What’s up with these boat names, anyway?
MarineLab is very proud of its fleet of US Coast Guard Inspected passenger vessels. These boats are crucial to the programs so we can get our students out to explore all the amazing underwater communities surrounding us here in Key Largo!
Now, people have noticed that our boats have unusual names, and that there’s a pattern. All our boats’ names end in the letter “I” and they all have a story behind the name! We try to link the boats’ names to marine science, and to be honest, some of the efforts are more successful than others.
Our first MarineLab boats were named MAUBI and JUMBI as a nod to our organization’s birthplace in the Caribbean. “Maubi” is a sweetened drink made from the bark of the soldierwood tree (Colubrina elliptica), similar to root beer. “Jumbi” is a West Indian term for ghost or spirit and is also part of the name “Moko Jumbi”, the stilts walkers/dancers seen in Carnival celebrations in Trinidad and the US Virgin Islands. To honor our origins, MarineLab’s fleet will always contain a Maubi and a Jumbi; in fact, we are on Maubi 2 and Jumbi 3 right now!
Some of our past boats included the NORI (seaweed), CASSI (upside down jellyfish), and MAHI (dorado or dolphinfish), shown here.
Next up is the LOKI, an easily recognizable name from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Well, not only is it the name of Thor’s brother the Norse god of mischief, it’s also the genus name of a small isopod that lives in the abdomens of shrimp. Yep, the marine connection here is that it’s a shrimp parasite!
And on to the HALI, representing our connection to SALT. “Hal-“ is a Latin prefix relating to salt, and is found in many of the words we use at MarineLab! You’ll find Halimeda spp (oatmeal algae) in the seagrass beds; you may snorkel through a halocline in the lagoon after a hard rain; our mangroves are facultative halophytes. It’s everywhere!
Our first big boat, the LEWI, was named after the scalloped hammerhead, Sphyrna lewini. Like the Loki, it has a fun secondary meaning too - it’s Louie with a MarineLab twist, and has its own theme song!
The LEWI is a great boat, especially for the reef trips!
We are excited to welcome another big boat to our fleet, which should be in operation for our fall programs. The NARI is named after our favorite cartilaginous fish, the spotted eagle ray Aetobatus narinari. We are also on the lookout for a small skiff to be used by staff for our plankton tows and collection trips. We’ll want to keep up the tradition of names ending in “I” – what do you think would be a good name?