Tom Whitfield has managed Prentice Coastal Field Station since 2015. He is responsible for the station's boats, buildings, laboratories and dive locker, and for the safety of everyone working there, which in practice means he is responsible for stopping things.
He schedules course groups and research use, maintains the small boat fleet, and holds the institutional memory of a shoreline that has been surveyed for twenty years. Students working on the transects learn the sites from him before they learn them from the data.
He came to the station from a career in commercial marine operations and holds a 100-ton master's license. Course groups book through him. So does anyone who wants a boat.