Sea Education Association (SEA) is a private, nonprofit educational organization. Founded in 1971 by Corwith Cramer, Jr. [1] SEA operates two sailing ships traveling throughout both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
SEA is based on Cape Cod in the oceanographic research community of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. [2]
Founded in 1971, the Sea Education Association spent its first years operated from headquarters in Boston and Chicago, however in 1975, Corwith Cramer had the organization and its sole vessel, the R/V Westward, transferred to its modern-day location in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Over the years, the program would expand greatly, with more ocean semester programs being offered at a time and the expanding of the SEA fleet. Most of these changes can be accredited to Cramer's successor, Rafe Parker, who replaced him in 1982. Some of the program's most significant changes include, the addition of the SSV Corwith Cramer brigantine in 1987, and the replacement of the R/V Westward with the SSV Robert C. Seamans in 2001.
John Bullard took over as President in 2002 and retired in June 2012. During Bullard's term, SEA developed the Stanford@SEA Program and formed additional partnerships with domestic and foreign universities. [3]
In 2004 SEA joined the Woods Hole Diversity Advisory Committee, a coordination between NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, United States Geological Survey, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Woods Hole Research Center to increase diversity and inclusion within ocean sciences. This effort was initiated and led by Ambrose Jearld Jr. of Woods Hole.
Peg Brandon, SEA Semester alumna and former SEA Faculty Captain, took over as SEA's President in 2014. [4]
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The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering.
Woods Hole is a census-designated place in the town of Falmouth in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. It lies at the extreme southwest corner of Cape Cod, near Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands. The population was 781 at the 2010 census.
The National Sea Grant College Program is a program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) within the U.S. Department of Commerce. It is a national network of 34 university-based Sea Grant programs involved in scientific research, education, training, and extension projects geared toward the conservation and practical use of the coasts, Great Lakes, and other marine areas. The program is administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with the national office located in Silver Spring, Maryland. There are Sea Grant programs located in every coastal and Great Lakes state as well as in Puerto Rico and Guam.
J. Lamar Worzel was an American geophysicist known for his important contributions to underwater acoustics, underwater photography, and gravity measurements at sea.
SSV Robert C. Seamans is a 134-foot steel sailing brigantine operated by the Sea Education Association (SEA) for oceanographic research and sail training; designed by Laurent Giles, she is named for former Secretary of the Air Force and NASA Deputy Administrator, Robert Channing Seamans, a former Chairman and Trustee of SEA's board. She is equipped with hydrographic winches, bathymetric equipment, biological and geological sampling equipment, a wet/dry laboratory, and a computer laboratory. She has a sister ship, the Corwith Cramer.
The Corwith Cramer is a tall ship owned by the Sea Education Association (SEA) sailing school, named after SEA's founding director. Her home port is Woods Hole, Massachusetts, United States. She was designed by Wooden and Marean specifically for SEA and was constructed by ASTACE in 1987 in Bilbao, Spain. She is a 134-foot (41 m) steel brigantine built as a research vessel for operation under sail, and generally sails in the Atlantic Ocean.
Mary Sears was a Commander in the United States Naval Reserve and an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
Richard R. Behn, is a retired one-star rear admiral of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps who served as director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine and Aviation Operations Centers, from August 2004 to September 2007. He was nominated for this position by President George W. Bush, confirmed by the Senate, and subsequently promoted to rear admiral in August 2004.
Erin C. Myers Madeira is the former captain of the sailing vessel Makulu II and led a 3-year educational expedition and global circumnavigation. She currently works with The Nature Conservancy supporting collaborations between the conservation sector and Indigenous Peoples. She is a former editor for Blue Water Sailing magazine, contributor to Soundings magazine, U.S. Fulbright Fellow., and Program Fellow at Resources for the Future. She is a graduate of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Dartmouth College.
The Hatfield Marine Science Center(HMSC) is a marine science research and education center next to Yaquina Bay of the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is operated by Oregon State University in cooperation with five state and federal agencies co-located on site. Named after Mark Hatfield, a former U.S. Senator from Oregon, the HMSC occupies a 49-acre (20 ha) site in Newport.
The Center for Microbial Oceanography (C-MORE) is a research and education organization established in 2006 as a National Science Foundation funded Science and Technology Center.
Global Explorer ROV is a unique deep water remotely operated vehicle that has made numerous dives below 9,000 feet (2,700 m) on science and survey expeditions for National Geographic, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other research organizations. It was designed and built by Chris Nicholson of Deep Sea Systems International, Inc. of Falmouth, Massachusetts.
Robert B. Gagosian is an American oceanographer. In 2016 he is acting president of the Desert Research Institute in Nevada. Gagosian served as president and CEO of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, D.C., from 2007 to 2015, where he is currently president emeritus. Gagosian served as president and director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) from 1994 to 2006, where he is currently president emeritus.
Dawn Jeannine Wright is an American geographer and oceanographer. She is a leading authority in the application of geographic information system (GIS) technology to the field of ocean and coastal science, and played a key role in creating the first GIS data model for the oceans. Wright is Chief Scientist of the Environmental Systems Research Institute. She has also been a professor of geography and oceanography at Oregon State University since 1995 and is a former Oregon Professor of the Year as named by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Wright was the first African-American female to dive to the ocean floor in the deep submersible ALVIN. On July 12, 2022 she became the first Black person to dive to Challenger Deep, the deepest point on Earth, and to successfully operate a sidescan sonar at full-ocean depth.
Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, founded in 1974, is an independent, non-profit oceanography research institute. The Laboratory's research ranges from microbial oceanography to the large-scale biogeochemical processes that drive ocean ecosystems and health of the entire planet.
Susan K. Avery is an American atmospheric physicist and President Emerita of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts, where she led the marine science and engineering research organization from 2008–2015. She was the ninth president and director and the first woman to hold the leadership role at WHOI. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Colorado, Boulder (UCB), where she served on the faculty from 1982–2008. While at UCB she also served in various administrative positions, including director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), a 550-member collaborative institute between UCB and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (1994-2004); and interim positions (2004-2007) as vice chancellor for research and dean of the graduate school, and provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs. Currently she is a senior fellow at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, D.C.
Gerold Siedler is a German physical oceanographer. He is professor emeritus at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel and at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel.
Ambrose Jearld Jr. started his career as one of the first black fisheries biologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and spent his nearly 40-year career as a marine biologist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The lecture series named after him in Woods Hole reflects his career-long commitment to increasing diversity in environmental and fisheries sciences.
The Harvey Gamage is a 131' gaff rigged schooner launched in 1973 from the Harvey F. Gamage Shipyard in South Bristol, Maine. She was designed by McCurdy & Rhodes, Naval Architects in Cold Spring Harbor, New York and Frederick W. Bates of Damariscotta, Maine. She is a USCG inspected vessel both as a passenger vessel and a sail training vessel. As governments of maritime countries recognise Sail Training as an essential component of developing and maintaining an essential merchant marine force, the US Congress created a special service category of vessel for Sail Training and the Harvey Gamage is one of a handful of vessels licensed for this service. She has been educating students at sea along the east coast of North American almost continuously since her launch. She has 14 staterooms accommodating 39 people, including 9 professional crew, 22 youth sail trainees and up to 4 adult chaperones. As a training vessel, she takes crews of students along the eastern seaboard, from her home port in Maine to various destinations ranging from The Maritimes to the Caribbean
