Tag: science

Island Science

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 […]

Island Science

Folger’s Marsh Birds

• by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station • We are blessed to have the 17 acre Folger’s marsh as the centerpiece of the Nantucket Field Station. It is populated by an enormous menagerie of egrets, herons, and cormorants among other marsh birds. I usually […]

Island Science

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 […]

Island Science

Flying Dragons

• by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station • What is strong, a skilled hunter, ephemeral, eats mosquitoes and feeds a wide variety of birds, fish, and frogs? Give up? It is the beautiful dragonfly, currently gracing Nantucket ponds and wetlands this summer. Some of […]

Bay Scallops
Island Science

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 […]

Boring Sponge
Island Science

Sponges, Climate Change, & Bay Scallops

• by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station • We pulled up a common resident of our harbors the other day while doing a dredge for our Marine Ecology class off Pocomo Point. Scattered amongst the spider crabs and scallops and loose eelgrass and algae […]

Ghost Crab
Island Science

Ghost Crabs!

• by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station • The name of this week’s article sounds like an awesome indie horror film doesn’t it? Well ghost crabs are here and probably here to stay on Nantucket. Thanks to the eagle eyes of Manomet Center for […]

rabbits | Nantucket, MA
Island Science

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

• by Dr. Sarah D. Oktay, Managing Director UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station • This week’s title comes from the British tradition adopted in New England to say “rabbit” or “rabbits” several times in succession or “white rabbit” upon first waking on the first day of the month in order […]