UMD alumna shares lessons of the lakes, from the United States and Africa to Australia April Abbott, University of Minnesota Duluth student (MS ’11 Geology) and student researcher, said she chose UMD for her master’s degree because of the Large Lakes Observatory (LLO) and the R/V Blue Heron. “The program and mission had an exotic feel to it,” she says. When she began her work on her thesis, that “exotic feel” became very real. Africa’s Lake Malawi became a destination. Abbott found the nights “unbearably hot.” The bunk room had little airflow, so, “We'd try to sleep up on the top deck above the wheelhouse,” Abbott says. ”But it was the rainy season, so... we'd get massive thunderstorms in the early morning… and that would send us scrambling back to the bunks.”