Press Releases

October 25, 2001
Youngstown, OH Native Corrin Flora Participates in Shark Research Through Southampton College Program

Contact:
Patricia Conway
(631) 287 8313
Fax: (631) 283 4081

Corrin Flora, a Marine Science major at Southampton College of Long Island University, has always wanted to work with sharks. She had that chance this past summer when she participated in the College's Cooperative Education program working with Atlantic Sharpnosed, Black Tip, Scalloped Hammerhead, Fine Toothed, Mako and one infamous Bull Shark.

Flora, a Youngstown, OH native, worked with Dr. John Carlson, a shark researcher with the National Marine Fisheries Service, Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Panama City, Florida. Much of the work dealt with population studies that involved heading offshore as far as four miles and setting a large gill net to trap the sharks. The sharks were brought on board, measured, tagged, and released.

Flora's initial project was to study the relationship between a shark's diet and tooth shape. She analyzed stomach contents and used a special computer program to obtain tooth measurements. Age was determined by cleaning, cutting, and mounting shark vertebrae on slides to analyze growth patterns. Flora was also the spokesperson in a segment on sharks and water safety when a German educational television station filmed a children's video at the lab.

Although interesting scientifically, one assignment became Flora's least pleasant task of the summer Co-op. She obtained tissue samples from the Bull Shark that mauled a young boy vacationing in Florida. To get the samples, Flora had to dig up the dead shark's carcass at the beach where it was buried after the attack.

Flora, a junior at Southampton College, looks forward to finishing her undergraduate degree and plans to specialize in shark research in graduate school.

Southampton College's cooperative and internship programs provide students of all academic disciplines with the opportunity to apply their classroom knowledge and training in a real world setting. Students are placed in various businesses, scientific laboratories, community and government agencies, artist and film studios, among others, to gain a broader understanding of the world of work.

Southampton College, located on the eastern end of Long Island minutes from the Atlantic Ocean, places strong emphasis on experiential education and offers several intense programs that stress the value of on-the-job, hands-on experience. In addition to its cooperative and internship programs, the College offers SEAmester, where students travel and study aboard a 130-foot schooner, exchange programs with universities in other countries, and the Friends World Program, a full four-year experiential education program with eight regional centers around the world.