In September, I accompanied Professor Elsie Sunderland and 16 students to Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve as part of a field trip for a class about local pollution issues. We drove for a little over two hours from the Earth & Planetary Sciences department to the Bay which stretches over 825 acres on the south shore of Cape Cod and is the source of an abundance of scientific research. 

This was my second trip to Waquoit Bay; my first was as an undergraduate when I took this same course with Prof. Sunderland. On this day, it was sunny and warm—the perfect weather for going out on a boat!

E-PSCI/ESE 169 is a field- and lab-based class that allows students to conduct research at Cape Cod to understand how fishermen and the local community may be affected by issues like mercury pollution. Waquoit Bay is a popular fishing site, making it crucial to know whether the fish being caught and eaten are contaminated. Research has shown that mercury poisoning has a variety of negative health effects.

While my peers and I were excited to take the course because of its lack of exams, I now find that this class greatly shaped the way that I think about research today. What issues are affecting our local communities? How can we address them? What kinds of data do we need to answer those questions? These were all questions that we had to consider in developing our research project. 

A key aspect of the field trip was learning about the science being done at Waquoit Bay from researchers at the Reserve. Dr. Megan Tyrrell and Theo Collins from Waquoit Bay and Dr. John Logan from the U.S. Geological Survey have been recurring guest speakers for the class for the past few years. They talked about the kinds of data collected from the Bay, the instruments used to make the measurements, and the different ways that the data can be analyzed to answer key questions about climate, biology, and pollution. Once out on the research boats, they guided the students in using a plankton net, a ponar grab to collect sand, and a secchi disk to measure the water’s turbidity. They identified the birds that glided over the water as well as the mollusks pulled up from the bottom of the Bay. Their deep knowledge and understanding of this diverse ecosystem is incredible. 

Before taking Prof. Sunderland’s class, most of the research I conducted had been “desk research.” I had worked on some modeling and data analysis projects which required me to become best friends with RStudio and Jupyter Notebooks. However, my forays into lab and field work were minimal (except for three days of field work that I conducted in Northern California one summer, the extent of which was digging about a dozen large holes in the ground; yes, I felt like Shia LaBeouf). 

At the Cape, we used a seine to bring dozens of fish to the shore. We splashed around in the shallow water and tried not to let the wriggling fish slip out of our grasp before we could collect them to later sample their mercury content. It was messy work but holding the fish we would research made me feel emotionally attached to our research project. I left the field trip wet, sandy, and a little fishy. I had learned a lot about not just the methodologies for conducting this type of field research but also about the necessary mindset. Field research requires patience, creativity, and a readiness to meet any challenge that arises. 

These skills will be essential across all fields of science in the coming years. I am incredibly lucky to have been able to participate in the class field trip to Waquoit Bay and learn from the amazing on-site researchers two different times. I hope that future students have the chance to benefit from their expertise and have the chance to learn about conducting research on issues relevant to their local community. Personally, I have found that research grounded in real-world solutions is incredibly rewarding.

If you’re a Harvard student interested in working at Waquoit Bay, consider applying for a Harvard Club of Cape Cod Summer Community Service Fellowship!