by Hi, my name is Danisse Toro. I’m 21 years old and I’m a junior currently attending Queens College in Flushing New York. I was lucky enough to have been chosen to take the first expedition out on the STEMSEAS program excursion from California to Hawaii.
After a failed attempt to watch the sunrise at 0’500 we spent the morning working on the STEMSEAS synthesis. This project would ultimately encompass in 40 or so slides, all the aspects of the trip and what we learned about our lovely home for the past two weeks. (The pacific ocean being our home, not the ship.) While we sat around and waited for crew and staff to assemble so we could begin to present our findings, we collected our last water samples and watched the waves on our last leg of the trip, rise to disrupt our relatively calm voyage thus far. The captain came down to see us after our last lunch on the trip, said his goodbyes to us, thanked us for our time and wished us a safe trip home and a nice time on the island. I expected the power point presentation to go off without a hitch, which it did. We presented our synthesis had our last dinner on board the ship and watched our last sunset together. A wonderful ending to the most exciting experience of my life thus far and guess what? Some of us even saw a green flash.
