An international group of 16 graduate students recently pursued three weeks of intensive study of small fishes at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point.

The students, from as far away as California and New Zealand, participated in an intensive graduate-level lecture and laboratory course on the early life stages of fishes, said David Malmquist, VIMS’s director of communications. The course ended June 24.

The course was taught by a quartet of leading experts in fish development, classification and ecology, including Drs. Nalani Schnell and Troy Tuckey of VIMS, Professor Ed Houde of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and Dr. G. David Johnson of the Division of Fishes at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Alison Deary, a Ph.D. student at VIMS, said she took the course to help in her dissertation research on the development of feeding structures in drum, croaker, spot and other related species. These are ...