2 UNE Students Embark on Fall Gulf of Maine Research Cruise
 
University of New England students Crystal Faulkner '08 and Sean McQuilken '08 have departed on a 12-day research cruise in the Gulf of Maine as interns with Bigelow Laboratory Senior Research Scientist Cindy Pilskaln.
UNE student interns Crystal Faulkner and Sean McQuilken with Bigelow Senior Research Scientist Cindy Pilskaln.
UNE student interns Crystal Faulkner and Sean McQuilken with Bigelow Senior Research Scientist Cindy Pilskaln.
The R/V Cape Hatteras departed Woods Hole, Mass. on Oct. 18, 2004 and will return Oct. 29. Cruise activities include water sampling, sediment coring, bottom mapping, and collection of data on the temperature, salinity, and suspended sediment concentrations at 100 stations throughout the Gulf and into the Bay of Fundy. Four Canadian scientists from the University of New Brunswick and Dalhousie University are also participating along with five colleagues from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The focus of the research project is the delivery, deposition, and resuspension in the Gulf of Maine of the dormant cysts of the dinoflagellete Alexandrium spp., known to be the cause of harmful algal blooms resulting in paralytic shellfish poisoning.

This is the first large-scale field project funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Program on the ecology and oceanography of harmful algal blooms to look at the specific relationship between bottom sediment resuspension and the transport of buried cysts into the water column where they may result in a bloom.

Faulkner '08 is a marine biology major, and McQuilken '08 is a aquaculture and aquarium science major.

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, located in West Boothbay Harbor, Maine is a world-renowned non-profit organization dedicated to marine research and education.

(Press release issued Oct. 21, 2004)

   
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