• by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station • Each year in early spring, we start to see the islands’ plants and animals emerge. This past winter has been difficult, with three major storms (Sandy, Nemo, and Saturn) causing significant erosion and destruction around the […]
Tag: Nature Studies
Biomimicry
by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station In the past year, the UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station has offered two public lectures and a summer course in Biomimicry, and we plan to include it in our regular year round and summer offerings. Biomimicry is both […]
Dangerous Beauties – Jellyfish
by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station As the summer temperatures warm up our harbor and offshore waters, floating translucent creatures begin to crowd our shores and become a concern for swimmers. Unfortunately, as ocean waters warm world-wide and we continue to over-fish or endanger […]
Creatures of the Night
by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station As part of the recent Nantucket Biodiversity Assessment Week program, we set up a couple of moth sheets at the field station and used two different types of lights (UV or “black lights” and mercury vapor lights) to […]
The Intellectual Outdoorsman
The air is balmy and the sun smiles as I find the discrete nook of Nantucket town that is the Vestal Street headquarters of the Maria Mitchell Association. I meander about the premises for a little, drinking in the dreamlike greenness of it all and feeling a bit like Alice […]
Is Nantucket Sinking?
by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station This spring on a Q&A feature of www.Nantucket.net a question was submitted by a teacher named Vienna. She wrote: “Is Nantucket sinking? My class is doing a state report and my student needs to know if Nantucket is […]