One sunny September afternoon, undergraduate Julianne Park, '27, intently thumbed the buttons of a PlayStation 4 controller aboard an 87-year-old fishing vessel on Monterey Bay. A cheer rang out. Gathered around her, Park's classmates had spotted a group of frolicking sea lions swimming across the camera of the remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, she was guiding beneath the water's surface.
As part of a three-week course in Stanford's 2024 Sophomore College program, the students stood aboard the sweeping decks of the Western Flyer, a 77-foot sardine boat that carried author John Steinbeck and marine biologist Ed Ricketts to the Sea of Cortez in 1940. The pair's observations and musings from the trip inspired Steinbeck to write The Log from the Sea of Cortez, one of his most celebrated works of non-fiction.
Today, the Western Flyer Foundation operates the restored wooden vessel as a floating classroom for students from across the region to connect with the local marine environment. For many of the students enrolled in the Sophomore College program, this was their first time out on Monterey Bay.
"The goal is for the students to gain a deeper appreciation for the ocean and some of the ways you can study it," said Christopher Francis, a professor of Earth system science and of oceans at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and co-instructor of the course, Oceans 10SC.
"I don't think science students read enough literature, and I don't think humanities students know enough science," said oceans Professor William Gilly, Francis' co-instructor who envisioned the course and is a founding board member of the Western Flyer Foundation. "Our culture is too polarized."
Oceans 10SC seeks to close this gap by immersing students in the ecological, cultural, and literary history of Monterey Bay. Based at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, students embark on a series of field trips - including several voyages aboard the Western Flyer - to explore the coastal environment and collect oceanographic data using instruments like ROVs, conductivity-temperature-depth sensors, and echosounders. The students also study the writing of local luminaries like Steinbeck and the poet Robinson Jeffers, whose work celebrated the central California coast.
"My hope is that the students start to look at the world a little bit differently," said Francis, an environmental microbiologist who studies how nitrogen and metals cycle through the ocean, estuaries, and soils. During a kayaking trip to Elkhorn Slough, a seven-mile-long salt marsh that drains into Monterey Bay, he encouraged students to view life at a smaller scale, too. Over a million microbes can inhabit just one teaspoon of seawater, Francis told them. "I try to give them my window to the world, and encourage them to find their own."
Shortly after Park and her classmates spotted sea lions on the ROV camera, the aquatic acrobats broke the water's surface, turning it into a frenzied froth and drawing the students' attention away from the ROV's digital monitor - for a few minutes, at least.
According to Gilly, taking a break from the instruments to observe the ocean is one of the most valuable experiences for students since it offers them a chance to process the experience. On the final day of Oceans 10SC, students shared their reflections on the course in final projects. Presentations included a video game and a "tin talk" tour of Cannery Row guided by pop-up illustrations that nest neatly inside a sardine tin. "We really couldn't predict what students would gravitate towards, but they all did an amazing job," said Francis.
Weston Keller, '27, is an undergraduate majoring in Symbolic Systems. Throughout the course, he captured photos and videos of wildlife, students, the teaching team, and the crew. Very few clear photos remain from Steinbeck and Ricketts' time aboard the Western Flyer, offering Keller the opportunity to think about which moments felt most meaningful to him and important to document.
"One of the themes I explored is that of observation and how our perception warps reality," said Keller, speaking to the distinction between gathering information and interpreting it. Keller's final project paired readings of The Log from the Sea of Cortez with his footage from the course. The resulting film pays homage to Steinbeck and Ricketts while illustrating the student experience aboard the Western Flyer. Keller's portrayal of these parallel experiences is a stirring reminder of how the vessel, even decades after its historic voyage, can evoke feelings of community and connection to the natural world.
According to Francis, the students eventually felt quite at home on the Western Flyer. "Something about their spirit while on the boat was remarkable," said Francis. "You wonder how much of that impact was felt at the time, versus a few months from now. Will they reflect back on that?"
For Keller, the experience aboard the Western Flyer inspired a renewed passion and responsibility to pursue scientific knowledge with creativity and compassion. "We started to see the world in new ways," he said in January. "Not being able to reduce an observation into a tidy name or dataset shouldn't be scary, but rather an opportunity to ask ourselves where art and science become the same thing - a need to feel the world around us more closely and cherish how we are entangled with the larger whole."