• by Dr. Sarah Oktay, Director, University of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Station • This week’s column is designed to get you outdoors to work with visiting scientists and learn more about Nantucket’s diverse and fascinating plants and animals. For the first time, the Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative is sponsoring a Citizen […]
Tag: nature
American Oystercatchers: Fine feathered friends Part 1
• by Dr. Sarah Oktay, Director, University of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Station • Living at the UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station gives me the opportunity to observe the wonderful diversity of bird life that defines Nantucket. Spring signals the return of piping plovers, oystercatchers and osprey along with the wading […]
Magical Kingdom of Vernal Ponds
• by Dr. Sarah Oktay, Director, University of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Station • Spring is vernal pond season. All over the island, creatures who have adapted to the unusual conditions that are inherent in a vernal pond are hatching and going through a variety of stages as they progress to […]
Winter Weather
• by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station • I am writing this article on an unseasonably warm Sunday in November. According to Weather Underground (http://www.wunderground.com ) which is usually my go-to source for weather data the maximum temperature was 57 degrees Fahrenheit on Nantucket […]
Denizens of the Night
• by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station • Last June I wrote about moths here on Nantucket in preparation for a “moth party” and a public education effort to teach people more about moths and get folks excited about photographing them. Since then I […]
What Lies Beneath
• by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station • Mapping the Ocean Floor The UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station has the use of a new toy, and boy what a toy it is! In late August, Dr. Mark Borelli of the Provincetown Center for Coastal […]
The Magical Island of Tuckernuck
• by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station • For the past two summers I have been fortunate to visit the Tuckernuck Land Trust’s (or TLT, website can be accessed at http://www.tuckernucklandtrust.org/) field station and do some basic biological collection (bees and mosquitoes) and give […]
Bay Scallops, Nantucket Gold
• by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station • Nantucket is home to the last commercially viable “wild” bay scallop fishery in the U.S. (and essentially world-wide) and preserving this treasure is, in a way, tantamount to preserving Nantucket. Other fisheries up and down the […]