working intern, cause you’ve been there.
-Justin Stilwell
Charismatic-Pelagic-Megafauna
workinginterns | 8:21 am | August 8, 2009 | Uncategorized
Text by Heather Olins
Marine Environmental Science Teaching Assistant
Photos by VIrginia Winkler
Marine Environmental Science Student
We went out on a whale watch yesterday with the class. I was excited, but didn’t have many expectations. I figured we might see a few shadowy figures in the distance and be convinced that they were whales. I could not have been more wrong! We must have seen 50 different whales, and we saw some incredibly close. Not only did we see whales up close, but we saw some really amazing behavior.
We blew past some Minke whales on the way out because the captain had been told about Humpbacks a ways out. We stopped to see some Finbacks chowing down on a huge bait ball. This also allowed us to see enormous numbers of Shearwaters and Wilson’s Storm Petrils sharing in the whales feast. After being thoroughly amazed by these examples of the planet’s second largest organism we went off in search of Humpbacks.
We came across a mother and calf and they shocked us by getting right up close to the boat and doing partial breaches. We were able to see the massive head if the young Humpback right next to the boat. We watched the two eat and dive for a while and then went in search of other whales. For a while we were all on sensory overload because in any direction you could see spouting or diving (showing us their tail). There were plenty of Finbacks around as well and even a few Minkes.
The grand climax came just about as we were getting ready to head back. We came across a group of 3 humpbacks that, after gorging themselves on baby herring, were incredibly playful. We were treated to flipper slapping in unison, synchronized dives, and lots of breaching! Seeing a humpback whale come all the way out of the water is not something I will forget, ever. One particularly feisty animal breached 5 times in a row. It really seemed like they were performing just for us. When we finally had to pull ourselves away two of the whales began to tail-slap the water repeatedly, as if waving goodbye to us. This continued until we were out of view. Truly amazing!
Humpback surfacing
Humpback breaching
Another beautiful day…
GoShoals | 11:25 am | July 16, 2009 | Uncategorized
Click for the larger versions -
(Thanks Robin!)
Life on the Rocks: A Tale of Shoals Marine Lab and Other Thoughts and Meditations
workinginterns | 11:04 am | July 4, 2009 | Uncategorized
I’ve been living here on Appledore Island, Maine for over a month now, and I find that there is very little that I miss about the mainland. Being from Kansas City and going to school in Oberlin, Ohio, my decision to come to Shoals was a leap into a foreign, nautical territory. It was as if I was driven by some primal urge to live on the edge of things after living in the middle of things for my entire life—by the sea. The first two weeks of “summer” I adventured around Appledore and the other Isles of Shoals in search of rare migratory birds in Field Ornithology, taught by the wonderfully chill and awesome David Bonter. Having only a vague idea of what birds were before the class, I now carry binoculars with me whenever I leave the island hoping to catch a glimpse of a Northern Gannet plunging into the water for a meal, or a graceful Sooty Shearwater shooting over the updrafts of the waves.
It is amazing how much college changes you. And because Shoals is a cooler, wilder extension of college, I think it is interesting how living on Appledore has changed me. My decision to stay here as a working intern following my class has resulted in a strange concept—free time. Shocking, I know, but having time to reflect has made me contemplate what exactly it means to be a biologist. Or maybe not just a biologist, but a person who cares about what is happening to the Earth. Why don’t more people care about stopping pollution, overfishing, global warming, ocean acidification, etc.? I didn’t even know what the dangers of some of these things were before I came to Shoals.
I remember thinking as a little kid, how cool it was going to be to live in the distant year 2050. I thought by then that the earth would be miraculously cured. Everyone would use renewable power and landfills would be an antiquated idea. I wanted to fast-forward to a future where they have already solved the major problems of the present. Being here has kick-started my desire for sustainability and conservation—something so easy to forget when you are preoccupied with school and work.
Sitting on the rocks on the eastern shore of the island, looking out at the misty blur of the horizon, a mix of grey and blue and purple—I know that there is so much out there to learn. Waves pummel the rocks in the intertidal, the ascophyllum pulsing with each current. The fog obscures the mainland so that you can only see water and rock. Irises and daisies seem to glow in the encroaching twilight. Gulls “yeow” and “kak” in the background of all of this, now so familiar to me and all inhabitants of Appledore, but also so little understood. It struck me that I am sitting in the middle of a wilderness. Not that there is nothing here, there is: shoe trees, caves, cliffs, coves, waves crashing onto Transect 22, amazing people, great food, great music, and nighttime adventures through the mud (!!!).
No, Shoals is not a wilderness—it’s just that everything surrounding me at this moment is wild.
And as cold as it sometimes is, and as foggy as it sometimes is, there is a wild beauty to this place unlike anything I’ve ever known.
–Bud Stracker
100,000th Bird
GoShoals | 10:55 am | June 5, 2009 | Uncategorized
Appledore Island Migration Banding Station: A Gray Catbird, Dumetella carolinensis, banded on May 19, 2009 was the 100,000th bird (pictured below) banded at our Appledore station!
Catching No End of Fish: The Archaeology of a Fishing Station on the Isle of Shoals
GoShoals | 1:02 pm | March 31, 2009 | Uncategorized
Come join the Massachusetts Archaeological Society’s Northeast chapter in welcoming Dr. Nathan Hamilton back to the Peabody Museum for his presentation An Off Shore Fishing Station: Historic Archaeology of the Isle of Shoals.”” Dr. Hamilton will be discussing the recent archaeological excavations that he has been conducting on the Isle of Shoals, which are a group of islands located off the coast of New Hampshire… read more!
Star Island on Ghost Hunters
GoShoals | 6:56 pm | March 19, 2009 | Uncategorized
Ghost Hunters did a little Star Island review – you can watch it on Hulu. For those of you who are going out to Shoals for the first time, Star is our neighbor island and they have ice cream.
Shoals Marine Lab Summer 2009 Facebook Group
GoShoals | 10:43 pm | March 1, 2009 | Uncategorized
Heading out to Shoals for the summer of 2009? Friend us on facebook and join the official Shoals Marine Lab summer 2009 facebook group! It will be awesome.
Gulls in the News
GoShoals | 9:41 pm | February 24, 2009 | Uncategorized
Julie Ellis’ gulls made it into the Cornell news!
Rare gull banded at Shoals Marine Lab lands in Florida
A rare lesser black-backed gull banded in May 2007 at Shoals Marine Laboratory on Appledore Island off the coast of New Hampshire was spotted on Jan. 21 in Florida. While at Appledore Island, the bird had also nested and paired with a native herring gull… read the full story.
Learn even more at appledorellbg.
Shoals in the Winter
GoShoals | 12:15 pm | February 19, 2009 | Uncategorized
A beautiful set of island winter photos from Hal Weeks (if you want to see the island in the summer, check out the tour):
