Tides have now switched to the low tides being in the afternoon, so we spent time in the classroom this morning...we managed to cover salt marsh communities as well as docks, piers and pilings. The class is doing great!
After class we took a class field trip to the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, or SSNERR for short. It is one of only about half a dozen such national research estuaries that have been designated along the entire west coast, and this one is only about 5 miles from here as the crow flies.
Some of the class visited this place on Sunday but they were happy to go back. It's a beautiful place and entirely unlike pretty much anywhere in Idaho for sure. To get to the slough we took a trail down along a stream through Oregon's coastal uplands and this is the sort of scenery we had.
With this kind of vegetation, you half expected a dinosaur to come crashing through the underbrush. Instead we had to content with forest denizens like these!
Oregon's version of a banana slug.
Courtney likes them! Besides, what's not to like?!
And this terrestrial snail - beautiful!
We eventually made our way down to overlooks were we could see the estuary. When we arrived the water was low so lots of mudflats were exposed. During high tide all of these muddy areas are covered by seawater that pushes upstream.
Here's the crew at the first overlook.
(L-R) Stephen, Ashley (back), Darby (front), Janae, Emily, and Jay (others in the background)
This is what the estuary looks like at high tide. Beautiful tidal marshes!
What does the class think about that? Just ask Darby and Janae!
Later on we spotted a cool visitor to the estuary - Great Blue Heron! Nice! We watched it snapping small fishes out of the water. Now that's nature!
We wrapped up our Tuesday with a class meeting where we discussed formatting for research manuscripts and doing an exercise that introduces the principles of research design.
And the trip goes on. Stay tuned for more!
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