By Gillian Graham

Staff Writer

Kristen Raskauskas bent over a lab table, her face inches from a small herring.

With a steady hand, she guided a scalpel across the belly of the fish, exposing its guts while her two lab partners wrinkled their noses at the sight. For the three teenage girls, dissecting a fish was just another day at summer camp.

Raskauskas was one of 18 high school students who spent two weeks at the University of New England as part of the Coastal Marine Ecology Program. The intensive program took students from the classrooms and labs on the Biddeford campus to the mudflats and barrier beaches of southern Maine.

Each student applied to the program and provided high school transcripts and an essay about why they wanted to participate, said Audery Gup-Mathews, director of continuing education and summer programs. Students who successfully completed the program earned three college credits. The camp also was held in 2007, but not for the past two years because of lack of interest. Gup-Mathews said most of the students who applied were accepted into the program.

Last week, Raskauskas and lab partners Carolyn Gorss and Carrie Zuk spent an afternoon working in a laboratory at the university’s Marine Animal Rehabilitation Center. After dissecting the herring to identify various parts inside, they identified preserved sharks, examined sharkskin under a microscope and got an up-close look at skulls of marine mammals. Earlier in the day they watched center coordinator Keith Matassa perform a necropsy on a seal.

“Watching the seal necropsy was cool, but I wouldn’t want to be the person doing that,” said Zuk, a 17-year-old from Carlisle, Mass.

Gorss, 17, of Southborough, Mass., agreed the necropsy was cool, but said it was much different than the dissections she has done at school.

 “It was way more intense. It was much bloodier than I expected,” she said.

“It smelled terrible but it was really, really cool,” added Raskauskas, 16, of Brighton, Mich.

Leah Bymers, an assistant lecturer in the Marine Science Department, led the program with assistance from two undergraduate students. Activities and field trips throughout the program were designed to show students marine ecosystems such as salt marshes, barrier beaches, rocky coastlines and the open ocean, she said.

 “There is so much they can access just by walking to it from here,” she said.

Bymers said field trips included a whale watch, a meeting with a lobster biologist from the Department of Marine Resources, a trip to mudflats to collect samples and a trip to the waterfront and Old Port in Portland.

The students were able to learn about and use tools normally used by marine scientists to study the environment. On a plankton tow, students used a funnel- shaped mesh net towed behind a boat to catch algae and zooplankton. The students then used microscopes in the lab to identify what they caught and discussed each organism’s significance in the food web, Bymers said.

Bymers said she tried to expose the students to as many scientists as possible so they could see what people do for work and ask questions. Matassa demonstrated a necropsy and explained how it can be useful for learning about how the animal died and protect others of the species, she said.

“They were totally grossed out and fascinated at the same time,” Bymers said.

While the field trips and lab work were designed to be fun and show students something they may never have seen before, the program also was designed to provide a look at college life, Bymers said. She assigned students homework and they had to achieve a balance between schoolwork and social activities the same way college students do, she said.

Despite homework assignments in July, students said they enjoyed the program because it provided a closer look at a field they had been considering from afar. Bymers said many of the students have been interested in marine biology for years.

 “I hear from many of them that since birth they’ve loved the marine environment,” she said.

Raskauskas said she has loved the ocean since her early days in coastal Massachusetts. Her family moved to Michigan, but she said she hopes someday to return to the water. She is considering studying biology or marine biology in college and her exposure to the marine biology field will help her with the decision, she said.

Raskauskas said it also was helpful to talk to other students about colleges they have visited and programs they have heard about.

For Gorss, the program allowed her to have her first summer camp experience while adding more academic achievements to college applications. She said she wants to study environmental science and enjoyed learning what marine biologists do every day. 

Zuk, who will be a senior this year, said she found the program interesting but will continue to explore other academic areas.

“I liked learning about everything,” she said.

Lachlan Newcomb, 15, of New York City, and Alex Ulmer, 18, of Shrewsbury, Mass., said they both found the program interesting, especially the seal necropsy and trips on the university’s research boat.

Bymers, who has worked at the university for five years, said she also benefits from watching students explore their world through the program.

 “It revitalizes me,” she said. “They get me excited about it all over again.”

Staff Writer Gillian Graham can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 213.