e-SML May 2007

Greetings from sunny and spectacular Appledore Island, where SML Summer 2007 is underway! More than 40 students and interns arrived this week to beautiful weather, an island and staff well prepared to receive them, and faculty eager to get into the field and laboratory. With 22 credit courses, more than 220 enrollments, three internship programs, and three ongoing monitoring and restoration efforts, this promises to be a very busy summer.

Throughout May, our sense of purpose and excitement grew as SML Staff, volunteers, and contractors brought up the island and its systems. We had developed a long list of needed repairs and upgrades, including two new dive floats to replace ones destroyed by the microburst storm on August 3, 2006, a new composting toilet for Kingsbury House, a new parallel 2‰ saltwater main based on the findings of our 2006 Engineering Interns, pre-construction work for our new solar and wind energy projects, repairs for island vehicles, and new roofs for Founders Hall and Dorm 3. Bad weather in March had delayed several of these projects, and the Patriot‚s Day Nor‚easter in April made things worse, when high winds tore off half of the roof on Palmer-Kinne. Thus, when Ross Hansen and Jim Gibbs arrived on Appledore for open up, it quickly became apparent that May needed to be a month focused on roofing.

Ross prioritized the schedule for roofing as follows: Founders Hall, Dorm 3, and Palmer-Kinne. With expert help from Steve Bogdanowicz, Rocket Getchell, Matt Hansen, Harry Simrell, Meryl Phelps, Andy Hoffman, the Island Engineers and a great ground crew, Ross oversaw the complete removal and replacement of shingles on Founders Hall during the two days of Volunteer Weekend, May 5-6 2006. Then, two weeks later, Steve and Rocket returned to Appledore to work with Ross and the entire island staff to repeat this process for Dorm 3. Just this last weekend, our general contractor, Al Stillman, oversaw the removal and replacement of the rubber membrane roof on Palmer-Kinne. Roofs for three buildings on Appledore in less than a month, each requiring careful planning, thousands of pounds of new materials, and extensive clean-up by all hands on Appledore ˆ this was an amazing feat of coordination and hard work. Many other pressing projects, incl! uding the new saltwater main, dive floats, vehicle maintenance, new steps for the tower, linen closet reorganization, clean-up and general maintenance, and relocation of the Laighton sea table were completed during one of the most beautiful spring Volunteer Weekends in recent memory. Everyone cheered Chef Matt Coyle and the kitchen staff for excellent and beautifully served meals, and we had a great time. Thanks are due all around.

This year‚s Tern Restoration Project began in April. Last fall‚s selective burning of vegetation that had grown up on Seavey‚s Island over the last few years opened up new breeding habitat for terns, and numbers so far look good. We‚ll have to wait and see until later in the season, but this could be a particularly strong year for terns. It is always fascinating to get the daily updates from the Appledore Banding Station. Among other news, Mary Wright banded her first hummingbird, and daily counts have been good thanks to the generally favorable weather this month. As of today, more than 2200 birds have been banded representing 64 species and on May 26, 366 birds were banded; this was the fourth highest singe day of banding in the history of the station. Songbirds reported north of their typical breeding range include two summer tanagers (banded) and a blue grosbeak (observed). This week‚s census of gulls nesting on Appledore reveals ! numbers similar to those recorded in 2005 but much lower than those of a decade ago; areas near our buildings seem to me to have many fewer gulls than last year. Time will tell. I have had a great time watching swallows courting on the porch of Kingsbury House ˆ these colorful, endearing birds seem to have so much fun with each other. Other observations of birds this month include two common ravens, hundreds of male and female common eiders (including many in Babb‚s Cove on quiet mornings), and black guillemots off the northeast side of the island. Overflights by bald eagles triggered several spectacular dreads of gulls in recent days. I always enjoy seeing so many gulls up in the air.

Last Saturday, twenty new microscopes and one new companion digital camera system arrived on Appledore. This long-awaited event marks the first phase in what I hope will be a complete replacement of the optical equipment needed for our teaching laboratories. The optical differences are striking: the new microscopes are brighter and sharper and a joy to use. This new equipment also allows us to offer new courses at SML, including Field Microbial Ecology , which started this week and which is taught by Erik Zettler and Linda Amaral Zettler. Thanks to everyone who made this possible.

Celia Thaxter‚s Garden in the springtime looks like every other New England garden in the spring: in need of some attention. As always, however, that attention materialized last Sunday, when the crew arrived to clean up the Garden and prepare the soil for the summer ahead. Pam and Mark Boutilier, Priscilla and Fred Chellis, and Keith Mills went straight from the boat to the Garden, logging hours of cleanup before sundown. Then on Memorial Day, they worked from sunrise to sundown to prepare the beds for the arrival of the plants next week. SML is lucky to have such a wonderful and dedicated crew.

Kevan Carpenter visited this week to deliver a Rock Talk on the UNH AIRMAP Program and describe new instrumentation being installed on Appledore. Installation work for the wind turbine, which is funded by AIRMAP, also began this week. The turbine will allow AIRMAP to collect data throughout the year. Ross and the Island Engineers spent much of the week pulling new electrical cable from the turbine site near the old reservoir to the tower, which is where they will install a large bank of batteries to store electricity.

In May, we held the last regular meeting of the SML Executive Committee until our meetings resume again in the fall. Our five meetings this year helped to advance SML in many ways, and I am very grateful to all six members of the Executive Committee for their advice and help. In his capacity as Vice President for Research and Public Service at UNH, John Aber served as a member of the SML Executive Committee, but he will be leaving this position to return to the Department of Natural Resources and the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at UNH. John‚s kindness, enthusiasm and constructive criticisms have been very helpful to SML, and I will miss the chance to interact with him in a formal capacity. Hopefully, now that he will have abundant free time, John can be enticed to spend summers on Appledore!

The Creek Farm Planning Committee met at Creek Farm Cottage on May 7. We reviewed our plans to phase the construction and renovation of the Cottage and our goal of starting residential programs at Creek Farm Cottage in Summer 2008. Essential repair work on the gutters and porches of the Cottage is nearly completed, and we will move on to the next stages of construction once Appledore closes down in September.

As I look out the windows of Kingsbury House, I see the REU interns receiving their training to use the zodiacs. One group just departed for White Island, and I am about to visit another class busily studying microorganisms in Palmer-Kinne. In short, things are in full swing out here and we are all having a wonderful time. Please plan to come to Appledore this summer to see what we are doing!

Willy Bemis, Kingsbury Director of Shoals Marine Laboratory