Catalina Island U Called Life-Changing Experience

California State University's marine biology semester program is offering students the opportunity to study the clear waters and rugged landscape of Santa Catalina Island. 

In an intense, hands-on, 15-week learning experience, qualified students from any university, not just CSU, can not only study, but live at USC’s Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, which is located in a small cove at the Catalina isthmus near the community of Two Harbors. 

The program, coordinated through the Southern California Marine Institute, is a non-profit consortium of 11 institutions, including eight CSU campuses, plus California State OSI members. The schools include, Dominguez Hills, Fullerton, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Northridge, Bakersfield, Channel Islands, San Bernardino, San Marcos and Cal Poly Pomona, plus USC, UCLA and Occidental College. 

Catalina semester students register through California State University Long Beach, which serves as the lead campus, and transfers credits to the students' home schools. 

In a news release, Larry G. Allen, director of the program and professor of biology at Cal State Northridge said: For over a decade, the CSU marine biology semester has given hundreds of university students the unique opportunity for a full-immersion, hands-on learning experience at one of the world’s premier marine biological laboratories.

He added that, “this is a life-changing experience for most with students, often forging strong friendships, and many go on to post-graduate work in marine biology at prestigious universities.”

Twenty students have registered so far. The semester began with Marine Ichthyology, an introduction to fishes class taught by Christopher Lowe, director of CSULB’s Shark Lab; then Environmental Physiology and Toxicology in Marine Organisms, taught by Kevin Kelley, director of the Environmental Endocrinology Lab; and finally, Marine Community Ecology, taught by Bengt Allen, director of the Marine Ecology Lab. 

“I call it marine biology boot camp,” Lowe said in a statement.  “They’re up at 7 a.m., they have lecture from 8 to 10, they’re in the water from 10 to noon, and then after lunch, they’re in the lab or in the field usually from 1 to 4 p.m.  We give them an hour for dinner and then we have a paper discussion and talk about experiments and other things.  And, then they get a few hours to read about 50 to 100 pages of text and then we do it again the next day.  But it is absolutely amazing to lecture about something in the morning and have the students be able to get in the water and actually see it within a few hours of talking about it.”

The Wrigley Institute is adjacent to the shore — so it isn’t rare for the students to put on their snorkel or scuba gear and head to the pier. The students, while in the program, learn to drive small outboard motor boats and they learn to use electronic fish tracking equipment.

Katherine Huotari, a CSULB student, said in a news release that her family frequently traveled to Monterey Bay, which is where her love for marina biology started.

“It was a nice place to relax and we’d always go to the aquarium together.  I’ve always been interested in animals in the world and how it functions.  Being submersed in that throughout pretty much my entire childhood, I thought this would be fun to study, so I took a couple of science classes and thought, ‘I’m pretty good at it, too, so why don’t I just do this?’  I would like to study the human impact on the ocean because that’s where I would be able to make the most out of my career,” she said.

Elizabeth Duncan of Porterville, a CSULB president’s scholar, said she was “ecstatic to be here.”

“I’ve been looking forward to the Catalina semester since my freshman year, so it’s surreal that I’m actually here,” she said.  “My career goals now are general, but I know I want to devote my time and my scientific mind toward an issue that we currently have, be it fisheries, pollution or restoring wetland habitat,” after attending graduate school.

But it is the cost of the program that is a big challenge for each of the students, Lowe said. 

“They have to pay for tuition and room and board, and many of them have to give up apartments for the semester, so it’s an expensive alternative for our students,” he said. “Many of them save for years to be able to do this program.  Students may qualify for scholarships, some of which are provided by friends of the program, but it’s harder for faculty.”

For more information about the CSU Catalina semester program, please visit, http://scmi.us/category/ocean-studies-institute/csu-marine-biology-semester, or you can reach out to Tom Chavez at 310/519-3172 or osi.catalina@gmail.com.