We had another early morning low tide…not as early as
yesterday, but the crew fell out for breakfast by 6am and we were on our way to
South Cove, Cape Arago, before 7am.
Boots on, buckets at the ready and we were off.
Here's the entire class:
L-R: Blake, Dallas, Patrick, Ty, Daniel, Kristin (fore), Tony (back), Lindsey, Jessica, Elysa, Mackenzie, Bailey
Down the trail toward South Cove, Cape Arago, Oregon
This made me want to start whistling, "Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to work we go."
You need a rope for the last little bit. Here are Kristin, Lindsey, Bailey, Jessica, and Mackenzie making their way down.
The plan for the trip was for students to look for examples
of adaptations or behaviors that allow intertidal organisms to deal with heavy
wave action. This meant that we needed
to go someplace where wave action can be heavy – the point at the end of the
north shore of South Cove.
We had a -0.7 foot low tide, our lowest so far, and the
class loved it. We arrived at South Cove
around 7:30am and stayed there until about 10am. We had a few mishaps while we were there…like
Blake’s waders having a major fail, but at least he didn’t get all wet.
The class found all kinds of things they hadn’t seen before…including
the voracious, predatory sea star Pycnopodia helianthoides, and Crytochiton
stelleri, the world’s largest chiton species.
They also took lots of photos for an assignment they will hand in at the
end of the term – it’s a PowerPoint slide set of a minimum of 50 photos showing
ecological interactions or examples of ecological principles.
Here are a few shots from the outing:
A mid-level tidepool
(c) 2013 Alan Holyoak
A high tidepool
Students in "lab"
L-R: Lindsey, Patrick, Blake, Dallas
L-R:: Mackenzie, Elysa, Ty
Ty (fore), Daniel (back)
L-R: Tony, Kristin, Bailey
L-R: Tony, Dallas, Daniel, Lindsey, Blake
Blake sporting the new hole in his waders.
Jessica and Bailey, putting their face where their feet were to get a good look at some algae.
The time seemed to fly by, and then it was time to go. The tide was coming in, and we had other things to do.
This is looking south along the Oregon Coast from the trail to South Cove, Cape Arago.
(c) 2013 Alan Holyoak
We made it back to OIMB around 10:30a, then had class 11-noon,
and then lunch. We followed up lunch
with another class meeing/lecture/discussion about the rocky intertidal
zone. I then cut the class loose to work
on identifying species collected today, as well as ideas for research. Nearly 6 hours of class is plenty for one day
(if you include the early morning field trip).
These students are eating up this experience. It’s fanastic.
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