STEVE SULKIN: My
name is Steve Sulkin.
I'm a professor at Western
Washington University,
and director of the Shannon
Point Marine Center.
We have really
excellent facilities.
About 27,000 square feet
of laboratory facilities.
An area for housing
so that students
can stay here during the
course of the quarter or summer
if they're carrying
out research.
We have a fine
research vessel fleet
that gets students out
into the environment,
and lets them use the tools
that we use out in the field.
Our laboratory facilities
are excellent in terms
of maintaining organisms so
that they can be studied,
and so that research can
be carried out on them.
And also we have extensive
analytical facilities here
that permit study of
geochemistry and biochemistry.
And those are very important
areas in modern marine science.
And we have a lot of activity
in that area going on.
And we have excellent facilities
for the study of all aspects
of marine science.
BEN MINER: So my
name is Ben Miner.
I'm an Assistant Professor
in the Biology Department.
I teach Marine Ecology
in the spring, which
is kind of a field
combination lecture class
where the students come
down for one day a week
and spend the day
at Shannon Point.
Normally part of the day
is spent on a lecture,
and then we spend some
time talking about the labs
that we've done
in previous weeks,
and then we normally
go out into the field
and do a lab for the day.
So today we're in Borough's Bay
and we're doing a bio diversity
survey where we're doing a
transect across depth gradient
here.
And so we're sending
down a net to the bottom,
trawling across the bottom,
pulling up those organisms,
identifying which ones
they are, counting them,
and then we're going
to look at the patterns
to see what type of trends we
see along this depth gradient.
[INAUDIBLE]
The ability to take
students out into the field
and actually do real
research it's invaluable.
You absolutely have to
have some type of facility
that provides boats to
get out onto the water.
That provides the
facilities of microscopes
when you bring back
those organisms
to be able to look at them.
And in the case
of Shannon Point,
having the university
close to the ocean,
Bellingham Bay is nice
because we can get to it.
But in reality Bellingham Bay
is a very shallow, not very
diverse habitat, and so having
the marine lab in Anacortes
here where we can get to these
deeper water habitats just
right off shore is--
it's really, really unique.
So only a few universities
throughout the country
are typically associated
with marine labs that
allow students to take classes
and get out into the field
this easily.
SPEAKER 1: This must
be the crab bucket.
SPEAKER 2: Decorator.
SPEAKER 1: OK, we'll
make this the crab.
SPEAKER 3: Where'd
you come from?
MOLLY JACKSON:
I'm Molly Jackson.
I'm a senior at Western
Washington University.
For me, like since I'm a
marine biology emphasis
like I haven't been able
to do a lot of marine stuff
on campus, because they don't
really have the same tanks
and stuff like that.
So getting to come
down here and go out
on the boat like this today
has been really exciting,
because we actually get to
go out in the field, which
is what I want to do.
So it's been a pretty
unique experience.
Not a lot of colleges
have a marine center
where you can actually
take undergraduate classes.
So it's pretty exciting to be
able to get out and actually do
what I want to do.
STEVE SULKIN: I think the
opportunity for undergraduates
to study at the
marine center combined
with very strong
programs on campus
in both the biology department
and the environmental sciences
department provides students
with as good an opportunity
for the study of marine science
as you can find anywhere
in the country.
