Ocean studies is wonderfully located in being on the waterfront of Maine Maritime Academy. And so our offices and our labs are right on the waterfront of the campus. Oftentimes for lecture and laboratory, we just go right out to the MMA beach or the salt marsh or utilize Friendship, which is the vessel that's dedicated to ocean studies. So marine biology is one of three programs we have in the Corning School of Ocean Studies that train students to really be proficient and knowledgeable in Marine Biology. So the biology, the ecology, the physiology of organisms that live in the ocean, or in an ocean realm.
I chose Oceanography as a major at Maine Maritime because I was really excited about all the opportunities to get some firsthand learning experience, out of the research vessel, doing water quality, utilizing the laboratories here, and a lot of the really cool equipment to do some really cool chemistry and cool physics.
If you think about Oceanography and Marine Biology sort of being like the organismal. And then sort of the processing based coastal marine environmental science kind of, is nested in between those two, with an additional facet of how the ocean and the ocean environments on the coast are interacting with humans and human populations.
Those students have the opportunity to dual major or get a dual degree with SVO, Small Vessel Operations. What that does is it gives our students a 200 ton license given by the Coast Guard. It is a five year program and that fifth year is almost exclusively devoted to getting all those Small Vessel Operations requirements like navigation, ship, handling, firefighting, all of those aspects of the Coast Guard requires in order to get that license.
