Island Updates

Organization of Biological Field Stations Meeting

Meeting participants take time to explore the North Pole Basin with Ian Bicknell, RMBL Director

Meeting participants take time to explore the North Pole Basin with Ian Bicknell, RMBL Director

At the end of September, I was fortunate enough to spend a week at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab in Gothic, CO, attending the Organization of Biological Field Stations (OBFS) Annual Meeting. OBFS is a network that supports over 300 field stations around the world with the mission “to help member stations increase their effectiveness in supporting critical research, education, and outreach programs. We pursue this goal in a manner that maximizes diversity, inclusiveness, sustainability, and transparency.” Individuals are able to trouble shoot and problem solve by accessing the wealth of knowledge contained in this network and the annual meeting provides the opportunity for face-to-face interactions, which leads to collaborations and partnerships. I traveled to the meeting with Laura Sewall, Director of the Bates Morse Mountain Conservation Area and Coastal Center at Shortridge, and my co-PI on the NSF Field Station and Marine Laboratory planning grant. We used the meeting as a venue to gather ideas and make connections to further formalize the network of Gulf of Maine field stations, marine labs, and larger research institutions.


I attended a session on how to develop programs with community colleges to increase field science opportunities to those who may not otherwise have access - Hurricane would be a great venue! Other sessions offered ideas on fundraising events and efforts to supplement operating revenue to keep a field station financially viable over time and establishing and maintaining long-term monitoring projects with the aim of providing services to surrounding communities and the broader scientific community.


Miles O’Brien, a freelance journalist and science correspondent for the PBS News Hour, and Mark Ruffalo, an actor and environmental activist who started Water Defense, connected to the meeting through Skype to speak to the entire group. They spoke about their experiences communicating science to the public and the dire need for increasing science literacy. They emphasized the importance of field stations as providing access to nature and in understanding our world through the scientific process.  


Overall, it was an incredible week in a beautiful place and I am reenergized to continue the work to create field science opportunities for middle and high school students through career scientists on Hurricane Island.


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Fryeburg Academy

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Fryeburg Academy's AP Environmental Science class joined us for a fast-paced 24-hour visit! Upon arrival, the students explored Hurricane’s historical roots and sustainable systems. They then hopped on one of our boats to learn how to haul lobster traps with Oakley. The rest of the afternoon was spent with Chloe and Jacque, hiking and learning about basic botany and phenology (the study of seasonal change) in preparation for the development of a phenology focused research project.

After a tasty, fresh-caught lobster dinner and watching the nearly full moon rise over Greens Island, we headed to the lab where the students developed their research question and methods.  The students were interested in investigating if paper birch trees on the south end were further along in their phenophase (an observable stage or phase in the annual life cycle of a plant) than paper birch on the east side of the island. Early the next morning, the students were back in the lab narrowing down a procedure and then they headed out into the field to collect their data.

They split into two groups – one headed to the south end and one to the east side of the island.  Each group walked along a 60m transect. In order to randomly select paper birch trees, the students would stop every 15m along the transect and then collect data on the nearest paper birch to that stopping point.  At each tree, students quantified the color of leaves on a select number of branches as well as other data about that tree including height, circumference, and available sunlight.

Back in the lab, each group compiled their data and spent time analyzing the results, which were then presented to the Hurricane Island staff. Even in such a short amount of time, students were able to collect enough data to conclude that paper birch on the eastern side of the island were further along in their phenophase than paper birch on the south side of island.  We had a great time with the Fryeburg students and their instructor and we hope they enjoyed their whirlwind trip of Hurricane as well!

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Proctor Academy Ocean Classroom

Students from Proctor Academy’s Ocean Classroom semester program started the first leg of their journey on Hurricane where we enjoyed two days exploring the island and learning some valuable skills that students can take with them to sea as they begin their sailing voyage aboard the Schooner Roseway.

During the first part of the program we showed everyone around Hurricane’s sustainable systems and then took students on a hike around the island that revealed the foundations and other artifacts that remain from when Hurricane was an operational granite quarry town. Students looked through historical images and identified the church, town hall, and company store from the granite era. We also recently received the original organ from Hurricane’s Catholic Church back from North Haven, and students even took turns playing it and reviving some of the old sounds of the island in the 1900s.

After the history lesson, students learned about how to read nautical charts and perfected some basic knots including a bowline, slipknot, figure 8, and clove hitch. Each watch then raced to get everyone to successfully tie all of the knots and demonstrate their new skills.

Students also had a chance to explore the low-tide zone near Gibbon’s Point to get a snapshot of the type of organisms that make up rocky intertidal areas in Maine. We caught a lot of green crabs (some students dared to eat a live green crab), watched barnacles feeding in tide pools, and caught hermit crabs scampering around trying to hide among empty periwinkle shells.

We also enjoyed showing students how to use ornithology field guides and binoculars to identify seabirds. While we mostly saw herring gulls and eider ducks off Hurricane, we expect students to encounter a variety of amazing seabirds during their ocean voyage. We also talked about how seabirds are adapted to survive in the ocean environment.

Finally, we discussed Maine’s commercial fisheries and how important the lobster industry is to the economy of Maine’s coastal communities. We took a look at the data from this past year’s fishing season from the Maine Department of Marine Resources, and students learned about the history of some of Maine’s other historically important fisheries including the cod fishery and the scallop fishery. Students learned about how Maine manages and regulates fisheries to try and avoid overharvesting different species, and we discussed the challenges of trying to manage species that have complicated and not fully understood life histories and behaviors. Students also had a chance to see how lobster fishing works in action by going out on the boat with Oakley to watch him haul his recreational lobster traps. We got enough lobster to enjoy a lobster dinner that night, followed by a birthday celebration!

We wish students fair seas and strong winds during their next adventure on Roseway headed towards the Caribbean, and you can follow along with their trip’s progress at the school’s blog.

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Pathways 101 Deer Isle-Stonington High School

We had a great time working with students from Deer Isle-Stonington High School’s Pathways 101 program: an introductory course that is focused on developing core skills so students understand the project-based learning principles that guide the Marine Studies Pathway and the Arts Pathway programs at the high school.

Students started the program with a discussion about how they operate in groups and the constructive and destructive behaviors that individuals can bring to the table to hold group work back or help group work move forward.

Students then took on two small design challenges where they competed to build the tallest tower using just 1 meter of tape, 10 pieces of spaghetti, and a marshmallow. They also worked as a group to design aluminum foil boats to hold the most rocks while still remaining buoyant in a tub of water. Both of these activities were an opportunity for students to learn how to work as a group towards a common goal, and figure out their individual strengths within the group.

Afterwards we shifted gears to talk about the issue of marine debris in our oceans. We discussed the sources of marine debris, how long it takes to degrade in the marine environment, and how marine debris can harm marine organisms through ingestion and entanglement.

The group then split into two teams, and we recorded data on marine debris we collected from along Hurricane’s shoreline. Between the two groups we collected over 400 pieces of trash ranging from pieces of fishing debris (buoys, line, and bait strapping ties) to household waste like plastic bottles and food wrappers. One group even returned with a full tire!

The next challenge was for the groups to design a sculpture using the marine debris they collected to communicate a message about some aspect of why marine debris is a problem. Students got inspired by looking at examples of how other artists have tackled the problem including Chris Jordan and Angela Pozzi.

After planning their art projects to include the materials they would use, the message they were trying to communicate, and the design they were planning to implement, students spent the whole morning on the second day working as a group to develop their marine debris sculptures.

One group chose to make a lobster that was choked up with fishing debris, showing that trash generated by the lobster industry can impact the health of the resource it is trying to harvest. The other group built a series of marine organisms entangled in marine debris including some fish made out of plastic bottles with a comb for a dorsal fin, and a seagull made out of bottles and a Styrofoam cup.

We enjoyed working with students to complete their projects and were impressed by how quickly they learned to work together as a team. This program is part of their formative assessment on group work, and we look forward to seeing the product from their summative assessment! We also appreciate their enthusiasm and dedication to help us keep Hurricane’s coastline clean!​

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Brookwood School 6th Grade

Sixth grade students from Brookwood School in Manchester, MA joined us on Hurricane for a fun-filled 24-hour program (September 17-18, 2015) that helped students kick off their school year as new members of the upper school. We enjoyed showing students some of our favorite parts of the Island and also took advantage of early fall by harvesting apples from Hurricanes trees to make cider.

Other highlights from the program involved a full-group exploration of the low tide area between Hurricane Island and Two Bush Island. Students left few places unexplored and found all sorts of exciting invertebrates including baby lobsters, sea urchins, tunicates, and we also found some lumpfish!

We spent the rest of the program with students in smaller groups rotating to different stations where they learned about maps, the forest ecosystem, Maine’s lobster fishery, and how Hurricane operates off the grid.

At the mapping station, students learned the parts of a map and how different maps communicate different messages. Making their own maps of their advisors classroom, students learned the importance of clear symbols, legends and scale bars in painting a picture of a foreign land. Students then collaborated and got creative as they worked to create a map of their Journey to Hurricane. This activity gave the students a chance to think about where their journey started, what were important landmarks and how best to communicate what this journey meant to them and they did it as a team!

Students also explored Hurricane's forest ecosystem starting with granite.  They learned about primary succession and how soil came to be on Hurricane.  Then we talked about how different types of plants would have arrived to Hurricane and how we can learn about a lot about a forest through tree rings.  After that, we discussed ways wildlife impact the forest and looked for wildlife tracks and scats. Finally, we created a Hurricane forest food web as a team and connected common species of Hurricane to each other based on habitat and diet requirements.  Each student was a different species and became directly or indirectly connected to one another through the web so that when one student moved, everyone moved.

During our lobster explorations, students were challenged to draw lobsters only from hearing their classmates describe them. We then talked about how important the lobster industry is to the State of Maine, making up 78% of Maine’s fisheries income last year and how different fisheries have been important to Maine historically. Students took a look at the collapse of the cod industry, and got a snapshot of how global ocean warming and acidification will impact the Gulf of Maine. Students also had a chance to go see our recreational lobster traps get hauled up and more about the mechanics of lobster fishing. There was also some time for students to jig for fish off the dock—where we caught and released a few pollock and mackerel.

At the sustainability stations, we learned about Hurricane’s off-the-grid campus and students also had a chance to really think about what sustainability means. In ecology, sustainability is the capacity to endure; it is how biological systems remain diverse and productive indefinitely. To pursue sustainability is to create and maintain the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony to support present and future generations. Part of understanding sustainability involves looking at how previous communities on Hurricane functioned: students learned about the human history on the island, form the quarrying era, to Outward Bound and then to our current use of the island. We talked about how each community acquired essential needs (food, water, energy, and shelter) and how we can learn from the past about how we want to live and operate on Hurricane. We also discussed our water system and how we pump and distribute water and where the water ends up after it is goes down the drain, then we talked about food and the cycle of growing food to eating and composting. Some students helped plant beds of hearty spinach and kale in Hurricanes garden that we will enjoy as the season gets chillier out on the island. We finished by talking about solar electricity and the solar thermal system, and the difference between using generators run by fossil fuels vs. photovoltaic panels and the different between the inputs of materials for each.

We had a great time with Brookwood and we hope to see students and classes back out on Hurricane in the future!​

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Visiting with Ecologist Bernd Heinrich

Post by Chloe Tremper, Science Educator

Enjoying the views on Hurricane

This past weekend, we had the honor of hosting Bernd Heinrich and his partner Lynn Jennings on island.  Bernd is a well-known naturalist, ultrarunner, and author of over 20 books including Mind of the Raven, Winter World, and Why We Run.  He has been a runner for most of his life but got into ultra running after he turned 40.  He won his first 100k in 1981 with a time of 6:38:21, which was an American record at the time.  He has also held American track records for the 100k, 100 miles, and 24 hour races and holds American ultra records in three age divisions.  Bernd is a professor emeritus at UVM and still teaches a winter ecology course at his cabin in western Maine for a week each January, which is how we got him here on Hurricane.  Chloe, one of our science educators, TAed his winter ecology course and invited him & Lynn to visit. 

We were incredibly lucky to have Lynn out on island as well. Lynn is one of the most accomplished women’s long distance runners in American history.  She is an Olympic medalist (bronze in the 10k at the 1992 games in Barcelona), has won more U.S. women’s cross-country titles than anyone in history, and holds the world record for the indoor 5,000m.  While Lynn is retired from running professionally, she still runs daily and works as the Running Program Director and Coach for the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in Vermont.  

Climbing the spruce trees

As you can imagine, our staff had a blast spending time with these two amazing and humble people. Their two days on Hurricane were chock full of running, exploring, lobstering, nest hunting, writing, tree climbing, cookouts and more.  Lynn even held an informal running workshop for a few of our staff to improve their running form!

On Saturday evening, we all headed over to Vinalhaven where the Hurricane Island Foundation and the Vinalhaven Land Trust co-hosted a talk by Bernd.  Over 90 people showed up to hear Bernd speak about his American chestnut trees. 

Bernd speaks to a packed room in Vinalhaven

American chestnut trees used to dominate the forests of eastern North America up until the early 1900s. This was until chestnut blight arrived in North America – catching a ride on imported Asian chestnut trees arriving to plant nurseries around the U.S.  Within 50 years of its arrival, chestnut blight wiped out almost 4 billion chestnut trees across the east coast.  While a few American chestnut trees survive, most remain small and succumb to blight before they can flower and reproduce.

In the early 1980s, Bernd obtained and planted some American chestnut seeds on his property.  After ten or fifteen years passed, he noticed that his trees were beginning to flower and fruit – this caught him off guard as he had never expected his trees to successfully reproduce since most chestnuts planted today don’t.  The first few years of flowering and fruiting, he was uncertain that the trees were being pollinated because many of the fruits he was finding on the ground did not actually contain nuts.  He came to find out later that this was because chestnuts drop their dud fruits early and keep the successful ones on their branches until later in the season. 

Bernd then began to notice chestnut saplings popping up all over his forests.  Chestnuts have large, heavy nuts that are not very easily dispersed so he thought it curious to be finding seedlings showing up hundreds of yards from the mature chestnuts near his cabin.  After a season of watching wildlife visit his trees, he determined blue jays and red squirrels to be the main dispersers – watching jays fly away with mouths full of nuts and squirrels run off with one nut at a time to stockpile away.

Bernd’s American chestnuts are still thriving and some of the saplings in the forest are beginning to grow fairly large. Hopefully chestnut blight will not find its way to any of Bernd’s trees.  Want to plant some chestnut trees of your own? Check out the American Chestnut Foundation.

We are so grateful to Bernd and Lynn for coming out to Hurricane and sharing such a special weekend with us. We hope they will be back in the future with chestnut seeds!

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On the Right Trail

Post by Chloe Tremper, Science Educator

Have you ever gotten lost on Hurricane’s trails? We hope not, but now it will be even harder to do so as we have recently redone our entire trail system! Don’t worry, the same old trails are still there – they’re just cleaned up and clearly marked with different color blazes.  This project has been a long time coming and was initiated earlier this summer by Olivia, one of our science education interns.  Olivia has worked on many trail crews in the past and upon her arrival noticed that Hurricane’s trail system could use a little sprucing up.

Olivia and I started this venture together by purchasing the paint and other supplies needed and began with the coastal trail since it is one of Hurricane’s most popular trails.  The coastal trail is now marked with green blazes and a few cairns where there weren’t many trees. 

Sadly, life on Hurricane got busy and by the time we were ready to carry on with trail marking Olivia had to head back to Vermont to finish up her senior year at UVM. Since her departure though, I have successfully marked all of our trails with a few helping hands of course – and sometimes without! Slocum’s trail is now marked with blue blazes, the high cliffs loop trail is blazed with red, the trail to sunset rock is a nice pastel orange, and the trail from the lab to the ice pond through the woods is yellow.  If you find yourself on a trail that has two blazes (one of the above colors and white) on the same tree- you’ve ended up on a connector trail!

In addition to trail blazes, you’ll also find some handy trail signs posted to point out trailheads off of the main roads.  All of these signs were either wood burned using magnifying glasses or painted by us.  On top of that, we have roped off areas that are either closed trails or not trails at all – we are hoping to start trail regeneration monitoring soon so please respect the rope!

Hurricane’s trails are ready for you so come visit us & go for a hike! Download our newest trail map here!

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Scientists converge on Hurricane for Field Station Network meeting

The Gulf of Maine is a vast expanse covering over 36,000 square miles and bordered by more than 7,500 miles of coastline from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia.  That coastline is home to a variety of scientific institutions, including many small field stations that individually operate with limited faculty, staff, and equipment.  Even though these stations are “small,” don’t underestimate their importance! Each station conducts their own research on a range of unique subjects within the Gulf of Maine, thereby contributing to our global understanding of the world we live in.  Their shared general purpose and location have brought these field stations together under the sentiment that ‘together we can achieve more’ and they converged on Hurricane Island this week to initiate a diverse partnership.

The partnership specifically aims to coordinate the efforts of these small field stations in order to implement shared research and training goals. The funding necessary to start this work was secured by Hurricane Island’s own Cait Cleaver (Director of Science and Research) and Laura Sewall from the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area who together received a $25,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Field Station and Marine Laboratory program.  Senators Susan Collins and Angus King recognized the award in a joint press release where they emphasized the critical importance of the partnership.  According to the joint statement, “this investment will support critical research efforts underway throughout the Gulf of Maine that will help us understand and better protect our environment and the livelihoods of our fishermen.”

The Hurricane Island meeting is just the first step in a 10-year plan to coordinate efforts among these field stations.  This initial phase includes two multi-day meetings this fall for all station directors, scientists associated with the field stations, and scientific advisors.  In this first meeting it was amazing to see the sheer number of different research efforts being conducted by the participants! Facilitator Craig Freshley orchestrated the meeting as scientists from each field station created cards listing their current research endeavors and then organized them on one of our walls.  This visual representation clearly helped identify the research gaps that existed across the field stations and helped focus the team as they decided on joint research priorities.  Another major outcome from this first effort was the formation of working groups that will be tackling particular issues in preparation for the next meeting in November at the Bates’ field station.  Groups were formed to address questions that arose surrounding data sharing and management, equipment, protocols, public outreach and education, and collaborative training and long-term capacity building.  These committees have their work cut out for them over the next two months and will deliver their findings to the whole group in advance of the next meeting.

And all that is just the beginning! After the next meeting, the lead field stations will continue their efforts and develop a 10-year strategic plan that will allow the small field stations to coordinate their work and fully leverage their capacity as a network.  The passion and dedication of the individuals present on Hurricane Island this past week was palpable and it is clear that their work is incredibly important and timely.  Senators Collins and King recognized that “as the environmental and economic impacts of warming waters and sea level rise continue to ripple through Maine’s coastal communities, marine research has never been more important to the future of our state.”  On an even broader scale, recent research indicates that the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans, positioning the Gulf as a true ‘living laboratory’ that can provide crucial insights into the effect of global climate change.

The hard work of keeping these scientists caffeinated was more than worth the effort and the entire Hurricane Island community felt enriched by their presence.  It was great to see old friends and make new ones and to learn so much about the incredible work that is already being done to understand and sustain our Gulf of Maine.  It is encouraging to think that this is only the beginning of even greater things to come and you can be sure you will find more information in our blog as the partnership between the field stations develops over the next decade.  In the words of Margaret Mead,  “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

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