Home, it’s where I want to be

All semester I’ve been taking my Ecology students out in the field every Friday. We’ve visited rivers, forests, natural reserves, endemic habitats, and fish hatcheries–none of which fall into my area of expertise. This year I have several students interested in various aspects of food production, natural/holistic health practices (which sometimes conflict with actual science!), mycology, as well as some who haven’t yet decided in which direction to take their academic endeavors. Until very recently I haven’t been able to share with my students much of what I really know, which is marine biology. I did have them learn the organisms that live on docks at the harbor, but that was to study the process of ecological succession rather than natural history.

Yesterday, finally, I took the class into my real field, the rocky intertidal. This year it happened that the best Friday to do our annual LiMPETS monitoring was at the end of the semester. We welcomed the new regional LiMPETS coordinator, Hannah, to our classroom on Thursday for some training. Students learned about the history of the LiMPETS program, some natural history of the rocky intertidal in California, and got to practice some organism IDs with photo quadrats of actual intertidal areas.

The real fun, of course, occurs in the field where the organisms live. So we went here:

We didn’t have a very good student turnout, unfortunately, but the ones who did show up were diligent workers and we got everything finished that Hannah needed. Most of the time was spent sampling along the permanent vertical transect line. This line is sampled at 3-meter increments along a line that runs from the high intertidal into the low. The same quadrats are sampled every time, and the data collected are used to determine how specific sites change over time. The most difficult part of the monitoring is finding the eye bolts that mark where the transects begin!

I admit, I was a little bummed at the low turnout and late arrival of my students. But the intertidal is the intertidal, and it didn’t take long for me to adjust my attitude. I worked up a handful of quadrats with Hannah, then let the students do the bulk of the heavy lifting. This was their field trip, after all. So I wandered around a bit, remaining within hearing distance in case I was needed. I needed to find some stuff!

I just want to show some of the animals and algae in the intertidal yesterday. I didn’t realize how much I missed this basic natural history stuff until I got to spend some time simply looking at things.

Such rich life to see! One of the students was astounded when she learned that we could visit sites like this only a few days each month. “At dinnertime today the spot where you’re standing will be under several feet of water!” I told her. Mind blown.

Looking more closely, there were, as usual, interesting zonation patterns to observe. One was the restriction of large brown algae to the vertical faces of rocky outcroppings.

In the mid-intertidal, mussels (Mytilus californianus) rule the roost. They are often (but not always) accompanied by gooseneck barnacles (Pollicipes polymerus). The barnacles, for reasons discussed in this earlier post, always live in clumps and are most abundant in the lower half of the mid-intertidal mussel beds.

During the training session on Thursday, Hannah told the students that Pollicipes is easily identifiable because the barnacles look like dragon toes. I think I can sort of see that. They are scaly and strange enough to be dragon toes.

The algae are taking off now, and the site is starting to look very lush.

Even algae start as babies! These balloon-shaped things are young Halosaccion glandiforme thalli, surrounded by other red algae. The large blades belong to Mazzaella flaccida, which makes up a large portion of algal biomass in the mid-intertidal zone.

The tidepools at Davenport Landing are good places to see fish, if you have the patience to sit still for a while and watch. This woolly sculpin (Clinocottus analis) posed nicely in the perfect pool for photography–deep enough to submerge the camera, with clear, still water.

And I was finally able to take a good underwater shot of a turban snail carrying some slipper shells. I’ve already written about the story of this gastropod trio in case you need a refresher. I’m still waiting to see a taller stack of slipper shells some day.

It was impossible not to feel satisfied after spending some time looking at these creatures. My attitude was mercifully adjusted, and we all departed feeling that we’d done a good morning’s work. Our small group of students was able to collect a full set of data for Hannah. That ended up being a very important accomplishment, as Hannah doesn’t have any other groups monitoring at Davenport this spring. This means that our data will probably be the only data collected this year at this site. I’m glad the tide and weather conditions allowed us to stay out there as long as we did.