News and Events for Nantucket Island
I love fall when the kids are back in school and coming out to the Nantucket Field Station for nature walks. One of my favorite things to find along the beach and show them is Codium fragile, otherwise known as “dead man’s fingers.” Among the many common names for C. […]
~ by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Director, University of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Station ~ As you walk around the island this month, take a deep breath and tell me what you smell. If you are at the Nantucket Field Station, the scent of Welch’s grape jelly is wafting through the […]
~ by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Director, University of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Station ~ I was sifting through a bunch of rainfall data trying to wrap my writing around the topic of drought, when the buzz of a cicada reminded me of one of my favorite sounds of the summer. […]
~ by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Director, University of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Station ~ There are many crabs that call Nantucket’s waters their home; both native species and interlopers paddle, skulk, scamper, skitter, or crab-walk around. Common species include the lady crab, black-fingered mud crabs, spider crabs, blue crabs, purple […]
~ by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Director, University of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Station ~ Whenever I write about invasive plants, usually when I am elbow deep pulling them up on a roadside or conservation land, I always think of the 1951 book and 1962 Movie “The Day of the Triffids” […]
~ by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Director, University of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Station ~ We had a little bit of drama in the UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station lab on Friday. Trawalney, our 15-20 year old red eared slider turtle (named by one of our junior rangers) decided the beautiful […]
~ by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Director, University of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Station ~ This week I am fortunate to be hosting Andy Revkin for an on-island event to support the Organization of Biological Field Stations (www.obfs.org) in my role as the current President of OBFS. Andy was the science […]
August 1 marks the 197th birthday of Maria Mitchell, who was born at 1 Vestal Street in 1818. To celebrate her life and legacy, the Maria Mitchell Association invites the public to an afternoon full of free activities and refreshments on Friday, July 31. The MMA campus on Vestal Street […]
~ by Amy Jenness, author of On This Day in Nantucket History, available at Mitchell’s Book Corner ~ On August 1, 1818, Maria Mitchell was born into the Nantucket Quaker family of William and Lydia Mitchell whose family lines went back to the island’s original white settlers in 1659 and […]
