Spring break beach trip, Alaska style

Diving in Kasitsna BayTwenty-six students at the ÎÞÂëÂÒÂ× put a twist on the traditional spring break trip to the beach this year.

The students, who were enrolled in ÎÞÂëÂÒÂ×’s Scientific Diving course, traveled to the remote Kasitsna Bay Laboratory, a cluster of buildings and a pier near the scenic southwest tip of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. There, the students used scuba diving skills practiced earlier at the ÎÞÂëÂÒÂ× pool, conducted a mock rescue and assisted with research on subtidal plants and animals.

The annual class certifies students to dive on university and government research projects. Brenda Konar, a professor with the ÎÞÂëÂÒÂ× School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, oversees the course. The lab is owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and operated in partnership with ÎÞÂëÂÒÂ×.

While Kasitsna Bay in March is no Fort Lauderdale, the trip south to the temperate coast does offer ÎÞÂëÂÒÂ× students a break from Interior Alaska’s winter; thermometers in Fairbanks on the second day of spring break 2015 registered 37 degrees below zero.

Photos by Alexandra Ravelo

Participants in the ÎÞÂëÂÒÂ× School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences’ 2015 Scientific Diving class gather on the dock and a boat at the Kasitsna Bay Laboratory. The flag is the “diver down flag,†which provides a warning to boat operators and others that people are in the water.

ÎÞÂëÂÒÂ× undergraduate students Jordan Sanchez and Genevieve Johnson measure a healthy sea star of the species Pycnopodia helianthoides during a survey that looked for wasting disease. Sanchez and Johnson were students in ÎÞÂëÂÒÂ×’s Scientific Diving class during the 2015 spring break trip to the Kasitsna Bay Laboratory.

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