A Sea Change

Hunched over a microscope at USC’s Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, Josh Cohen picked at the green-brown muck in a petri dish, looking for tiny shrimp larvae.

“Here’s one,” he said as his lab partner, Tommy Rumrill, rushed over to confirm the find.

Upstairs from the lab, Jeff Pham was planted in the library, rubbing his eyes and trying to make sense of data from the plankton he had meticulously scooped up at Catalina Harbor.

Sure, they all know the song, the one that goes:

Twenty-six miles across the sea,

Santa Catalina is a-waitin’ for me.

Santa Catalina, the island of romance, romance,

romance, romance.

But not to the students in USC’s new Catalina Semester program.

“This is the island of research,” declared Pham. “That’s what we see.”

Indeed, he had just finished his last final exam and was now racing against the clock to wrap up an independent research project whose results he had to present this week to a panel of faculty members.

In all, 19 USC undergraduates spent the spring semester at the Wrigley Institute, which was donated by the family of chewing gum fame. Tucked into Big Fisherman Cove on the opposite end of the island from Avalon, the facility is the only island marine laboratory on the Pacific Coast between Puget Sound and the Galapagos Islands.

The 30-year-old institute used to be reserved for advanced scientific study and an occasional USC student aspiring to become a marine biologist. But after a multimillion-dollar renovation and modernization, the facility in January imported its first class of undergraduates for a full semester’s exploration of a range of environmental sciences--and culture shock to students who had been warned: “Leave your Rollerblades at home.”

Ten seniors, eight juniors and a sophomore signed up.

First they sweated through an intense four-week course on California natural history. “We were already beaten down in the first couple of days, we were in class so much,” Cohen said.

Then came two more monthlong crash courses in subjects ranging from biological oceanography or animal physiology to natural disasters and the environment.

Now, a dozen of the students are writing up independent research projects.

It all adds up to a semester that is unusual for more than its exotic locale. That’s because the undergraduates get sent out to do original fieldwork and lay scientific groundwork that could influence real-world decisions--in this case, the way the Santa Catalina Island Co. develops the Two Harbors area.

“They are tackling graduate-level questions,” said Tony Michaels, the institute’s new director, who was inspired to give the program a practical bent by his last job at a biological research station in Bermuda.

“The best [student] projects will guide planning needed for the [California] Coastal Commission,” he said, “and other ones will guide what kind of research will have to be done in the future.”

Stephanie Betancourt studied whether marshy land next to Catalina Harbor qualifies under federal rules as a coastal wetland. Her work could influence whether property owners build a nearby hotel.

Pham’s plankton census in the harbor might provide scientific evidence on how polluted runoff affects ocean wildlife. It could have implications on whether to pave the area’s dirt roads, which would increase contaminated runoff.

“Plankton is the primary food source for fish,” Pham pointed out--meaning that if plankton disappear, so do larger ocean critters.

“Once you do the fieldwork, you understand the concept a lot better than if you do it in the lab,” he said. “This is my small contribution to the environmental safety of the harbor.”

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Many of the budding scientists are pursuing USC’s environmental studies major. The Catalina Semester cost them the same as USC’s regular tuition, plus $3,000 for room and board at the facility’s refurbished dormitory and dining hall--about what they would pay on campus.

Life here, though, made them part of an experiment of a different sort: What happens when you take 19 teenagers and early twentysomethings from the frenetic pace of a big-city campus and plunk them down in a sleepy island enclave, miles of ocean away from family, friends and the nearest pizza joint.

“My first impression was, ‘Oh, L.A. kids. They are going to have a hard time here,’ ” said Sheila Schueller, a PhD candidate in biology from the University of Michigan who was brought in as a student mentor.

Unlike Avalon, Two Harbors has no paved roads. It’s a tiny resort hamlet that caters mostly to yachting folk, who tie up to moorings during the summer and venture ashore to shop in the town’s one general store, eat in its one restaurant or drink in its one bar.

During the winter, the place is, well, dead.

The Wrigley Institute is even more remote. It’s a 45-minute walk from the facility to town on a twisting, hilly dirt road. Avalon is another 1 1/2 hours away by bus.

Even though the school made full disclosure about life here, it was still a shock to some of the undergraduates who arrived in January, sans girlfriends, boyfriends or even the most basic of Southern California necessities: a car.

“There were a few people who came out here [thinking,] ‘Catalina, party like a rock star,’ ” Rumrill said. “Didn’t happen.”

He himself experienced a personal crisis when he discovered that the institute had only one TV. And it wasn’t in working order until the semester was well underway.

“I’m a TV junkie,” he said. “I thought I was going to be missing my shows. But I’m not. Now I just want to go outside and do something instead.”

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The undergraduates similarly came to embrace the pace of life on Catalina. They went on nature hikes, scouted for the island’s buffalo, watched the gorgeous sunsets. Half a dozen learned to scuba dive. Many jumped off the institute’s dock to snorkel in the cove, home to bright orange garibaldi, moray eels and pregnant (and harmless) leopard sharks.

“It’s so unbelievably quiet here,” said Betancourt, a junior. “When you go back to main campus, you are struck by the traffic and TV and helicopters flying overhead. Here, you can leave your door unlocked.”

At first, some students couldn’t wait to catch a ride on the boat that would ferry them to the mainland on weekends. Now many are jockeying for jobs or other excuses to stay on the island for the summer.

“I don’t want to go home,” said Cohen, a junior from Canoga Park. Talk about urban animals: He has wraparound sunglasses, a gold hoop earring, mutton chops and brown hair with bleached tips.

Echoed Rumrill: “That boat ride home is going to be one of the most depressing times.”

In the fall, the facility will host a new crop of students, but not all of them from USC. A Cal State Northridge biologist, Robert Carpenter, is renting the institute to run a program for as many as 30 students from various Cal State campuses and other universities.

Meanwhile, USC already is taking names for next spring’s Catalina Semester.

They had better not expect a vacation, this year’s pioneers say. Their island time has been filled with more-rigorous-than-usual courses and a close association with live-in faculty and graduate students who, after all, are stuck on the same rock.

Then there’s the seemingly endless fieldwork that had Betancourt counting rare fiddler crabs along the shoreline and Pham motoring around Catalina Harbor in a 13-foot Boston Whaler snagging plankton in a net that resembles a coffee filter.

Rumrill and Cohen spent hours collecting shrimp and mussel larvae, using plastic kitchen scrub pads that they tied to offshore mooring chains. The idea was to see how many juveniles would make homes in the pads--part of an experiment to determine how well various species could recover after an ecological disaster.

Their larva count continued into late Friday afternoon as tunes from the Skankin Pickle and other bands blared from a boombox.

Finally, the two self-described “lab rats” had come up with a preliminary count--”That’s sweet!” Rumrill said--and were ready to take a break.

“It’s a shame on a day like this we are in the lab counting larvae,” Cohen said. “We should be frolicking in the sun.”

So the two bounded downstairs to the “touch tank,” filled with seawater, sea stars, urchins, crabs and other ocean animals, placed there for inspection--and handling--by human visitors.

“I come down and play with the octopus every day,” Cohen said, upending rocks to hunt for the creature, a master of camouflage.

But the tanks featured a new attraction, a moray eel lurking in a submerged pipe. A sign was taped to the tank, warning of the animal’s bite.

“Cool, let’s feed the eel,” Cohen said.

“I know where the anchovies are,” Rumrill told him. “Go get some sticks.”

For the next half-hour, Cohen used a pair of 18-inch wooden stakes like chopsticks--”I’m not going to stick my hand in there”--to dangle anchovies in front of the pipe. Eventually, the temptation proved too much, and the eel extended its snake-like body to snatch the bait.

“We have these little games to amuse ourselves,” Cohen said. “This is a new one.”