MBFE - Day 3 - Back to South Cove to study tide pools

Today dawned gray and drippy, but that didn't stop us.  We had another great low tide, so out we went.  This group is fantastic...no worries, no complaints, and good solid workers!

We arrived at South Cove, Cape Arago around 9:30 am and made our way down to the beach.

Here's the crew making their way over the drift logs at the bottom of the trail and then over to the rocky intertidal zone.  

Today's field work included collecting data to generate species diversity index values for low, middle, and high intertidal zone tide pools.  This way students could see how tide pools make it possible for organisms to live much higher in the intertidal zone than they can out of tide pools.

Here's one of the teams at work (L-R Skyler, Devon [facing away], Rachel S, Shannon, and Eileen). Note the smiles!  

Tide pools are extremely interesting places since no two pools are alike in size, shape, depth, or community composition.  Here are a few examples:

Here's a tide pool in the low intertidal zone - notice how it's full of surf grass and algae.

Here's a tide pool in the mid-intertidal zone.  It's dominated by red coralline algae and sea anemones.

Here are a few tide pools in the upper intertidal zone.  Notice that the rocks around the pools have only scattered small barnacles and that there is lots of bare rock. The pools, however, are lined by mussels and contain some large sea anemones.

Lastly, here's a tiny tide pool located in the bottom of a hole that was ground out by a rock moved by wave action and flow.

We had a great day!  

The plan for tomorrow?  MUD!  

Stay tuned.