 
PORTSMOUTH, NH
To The Shoals Marine Lab
So welcome to college.
I like it.
Marine Immersion is a one-week, two-credit summer
course for incoming freshman.
The aim is to do three things.
One thing is to have them learn
a whole lot of marine biology.
A second thing is for them
to have a whole lot of fun.
And the third thing
is to really get
them launched and ready to
succeed in their freshman year.
We do it out at the
Isles of Shoals,
at the Shoals Marine
Laboratory, which
is a whole campus on an
island in the middle of all
the habitats that
we want to study.
Wait you cut it into?
Yeah, you cut it into
smaller squares, right?
So far, it's been a blast.
Just the field research
we've done so far,
it's just so nice to have
the actual classroom setting,
and an actual field
setting so close.
You can go back and forth
multiple times a day.
I like this much.
There's many interesting things.
Things you don't know,
different things.
You don't need every crab
out here, but a couple.
I've been interested in marine
biology since I was younger.
Recently, I became
more interested though,
and just realized that I really
want to do this with my life
so why not start off my freshman
year, going into college
with classes already
under my belt and just
a great experience.
Wow, abdominal flap.
Well, the female is really wide.
The females are much wider
because they're carrying eggs.
This is for the
Asian short crab?
This is for all crabs.
OK.
It's important to get
an early introduction.
Students can't really decide if
this is where their passion is,
what they really want to do,
until they've really tried it.
And that's a really great thing
to figure out at the beginning.
Like I know I won't really get
to get into classes in my major
until later, like junior, senior
year, so now I'm starting off
and I'll be excited and
remember what the goal I'm
working towards.
What kind of organisms may
be top of the food chain
predators?
What differences maybe do
you see here versus [INAUDIBLE]?
The framework is that they
are in groups, each of which
is carrying out a field project.
We also have a series of
different guest lectures.
They will spend
a day out fishing
with a commercial fisherman,
and at the end of the week
they do a marine mammal
necropsy with Dr. Igor
Tsukrov who is also at UNH.
Yeah, at the end
of this week, I'd
really hope to just
get some useful field
experience, just under my belt.
It's a real nice
change I'd say and just
of how you're like learning
the actual material.
It's just really cool how we
have just like a live well
touch tank, and we can keep
like kelp and seaweed in there,
and horseshoe crabs, which
we have there right now.
So females are much
larger than the males.
Another difference
you can tell is
that the males have these
claspers, these front claws that
look--
Out here, in this setting,
it's possible to do the highest
value kind of teaching there
is, which is working really
intensively with
individual students,
coaching them if they're
working with each other,
and having them
doing the real stuff,
not having somebody
tell them about it.
So for me, it's an environment
where the best possible kinds
of learning and teaching
happen, plus it's fun.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
 
