Day 21 - What do BYU-Idaho Marine Biology Field Experience students do on their "day off"

Remember, it's a Saturday.

I looked out my cottage window and saw Bailey, Jessica, and Daniel heading out to collect plankton samples before 7am.  Even before they left, however, Elysa and Mackenzie were already in the field at the rocky intertidal zone beyond the Boat House.. They went down there, skipping breakfast, to collect data on color variants of the intertidal mussel Mytilus edulis.  They wanted to look at the ratios between the normal dark blue color morph and the less common brown color morph in the population there.

The rest of the group slept in...well, until a little before 7am when they dashed into the Dining Hall grabbed a bite to eat, and dashed out again to go to South Cove, Cape Arago.  Why do this?  Today we were able to catch our lowest tides so far.  The tide was -2.2 ft at 7:00am.

It was a foggy, gray morning, but the fog burned off revealing a beautiful blue sky - what a fantastic day.

Foggy Morning and Low Tide at the Boat Basin

Charleston, Oregon

(c) 2013 Alan Holyoak

By the way, the photo above shows two things...what a foggy Charleston morning looks like, and what a -2.2' tide looks like.  Check out the floating dock at the right side of the photo - it's grounded in the marina floor!

A car load of students left before I did, but Tony and I made our way south to meet up with them.  On the way we saw that Sunset Bay was nearly completely emptied by the low tide.  Most of the time the bay is full all the way up to where Tony is standing in the middle of this photo!

We just had to stop and take a quick look.  You can see that the fog had already burned off...this was before 8am.

-2.2' low tide at Sunset Bay, Oregon

(c) 2013 Alan Holyoak

After a quick scouting trip at Sunset Bay we scooted down to South Cove and met up with the others who were already there.

(L-R) Blake, Dallas, and Patrick work their way out to the low intertidal zone.

South Cove, Cape Arago, Oregon

5/25/2013

Tony checking out some algae near the low tide line.

Blake is always on the lookout for a good perch and a nice scene to photograph.  He does nice photographic work.

Blake and Patrick team up to see what the low tide uncovered. 

Tyson looks lost in a sea of algal-covered rocks...but he's not.  Not after 3 weeks of this kind of work.

Dallas - mission accomplished.  One of his goals this trip was to find an octopus.  He did it.  It's about 18" long and was quite hammered, but he found one.  We took it back to the lab with us for a closer look.  Sadly, it's in such bad shape that it is not likely to survive.  But Dallas was grinning ear to ear.  

Here I am (Dr. Holyoak) holding a gumboot chiton (Crytochiton stelleri), the largest species of chiton in the world.  "She's a beaut."  To paraphrase "Neature Walk" of youtube fame, "You can tell it's a gumboot chiton because of the way it is."

Real friendships form a trip like this.  Surprisingly, only a couple of students even recognized each other from campus, but the group gelled nicely.   

(L-R) Blake, Daniel, Tyson, Patrick

It was such a nice day that we stayed for about 3 hours.  (L-R) Blake, Daniel, and Tony enjoy a seat where they can take in the beauty of the southern Oregon coast.

Bailey, Jessica, and Daniel joined us at South Cove after they collected their morning samples from the South Slough.  (L-R) Tony, Ty, Jessica, Patrick, Bailey

We spent three super-fantastic hours at South Cove - clear, sunny skies, warm (enough) temperatures, and a great place to poke around during an amazing low tide.

Before we left Blake pulled out his pocket knife and made a horn out of a bull kelp that drifted up on the shore.  

Um...epic fail.  Nice try though Blake.

They sliced off a piece of the end (made a new mouthpiece) and Tony showed him how.

Got it!

So this is what BYU-Idaho Marine Biology Field Experience students do before lunch on a Saturday.  Stay tuned for Day 21 - Part II.