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On October 12, 2010, a group of undergraduate students in the Boston University Marine Program (BUMP) visited the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The BUMP students were part of a Marine Geographic Information Science course taught by Kerry Lagueux, geographic-information-systems (GIS) analyst and associate scientist at the New England Aquarium.

Chris Polloni (USGS), Seth Ackerman (USGS), Scott Gallager (WHOI), and Karen Bolles (Advanced Habitat Imaging Consortium) treated the visitors to a series of brief talks during the morning session. Polloni and Ackerman summarized research activities conducted at the USGS Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center and discussed techniques, technologies, and results from the Massachusetts Seafloor Mapping Cooperative. Gallager and Bolles discussed their work with the Habitat Camera Mapping System (HabCam) group at WHOI and offered a fascinating perspective of seafloor habitats as revealed through stunning photographs captured by their towed camera system.

After the morning talks, we visited the Computerized Scanning and Imaging (CSI) Facility at WHOI, run by Darlene Ketten. Scott Cramer and Julie Arruda, both of WHOI, gave us a tour of the facility, which included the computerized tomography (CT) scanning room; the necropsy lab, which was being cleaned up after the necropsy of a marine mammal; and a quick peek into the necropsy lab's storage freezer.

In the afternoon, we enjoyed a captivating tour of the WHOI dock and ocean engineering facilities by retired WHOI researcher Hovey Clifford. Clifford topped off the tour by surprising the group with an up-close and personal visit with Alvin, WHOI's deep submergence vehicle, which was making a rare visit back to Woods Hole.

A handful of the students were equally excited to spot the Sea Education Association's sailing ship vessel (SSV) Corwith Cramer docked nearby. The tall ship was stocking up for a trip to the Caribbean, where some of the awestruck BUMP students would meet it for a voyage from St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, to Key West, Florida, as the final short course of their Marine Semester.

Special thanks are due to Joanne Tromp (WHOI) for helping to organize the WHOI lab and dock tours, and to Chris Polloni for organizing the USGS activities.