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Ready, Set, Research!

Partnership Education Program (PEP) student Kayla Jones (left) and guest student Hadley Clark geared up in the summer of 2017 to collect startlet sea anemones in Great Sippewissett Marsh, a tidal salt marsh on the eastern shore of Buzzards Bay in Falmouth, Mass. The two undergraduates were working with WHOI biologist Ann Tarrant, who studies how these sea anemones (Nematostella vectensis) have adapted to highly variable coastal environments. The small, wormlike anemones burrow into marsh sediments and can tolerate a wide range of temperatures, salinities, and seawater chemistry—unlike their usually much more sensitive relatives, the corals. (Photo by Ann Tarrant, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)