Over intensives, the marine biology group took a week long trip to Woods Hole, MA to visit the Marine Biology Laboratory (MBL). This trip really solidified my interest in biology and gave me a taste of what studying biology in college and beyond might look like. I was particularly influenced by looking at sea creatures under their high powered microscopes and practicing microscopic photography. I was struck by how visual and artistic microscopic photography can be, and that it’s not just about capturing the structure of an organism. For example, the photos of jellyfish cilia below– when lit at a certain angle, they glow with a rainbow. We also went into depth looking at coral and its skeleton under the microscope. These skeletons had striking patterns. I definitely want to pursue more biology experiences like MBL when I study marine biology in college. At MBL, the librarian introduced us to the work of Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, and physician who worked in the late 19th and early 20th century. His illustrations were essentially the precursor to microscopic photography, although he often invented creatures and imagined organisms to be more symmetrical and perfect than they actually are in real life.
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