“We actually didn’t expect there to be anything here,” McHugh said with a laugh. “I know the geology, so I knew we would see something on the geological level, but on the biological level this water is polluted, has been over fished and the East River feeds right into it, but we happened to find very fragile animals.” While onboard the students took part in five programs: marine biology, marine chemistry, marine geophysics, geology and physical oceanography. That way, each student would be able to experience the different concentrations. “It was the first such experience I had to be able to see the equipment deployed, and I was happy to be able to be see the type of data that can be retrieved,” said Semple, 35, a PhD student. “That was a wonderful experience, but now the most exciting part was to actually be able to see the connections.” Semple was able to match the latitude and longitude station from where the crew had actually retrieved the cores with the information she was seeing on the screens. “So it was almost like a conformation of what we predicted, because we thought that the surface in the pictures was an area with a very hard surface with an outcrop of bedrock, and when the core was sent down it brought up the very sediments, initial to lend to further studies,” Semple added. One Giant Leap Semple, who came to the United States in 1998 from Guyana with a bachelors in geography from the University of Guyana and a masters of philosophy in environment and development from Cambridge University, said she hoped the experience of going on a ship for the first time would help in her career. The experience overall would help in more than her career and geographical findings, McHugh said. “It’s kind of hard to recruit minority students into programs that are in the geo sciences because many of them are afraid of sciences and they are afraid of math and statistics, so this is scary for them,” she said. “We thought if we have field experience, then a one-to-one mentoring situation, that would encourage the students and show them they can do science; they would then become geo science majors.” “The students’ backgrounds represent a really mixed background, similar to what we find in Queens, meaning that some are Native American, Latino, a combination of Latino and Russian,” McHugh said. According to the most recent National Science Foundation statistics, in 2003, of 14,655 graduate students studying Earth, atmospheric or marine sciences, 375 were Asian or Pacific Islander, 270 were black, 484 were Hispanic and 66 were American Indian or Native Alaskan. “For the students that went, most of us were undergrads, and it’s really hard – one, as a woman, and it’s even harder as a woman who is a minority,” said Bowman, who found the research experience to be the most important aspect for minority students who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity. On Solid Ground Docking the Hugh Sharp the afternoon of June 29, the Queens College students excitedly stepped onto the wooden dock. With the first round of questions they set out with answered, and sediments and water samples to prove their hypothesis correct in hand, McHugh began telling of the history revealed. “There was an interesting finding of a lake buried under the sound, which was once documented on the eastern part, but never documented on its western part. We still have to pursue the science behind it, but we now have the initial evidence,” she said as her hair blew in the wind. “Evidence of pipelines, evidence of shipwrecks were found as well. There is still at least a year or two before findings are verified and published.” The crew believes the sediment samples pulled up will reveal the history of contamination and why the waters of Long Island Sound are increasingly oxygen-depleted, due to human impact, as well as areas of erosion that will have an impact in the future “I have a felling that when the findings are ready to be published,” McHugh said, “there will be some interesting scientific stories to tell.”

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