By Steve Scarpa
Photos by Andy Melien
Yale doesn’t have many classrooms like Horse Island, the largest of the Thimble Islands in Long Island Sound.
Located 1.5 miles offshore from Stony Creek in Branford, the 17-acre island is almost completely wooded with small stands of beech, pine, and cedar trees among mixed scrub and hardwoods. Pink granite lines the rocky shore of the island, which seems to creep from the margins of the woods. It is, in many ways, a scale model of the Connecticut shoreline.
The uninhabited island includes a mix of coastal vegetation with wide rocky intertidal zones, making it a perfect location for exploration and the collection of marine invertebrates.
The Yale Peabody Museum cares for the island and thanks to the work of its staff, the island is actively used for research and for classwork the likes of which couldn’t be replicated in a laboratory.
Professor Casey Dunn’s invertebrate zoology class is the latest to use Horse Island, spending half of the semester’s lectures and labs outdoors actively doing science.
The class meets in the island’s research station, which was designed and built in partnership with the Yale School of Architecture’s Regenerative Building Lab. “It’s incredible. It’s a fully functional place to be teaching,” he said. “But it requires a huge amount of support.”
That’s where the Yale Peabody Museum team comes in. Dunn works closely with the museum’s Student Programs department to coordinate the travel, make sure class resources are deployed on the island, and assure that students and professors have what they need to create an impactful educational experience.
Peabody staffers Andy Todd, who runs the museum’s imaging studio, and Patrick Sweeney, collections manager for Botany, were on hand during a recent trip to the island to help marry scientific theory and practice as closely as possible.
On a perfect early Fall morning out on Horse, you could hear distant sounds of construction vehicles and landscapers’ tool buzzing on manicured lawns back on land. But the predominant sound was wind and waves. Someone suggested music, but everyone agreed that it wasn’t necessary. “Part of me is like we need music, but part of me is like, the island is the music,” said Dunn.
A couple of hours before the class Dunn had one eye on his phone and the other on the rest of the goings on. Getting students from New Haven to Branford and then onto a boat generally goes smoothly, but he wanted to be sure. “It’s a bit of a ballet where I am working with the students,” he said.
As Dunn gently wrangled students, Todd set up a small digital imaging studio on the island, which included multiple stations. “We have a video camera that can shoot up to 120 frames per second, so if students have an organism with moving parts or moves fairly quickly, we can record that,” Todd explained.
Sweeney’s goal was to work with students to collect as many plant species as possible. “I am really excited about working with the students to document the algae on Horse Island because the algae are so amazing. There are upwards of 250 species of algae in Long Island Sound and all kinds of organisms – other algae and animals – grow on and around the algae. The beds of algae are little ecological communities, and documenting their composition over time can tell us things about changing conditions around the island and in the sound ”.
Fourteen undergraduates all found their way to the island and this instance being their third visit, immediately fell into a rhythm. A few fanned out along the water’s edges looking for specimens. Others gravitated towards the microscopes and imaging equipment. Dunn wandered the island, monitoring the student work, looking at their discoveries, and offering guidance.
“This is how invertebrate zoology is actually practiced,” Dunn said. “In a real research setting, you are going to the animals. You don’t know exactly what you’re going to get that day. When you get the animals out of the water, the first thing you do is figure out which species you’re even dealing with. The work begins of documenting its structure and observing its behavior.”
Anita Duncan ’28 waded into the Sound to look at what scuttled around along the shore. As an Ecology and Evolutionary Biology major, Duncan uses the class time to envision what it might be like to do this kind of work during her career. “I would love to say that I am a book learner, but I am really a hands-on learner. This appeals to me a lot more,” Duncan said as she held a tiny crab in her hand.
A short distance away, Sweeney also trawled the rocky shore, picking up algae and pointing out subtle differences between the plants pulled from the water. Later he worked with Celeste Giannoulias ’28 to press samples for the Peabody collection. Giannoulias had found several species of algae.
Back at the station, Todd helped a group of students look through a telescope at a specimen – hydromedusa, a type of jellyfish. The ubiquity of digital cameras can make photography an impulsive process. By using Todd’s sensitive and powerful technology, students can be intentional about their observations.
“It’s a way for them to see an organism that their eyes don’t necessarily allow and a way for them to collect specimens digitally,” Todd said. “It makes it real to them in a lot of ways. When things become manual it allows them to slow down.”
Slowing down. That seems to be a theme with Dunn’s class. Taking a moment to see and touch. A trip to Horse Island, facilitated by the Peabody team, isn’t just a day bathed in sea-salt air filled sunlight. It’s a place to explore fundamental scientific questions – what species live on this island? What are they doing there? Why are they there?
“It is incredibly fun to see it all come together and have such a deep bench of people making it all happen,” Dunn said.
