Academic adventure helps Darienite plan her future

Hannah Peck wanted to spend her summer by the water.

But not beneath a beach umbrella on a sandy shore. She wanted to learn about marine mammals through hands-on experience. It was this idea that guided her to search for summer programs that would allow her to explore her passion for marine biology.

"I searched online for different education summer trips that I could go on, and when I found Academic Treks, something really enticed me about it," said Peck, who is now a first-year student at the University of Miami in Florida, where she is majoring in marine biology.

"I've always loved marine biology," the Darienite said. "As a kid, I spent a lot of time down by the ocean, overturning rocks and stuff like that.

"I was looking through their Web site, and the prospect of seeing whales and dolphins, I thought was rather exciting," she said. "I had never done anything like it before. I had studied the summer before at a marine research facility, but it was nothing like the hands-on stuff in the wild that I did in Vancouver."

Peck decided to enroll in the Marine Mammal program, offered by Academic Treks, a community service and academic adventure program that offers college-accredited trips for high school and college students all over the world.

Peck's trip took her to British Columbia, along with 10 other students her age for a three-week expedition.

"First we spent a couple days camping and kayaking. We saw some whales, seals and lots of bald eagles, then we spent a week studying at a Bamfield Marine Science Centre on Vancouver Island, and it was basically our training," she said.

The science center is a world-renowned facility, and Peck and her fellow adventurers were taught by resident faculty and researchers there from the sixth to the 12th days of the 22-day trip.

"We had some tests, and a lot of lectures. Then we spent another week on whale watching boats on the other side of Vancouver Island, and we were naturalists in training; we helped answer questions for all the passengers who had come from all around the world," she said.

"We got to go on the whale watching boats, and we had the knowledge to answer questions that people had," she said. "And we got to study the individual animals, too. We learned how to identify animals in the wild and look them up in the catalog and see how long they've been there, how many offspring they have, everything."

Then she and her classmates spent another few days kayaking and camping around the islands of the Johnstone Strait before returning home. But though she boarded a plane and came back to Darien to attend her senior year of high school, the effects of her adventure are still with her.

"I only spent three weeks doing it, and I could have hated it, and realized that's not what I wanted to do. But I loved it," she said. "It definitely solidified my decision as to what I'm going to focus on later in life."

While she only spent a short period of time in the program, she was able to "fully immerse" herself in the marine biology field, she said.

It had a similar effect on the others in the program, she said.

"I think all of us are pretty much heading into the marine biology field," she said. "One of my trip-mates is going to the University of Hawaii, and she's studying marine biology out there."