We brought back dozens of living specimens to observe in the water table, from spiney puffer fish and dangerous long-spined sea urchins and stinging fire worms to the benign but colorful red, green, and brown macroalgae. We explored the rocky shore, where waves crashed and salt-loving plants and snails were plentiful and chitins stuck to the Pleistocene rock like glue. We climbed and snorkeled through the mangrove swamp, observing adaptations, like the soda-straw roots of black mangroves for living in low-oxygen soil. We explored a plantation Great House and the archeological site of Nueva Seville where Christopher Columbus was stranded for a year.

Other field trips took us strolling through the hills of Priory on a medicinal plant hike, climbing Dunn's River Falls, rafting the Martha Brae on bamboo rafts and hiking the wet limestone forest of the Cockpit Country. The food was exotic: curried goat, spicy jerked chicken, ackee and salt fish, vanilla ice cream with grape nuts, and mangos, mangos, mangos. Errol, the local Rastafarian herbalist showed us how to make delicious soursop and chocolate drinks laced with Jamaican spices purchased in the open Brownstown Market up in the hills. Students taking the course for lab science credit wrote a short paper on a marine organism while those counting it toward global cultural studies wrote up fascinating interviews they each had with a Jamaican.