Finding yourself and the island at the field station
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER

Dr. Sarah Oktay has measured the bottom of every major body of water in the world, yet finds herself at home on the 110 acres of the UMass Field Station off Polpis Road. Oktay combines fun and research and believes children of all ages can benefit from the pursuit of science.

Students who survive one of Dr. Sarah Oktay's intense, 90-minute lablecture fieldwork sessions at the University of Massachusetts' Nantucket Field Station off Polpis Road are rewarded with a peek inside her eerie Freezer of Death.

Inside, frozen solid bodies of a common loon, a juvenile brown cormorant, a whitefooted mouse, several snakes, the remains of a roadkill guinea hen and miscellaneous parts of a three-foot wide torpedo ray, including its alien-like mouth parts, eggs and electrical organs that produce 240 volts, are all wrapped in separate clear plastic bags, awaiting further examination from curious young naturalists' eyes.

Children are in the lab at the field station these days and so is the general public, proof of the evolution of this island outpost, owned by the state university system, since Oktay grabbed the director's reins in October 2003.

PHOTO BY ROB BENCHLEY Bird house on Salt Pond.

The field station's founder, the late Wes Tiffney, retired that year. Under Tiffney's leadership, the field station, located on 110 acres bordering the harbor, operated as an ecological cloister for graduate students and professors conducting field research.

The field station was re-named the Grace Grossman Environmental Center in August 2004 for the late Grossman, a generous friend of island environmental efforts.

With a new name and a new director, the field station still plays host to graduate students performing research, but is also open to the public 365 days a year from dawn until dusk for exploration of its trail system, salt marsh and beaches.

"We're much more interactive with the public and the schools," said Oktay, a water chemist specializing in water quality hydrology and environmental policy. "People can come walk the trails and learn about nature. We have our virtualnature trail where people can walk and we also have a very active, vibrant educational program from preschool to senior citizens.

PHOTO BY ROB BENCHLEY Dr. Sarah Oktay has measured the bottom of every major body of water in the world, yet finds herself at home on the 110 acres of the UMass Field Station off Polpis Road. Oktay combines fun and research and believes children of all ages can benefit from the pursuit of science.

"We work with the public school system, the Nantucket New School, the Lighthouse School and a lot of the daycare centers and private schools. In the summer, we get close to 500 visitors a week."

Oktay is a workaholic. Swept up by her passion for sharing the wonders of Nantucket's ecosystems with all islanders and visitors, Oktay not only runs the station and its many programs, but serves on several town boards and committees.

"She is a well-known person on the island," said Andrew J. Grosovsky, dean of the college of science and mathematics at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, Oktay's boss. "She makes herself very available and I think that is helping the station be better known and appreciated."

WES' WORLD

While Oktay is known to islanders outside the boundaries of the field station and uses her expertise to help the community- whether serving on town boards, performing water quality testing, beach profiling, helping to write the harbor plan or speaking at Town Meeting- it was Tiffney who built the field station from tents and two land donations.

The field station opened in 1969 with land donated by Stephen Peabody in 1963 and Catherine Coe Folger in 1965. Schooled as a botanist and ecologist, Tiffney, a self-described environmental scientist, gradually oversaw and helped build a classroom, a1,200-square-foot laboratory, a two-story 2,200-squarefoot building, with an apartment on the second floor for the director and a cottage on the beach for the field station office.

During Tiffney's tenure, the field station was all academic business. Graduate students came to the island for eight-week classes and field research projects and a shared lab facilities and room and board with instructors and professors, who were doing their own research. While the public was not prohibited from the grounds, they were not courted. Tiffney served as vice president of the Maria Mitchell Association and was on the board of directors of Harbor Fuel.

"Before, it was more of a quiet area for off-island researchers to come and do biological studies," said Oktay. "Now, I think we're much more integrated with the community and the schools and the UMass programs."

But that integration almost did not happen. In May of 2004, in reaction to the Legislature's cutting about $100 million from the University of Massachusetts' budget, leaving the field station vulnerable to being sold to cover the university's operational expenses, the Nantucket Conservation Foundation committed to purchasing the 110-acre property including its buildings, 40-acre salt marsh, 2,000 feet of harbor beach frontage, meadows, upland shrub habitat and large freshwater pond for $22 million.

The deal happened as an act of the Legislature, since the land belonged to Massachusetts. Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairwoman Therese Murray, D-Plymouth, filed legislation allowing UMass to sell its land to the foundation, yet the foundation had to allow the field station to continue to exist.

Currently, NCF is just $3 million short of completing its purchase of the field station and has until September 2009 to raise the funds, with an optional one-year extension.

RESEARCH, EDUCATION, OUTREACH

Last Sunday, Oktay and the field station hosted the kick-off event for the Nantucket Family Adventure, a treasure hunt guided by clues that 20 participating families follow this month all through the island's ecosystems to gain knowledge of the Nantucket wilderness for prizes. (See related story).

Her three-dimensional approach: research, education and outreach -- is a new direction UMass Boston is keen on perpetuating.

"Sarah is doing an extraordinary job in leading the station and actually, she's very resourceful," said Grosovsky. "She manages to get a lot out of everything at her disposal and I also think she is very good at networking; she has made herself very well known on the island."

Oktay's and the field station's offerings abound with natural world learning experiences for all islanders, groups such as the Maria Mitchell Association's Discovery Classes, Strong Wings' summer bike camp, seasonal visitors, mainland college and graduate students and the island's elderly.

"It's such a great location," said Strong Wings Education Director Megan Soverino. "You've got the salt marsh and the beach, and you can send people out there snorkeling, and they've got wildflowers and the osprey nest. As far as a location for our biking camp, it's great because they can utilize that location for filling their drinking water when they're heading toward Polpis and Wauwinet."

And this year, there will be more structured programs for youth groups, as the NCF secured a grant from the Weezie Foundation to fund Oktay's husband, Len, as the program education director.

"We primarily use it in the summer time. Our Discovery Class uses it as one of its sites [because] it has a little bit of everything, it's easily accessible," said Darcie Vallant, Maria Mitchell's director of education. "I also use it during the year for after-school programs. I also lead nature walks with seniors and coordinate with the public schools to get them out for their field trips."

REACHING OUT, DIGGING IN

With few exceptions, students pursuing advanced degrees no longer camp out at 180 Polpis Road for two months. Many graduate students are commuting by boat and modem to complete their course requirements, not having the time Tiffney's charges were afforded.

"Before, people did more basic research; now we're doing more directed research and a lot of that is that the grad population has changed," said Oktay. "Grad students can't take off for eight weeks like they did in the '70s. The average grad student is married with three kids, and now they work two jobs."

Additionally, researchers also commute rather than live in the dorms, coming to the island for a couple days up to 10 times a year.

The lucky few students and researchers who do get to stay for extended periods of time, stay less than a month.

"A lot of what's changed is society's changes," said Oktay. "A lot more of our students can just take the same class load but in a reduced a period of time with more online classes."

That profile fits 27-year-old Teresa Dujnic, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of California in Berkley and eight other UMass students led by Professor David Landen, associate director of the Andrew Fisk Memorial Center for Archeological Research and adjunct professor of anthropology at UMass Boston.

"We have the ability to do a different kind of a project, which also has a kind of local history, public outreach component to it, something that may be a little bit different," said Landen. "It may be about culture, rather than nature, although in a sense, we're very interested in that dynamic."

Dujnic and the other students are searching for artifacts on the grounds of the Higginbotham House at 27 York St. in preparation for a major renovation of the historic house by the African American Meeting House in Boston.

"I want to ask questions about cultural identity and the community in the 19th century," said Dujnic. "I think that there's not a lot of attention paid to the African American community on Nantucket during the 19th century and that's something we can bring to light and raise awareness about through digs like this, and publishing and doing public events, and eventually, changing the history books."

This archeological dig, while not related to the traditional ecological mission of the field station, is yet another tangent that Oktay is encouraging and the epitome of the evolution of the field station on Nantucket.

"The field station is really the only thing that makes this possible and Sarah Oktay specifically has been immensely helpful in getting us housing and getting us more units if we need them," said Dujnic. "We hope that we can bring this project into whatever educational programs are going on at the field

station in the future." i

Field Station Facts: Heading out to the field station? Remember that it's only open during daylight hours, not to leave your children there unattended and dogs are not allowed. If you do drive there - Director Sarah Oktay encourages visitors to carpool, take the bus, walk or cycle to the property - obey the 5 mph speed limit and park only in designated area. Reach the field station at 228-5268 and find it at 180 Polpis Road and online at www.umb.edu/nantucket/.