By: Jess Knachel ’27
Before there was Studio Art in Australia, there was Marine Biology in Bermuda. This incredible Off-Campus Studies program, created by Carleton biology professor Gary Wagenbach in 1972, went through many transformations over its nearly 40-year lifespan. The original concept was deceptively simple: Do marine science in the field. Carleton students embarked on a term full of scuba diving, independent research, collaborative learning, and support from a tight-knit cohort of peers and faculty leaders. The program evolved over the decades into a interdisciplinary and multinational program that incorporated the studies of art, geology, and environmental history in Australia, New Zealand, and the Cook Islands. This pioneering program changed not just the lives of its 467 student participants, but the biology department back at Carleton.
Gene Gallagher (’76) is a professor of oceanography and statistics at UMass Boston. Megan Dethier (’75) teaches marine biology at the University of Washington, and is the director of the college’s Friday Harbor Laboratories. Both participated in the 1974 Marine Biology program, and were kind enough to share a little bit about their transformative experiences in Bermuda.
How did you prepare for the program?
Gene: Part of the preparation was that everyone had to get certified for scuba diving. We went to the pool one night a week and got trained, and had our checkout dive right in the middle of November at Dudley Kelly Lake to get certified. Then we all flew to Bermuda. We all had rooms, private rooms, at an old resort hotel that had been turned into the Bermuda Biological Station, which is a really magical place. The course was set up so that we dove probably three times a week, maybe even four times a week. We had boats that would take us to all of the tremendous diving sites around Bermuda—and there are some phenomenal ones. The visibility in Bermuda is such that you could be swimming at 30 meters depth, and you could wave to somebody at the surface, and they could wave back.
Why did you decide to go on the Marine Biology program in Bermuda? Did you know you were going to be a biology major beforehand?
Megan: Even before I got to Carleton, I knew that I wanted to be a marine biologist. I always wanted to be a marine biologist. One of the reasons I chose Carleton, actually, was because I was looking at the catalogs and saw that there was this quarter abroad program in Bermuda for marine biology. It was one of the reasons I went to Carleton rather than some of the various other places that I applied to.
Gene: I had already decided, I think, by the time I had finished Invertebrate Zoology my
sophomore fall that I was going to be a marine biologist, but I came to Carleton for pre-med. I
had an older brother who went to the University of Chicago Medical School, and he stopped by
our Missoula Montana home with two other Chicago residents on his way to the University of
Washington for his residency. I asked them where I should go to get the best pre-med education
in the country, and they all agreed: Carleton College. All of the top students in their medical
school class were from Carleton.
How was the experience of learning biology in Bermuda different from learning in a Carleton classroom or lab?
Megan: Well, what can you say? Field stations are incredible. I am now a director of a field station, so I’m thoroughly involved in this business. The learning is all day, every day, 24/7. It’s a huge amount of time in the field and lab, and very little time in lecture, which is great. It’s all hands-on, just exploring a new place, new systems. In Bermuda, the class did a lot of snorkeling and scuba diving, so a lot of time in the field, underwater, in coral reefs, the works. It’s sort of like apples and oranges. There’s no way to compare on-campus time with off-campus time.
Gene: Working with Gary was a huge feature, and nothing beats scuba diving four days a week. All 22 of us were working on really interesting research projects, a lot of them involving scuba diving, and you can’t dive alone. We would have group dives maybe twice a week, and everybody was always looking for dive buddies. John Leber was mine—he did a coral reef project.
We had lectures from leading experts, like Wolfgang Sterrer, the world’s most famous benthic meiofaunal ecologist. There was a famous Carleton professor, Gerry Hill who’s unfortunately gone now, who taught aquatic ecology and non-vascular plants at Carleton. He flew out to Bermuda for a week and a half of the quarter and gave us lectures and labs on algae. We would also have student-led discussions of classic marine papers, which students got to pick. I remember Megan Dethier picking R. T. “Bob” Paine’s 1966 keystone predator paper. I later took Paine’s Marine Community class at U. Washington and Megan earned her U.W. Ph.D. with Paine.
What was Gary Wagenbach like as a professor and faculty leader?
Megan: Fantastic. I mean, he was my advisor throughout my time at Carleton, and we’ve stayed in touch. I went and visited him last June during Reunion. He is fantastic as a mentor. During the Bermuda program he really modeled how to get people out in the field, and how to teach in the field and in the lab. In subsequent years, after I got my PhD, Gary asked if my husband and I, who’s also a marine biologist, wanted to come help teach subsequent versions of that marine program. So we accompanied him to Catalina Island and Friday Harbor, Australia twice, and New Zealand. It got me on wonderful boondoggles to marine stations around the world.
Gene: Gary is incredibly dedicated. I don’t know if this article is about Gary, but it should be. Gerry Hill was also a phenomenal Carleton Biology professor. They were best friends and taught the course together, but it was mostly Gary’s course. We’ve kept in touch over the years. Our Carleton 50th reunion is coming up this June, and I’ll be there. It will be great to interact with Gary—that’s the main reason I’m going.
How has the program influenced your approach to biology?
Megan: On the program each student did an individual research project, which was the activity that I probably learned the most from. Something I do now in a lot of the classes that I teach is try to work in some kind of individual project. If you can’t get students engaged doing that, they’re hopeless. It’s the ultimate way to pull them into being a biologist.
Gene: Gary’s Fall 1973 Invertebrate Zoology course got me interested in polychaetes (bristle worms) before the Winter 1974 Bermuda program. Gary designed one invertebrate zoology lab where you had to dissect polychaetes; he brought in a variety of them. Then we had to do a term paper on invertebrates and I did mine on polychaete reproductive swarming displays. There were other great courses at Carleton that influenced me, but over five decades later, I’m still working on polychaete ecology.
How did the program impact your career trajectory? Did it influence what you wanted to do after Carleton?
Megan: I was already on that track, but something very formative was the reading of primary literature while there in Bermuda: stuff that we could get out of the library. I read a paper about marine community ecology by Bob Paine. And then I ended up going and doing my PhD with Bob Paine. I read the paper and went, “Oh, that’s the kind of marine biology I want to do.” Of course, I could have read that paper in the library at Carleton, but I happened to read it there, so it just sort of continued that track.
Gene: I knew I would work with polychaetes, and I did. I studied intertidal organisms, dominated by polychaetes. I got my Ph.D. in the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington, and then I wrote an NSF proposal to fund work with one of the top polychaete biologists in the country, Dr. Judy Grassle, at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole. Judy was married to Fred Grassle, one of the most famous deep-sea benthic ecologists of all time. I was going to work at the MBL for two years, but then I got a job offer from UMass Boston (UMB) to become the second faculty member hired to create UMB’s Environmental Science Program, the University’s first Ph.D. program. So starting in Fall 1983 I commuted 60 miles from Woods Hole to UMass Boston to help create that program. Now there are 30 UMB doctoral programs. I taught benthic ecology, oceanography, statistics and mathematical modeling at UMB for over forty years. I retired in December of 2023, but I continue to do statistical research on
polychaetes and other benthic organisms.
What was one memorable experience from the program that influenced your academic or professional development?
Megan: The whole thing was an incredibly good time, and that group just remained a very tight cohort of students. Again, we became permanently tied with Gary and his wife, Linda, who was also there on the trip, and became everybody’s mom.
A particularly memorable experience was riding motor scooters around Bermuda, which is the way most people get around the island. I chose to do a project on the shoreline on the other side of the island, and John Leber would let me borrow his motor scooter every day so I could zip around to the other side of the island, and study the creatures and tide pools there. It was sort of double independence. I mean, riding a motor scooter, working on my own, following something that was my passion—that couldn’t be beat. Also, there were a couple of geologists in the cohort who were studying the caves on Bermuda, so we got to go caving with them. Not exactly marine science, except that the caves are all formed by limestone under the ocean, but that was pretty amazing.
Gene: I knew before I even went that there was a famous, brightly bioluminescent polychaete in Bermuda called Odontosyllis enopla that mates 55 minutes after sunset three to five days after the full moon. The females come swimming up to the surface in this crystal clear water, and begin making blue circles as they release bright blue bioluminescent luciferin and luciferase, the same enzymes that make fireflies glow. When the males sense the female’s light, they swim directly towards the center of that light, flashing blue like police cars. Males will swim from 10 meters away to a single female when they’re sparse. When the males and females meet, they explode in a bright blue display, with sperm fertilizing the eggs. Within 5-10 minutes, the display is over, leaving complete darkness. So, my independent research project was documenting how the worms know it’s three days after the full moon, and how they know that it’s 53-55 minutes after sunset. I measured the faint light intensities from the setting sun each day for a month. I still have my report that I wrote on it. Gary also sent me a copy when I emailed him that I’d be coming to the 50th reunion.
When I got married, I arranged my wedding so that it was five days before the full moon so my
wife and I could honeymoon in Bermuda. I took my wife out to that same location where I’d done
my research, and we watched the polychaetes swarm and mate—it was romantic for me, anyway.
Beyond Bermuda
In 2005, a study of the program, the Marine Biology Longitudinal Study, was conducted to investigate the impact of the program on student learning. Over half of the alumni contacted—some of whom hadn’t participated in the program in several decades—responded to the survey.
Almost all students reported improved abilities in gathering data independently, approaching problems creatively, working as a team, and incorporating interdisciplinary complexity into their research. They also reported a greater understanding of and respect for ecological and cultural diversity, as well as human impacts on the environment.
The most influential aspect of the program, the one which was taken home to the Carleton biology department, was the field learning model. The critical immersion element produced an in-depth learning experience for students that fostered a better understanding of marine science, the nature of research, and potential career pathways. The Marine Biology program influenced teaching models in Northfield, other OCS programs, and beyond.