On Sapelo Island, tourism isn’t as dominant as on some of Georgia’s popular barrier islands. Vacationers flock to the state’s famed Golden Isles; Jekyll Island, St. Simons Island, Little St. Simons Island and Sea Island. But Sapelo, only accessible by boat or airplane, remains largely wild.

No one can visit the island unannounced. Visitors must be part of a tour, a guest of a resident or visiting one of the research stations on the island.

Sapelo Island is a state-protected barrier island in southeastern Georgia, along the state’s coast. Some 97 percent of the island is owned by the state and managed by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Private landowners, about 100 total, make up the remaining percentage. Most of the island’s permanent residents live in the Hog Hammock community, home to African-Americans of Gullah-Geechee descent, who have been living here for generations. They are direct descendants of slaves brought from West Africa in the 19th century to work on the island. This community was in relative isolation for so long that they developed a culture that has preserved much of their African linguistic and cultural heritage. The same ferry that shuttles scientists to the island also carries residents of Hog Hammock to the mainland for work and school.

For decades, Sapelo Island was privately owned and closed to the public. Tobacco heir R.J. Reynolds Jr. purchased the island during the Great Depression. He was interested in agricultural experimentation and founded the Sapelo Island Research Foundation in 1949, which funded the research of Eugene Odum, a University of Georgia professor and pioneer in the field of ecology. Odum’s 1958 paper “The Ecology of a Salt Marsh” painted a portrait of the fragility of the cycle of nature in the wetlands. The paper was well-received among scientists and helped launch the modern ecology movement.

Having established a scientific presence on Sapelo, UGA created its Marine Institute (UGAMI) in the 1950s to support research here using buildings from Reynolds’ experimental dairy farm (the main UGAMI lab is called "the barn"). Visiting scientists from faraway countries have been coming to Sapelo to study its salt marsh ever since (a team from the Netherlands was at UGAMI at the same time as Glass’s team). Resident scientists from UGA work here year round.

“This is a historic site, in many ways, but particularly for science. It’s really become one of those ecosystems around the country where scientists come back over and over again to study,” Glass said. “This facility is just amazing in terms of its historical relevance and its physical beauty.”

Glass’s team has come to UGAMI, in part, to study the methane cycle. Methane is a greenhouse gas that’s 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Burning fossil fuels releases methane, as do microorganisms in wetlands such as Sapelo’s marsh.

Some organisms in the marsh are also thought to eat methane using unique chemistry that involves iron and manganese. Scientists have characterized the salt marsh’s geochemistry through the years, so researchers have a good idea where to look for theses microbes. What scientists don’t know is precisely how microbes use iron and manganese in their metabolism. Glass’s lab is taking samples from zones in the marsh that have these metals and methane in order to unravel the pathways at play.

That’s why these four women are knee-deep in mud, to look for organisms that no one has ever seen and that eat methane in a way that no one fully understands.

On Sapelo Island, researchers work for everything they get. They load and unload their gear on and off the ferry, and then onto an old truck that they drive themselves – with a manual transmission, four on the floor – to the dorms.

There’s no cook for visiting researchers, so scientists must bring and cook their own food, even after a long day in the field. The dorms are utilitarian. Bunk beds, two desks and set of chest of drawers are all that each rooms holds. The private bathrooms almost feel like a luxury, but the water smells of sulfur. Even after washing the marsh off in the shower, the smell of sulfur lingers.

For half of Glass’s team, this is their introduction to field work. It’s old-school science for a new generation of scientists. They are a diverse group of women with backgrounds that are underrepresented in science. There’s Amanda Cavazos, a first-year PhD student from South Texas with a penchant for the oboe. Then there’s Melissa Warren, a master’s student whose love of mountain biking has her wearing a wrist brace for the entire trip – not that it slowed her down digging into the mud. Chloe Stanton, a second-year undergraduate Earth Sciences major with a passion for playing in the orchestra, strode into the marsh with the confidence of someone with years of field experience. For all of them, this was their first trip to Sapelo Island.

“This is going to be an adventure, because I’ve never been here before,” Glass said during the morning meeting with her team before their first day in the field.

One goal of the trip is to introduce the students to a field sampling site that they can return to throughout their careers.

"There’s no better way to understand a place or process than to go there and experience it first-hand,” Cavazos said. “The trip to Sapelo allowed me to do just that."

In addition to the marsh, the team also collected water samples from the ferry dock to learn about the Earth’s nitrogen cycle. Each summer, a unique bloom of microbes forms here, and the Glass lab wants to learn how they produce nitrous oxide, the potent greenhouse gas. Water below the dock was pumped into big jugs. Some water was filtered and quickly treated to preserve any genetic material, and then frozen in a giant container of liquid nitrogen that the team has brought with them. This will tell them what organisms are present. The unfiltered water will tell the scientists what nutrients these organisms are working with. Compared to the marsh, this part of their field work was a breeze.

“That was pretty mild field sampling,” Glass said. “We had a nice hard surface.”

Long days in the field under the South Georgia sun are capped with short nights back at the dorms. A quick shower, a couple of hours for dinner and conversation, and then eyes start to get heavy and people start to turn in just after 9pm.

Nights on Sapelo aren’t exactly quiet. There is very little car traffic on the island, and the hum of work carts around the research station dies down after sunset. But the bugs sing loudly at night, creating a soundtrack for Sapelo Island.

“It feels like we’re a thousand miles away from Atlanta,” Glass said.