Every morning, University of Rhode Island junior Alec Mauk checks emails and then sits before a microscope, staring at myriad organisms in water samples taken from Greenwich Bay. Before him is a book to help identify species of invertebrates with which he is unfamiliar.

Some days, SURF students Ana Nimaja and Marcos Figueroa travel along the rocky shoreline only to find bay users who want nothing to do with them. On a good day, however, coastal visitors open up about their experiences along Rhode Island’s coast, detailing the bay’s significance beyond scientific research and tourist dollars.

Roger Williams University senior Colby Masse, leaning on a lab counter in the Marine and Natural Science building, describes Narragansett Bay as a ‘sink’ for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Along with fellow SURF student Lyndsay Marlowe, he is working under Dr. Stephen O’Shea to discover the process by which these chemicals are deposited into the bay’s sediment, and also transformed into other chemical compounds which could prove harmful to the environment.

Last summer, Danielle Jordan was manning the tanks at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography’s Blount Aquaculture Lab, examining how farm-grown oysters developed defenses to disease.