While ushering the Coastal Studies Center into its new era of growth, director David Carlon also rekindled an old nautical tradition this fall. He and a group of Bowdoin students and staff set sail aboard the historic Arctic schooner Bowdoin, built in 1921 under the direction of famed explorer Donald MacMillan (Class of 1898) and now owned and operated by Maine Maritime Academy.

The crew embarked on a three-day voyage out of Rockland, during which students had the unusual opportunity to conduct marine research – plankton tows, CTD deployments, and more – while learning to operate an 88-foot wooden ship in the chilly but beautiful Gulf of Maine.

Bowdoin Sets Sail for Science from Bowdoin College on Vimeo.

That very same weekend, another group of Coastal Studies students was having an equally unusual field trip experience in the far reaches of the Gulf of Maine: necropsying a humpback whale. Read more here.