Even teachers need teaching

One of the best things about teaching is the opportunity to keep learning. Case in point: yesterday I attended an all-day teacher training session for the LiMPETS program, so that I can have my Ecology students participate in a big citizen science project in the rocky intertidal later this spring. In the Monterey Bay region LiMPETS is organized and run out of the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, where yesterday’s training took place. LiMPETS has two ongoing citizen science projects, one looking at populations of mole crabs (Emerita analoga) on sandy beaches and the other monitoring population of several invertebrate and algal species on rocky shores. Of course, my interests being what they are I signed up for the rocky intertidal monitoring project.

We spent the morning learning about the history of the program and how to identify the organisms that are monitored, then after lunch went out to Point Pinos to collect some data and work through the process that we need to teach to our students. The day before we’d had a high surf advisory on the coast, and yesterday the swell was still big. We hiked out to the study site and set up the transect line, which runs from the top of a rock through the entire range of tidal heights to the low intertidal.

Where Emily is standing is about 10 meters along the transect line. The monitoring protocol calls for sampling at every meter on the transect. One of the other teachers, Phaedra, and I were the only ones wearing hip boots, so we volunteered to work at the lowest spot. We thought we’d start with the 10-meter quadrat and hopefully get down to the 11-meter quadrat once the tide receded a bit more. Then we got hit by a few big waves and decided that discretion is the better part of valor and gave up. It was a pretty easy decision to make, especially after the quadrat got washed away and we had to go fetch it when the waves brought it back.

All told the group collected eight quadrats of data. We had a little time to poke around (i.e., take pictures) before heading back to the museum for data entry.

Codium is an interesting alga. These cylindrical structures are composed of many filaments, which in turn contain multi-nucleate cells. Yes, the cells contain multiple nuclei. Codium fragile has the common name “dead man’s fingers,” I suppose because. . . well, I actually have no idea. As far as I can tell they don’t feel anything like a dead man’s fingers, or the way I imagine a dead man’s fingers would feel.

There were quite a few empty abalone shells scattered among the rocks. As we were hiking out I found this shell. When I tried to pick it up I found that it was still alive, and well stuck to the rock. This is a very good sign, as the black abs have been suffering from withering syndrome, in which the animal gradually loses its ability to hang on.

All in all, this workshop was a lot of fun. If I have to give up an entire Saturday to do training, it couldn’t get much better than spending at least part of it in the intertidal. And Point Pinos is such a fabulous intertidal site that I certainly wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to explore there again.