MCC's Marine Biology Study Ablog 2022

Yesterday, we went on an all day boat trip. We put on wetsuits to keep us warm and afloat. I expected the water to be a lot colder but the wetsuit did a good job! When we took a dip in the ocean, a bunch of sea lions came to greet us. I had never seen one up close before. They looked so playful and cute. I heard that it is safer to look and not touch them because if they’re a pup, their mom might get the wrong idea and attack you. Glenn and four other people went diving. I would like to get scuba certified too some day. Later in the day, we saw a whale. The divers got pretty close to it and said it was pretty cool. For lunch, we ate some carne and shrimp cocktail. This adventure was the most exciting one we’ve had all week.

 Today is the last day of the trip. I’m surpised on how fast the trip went, feels like i’ve been here for a month but also a day. It’s such a changing expirence! I learned many things.  First thing I learned was to NOT EAT AT EL OKTOPUS! My stomach is hating me for that right now. Second thing I learned was no matter how careful you think you are, you are still going to get burnt. This trip has really changed my perspective on a lot of things. I’ve learnt so much about marine biology that i didn’t know and i made so many good friends while doing it. This is a trip i’ll never forget for the rest of my life. I feel like it’s the very start in my marine biology academic career and i’m so thankful to have such a memorable expirence.  Everyone here has such a great personality and it comes together to make a fantastic group of people. There is so much laughter, teasing, joking, and inside jokes that came from this trip. It was truely one for the books. I’m so happy I went on t...

  On our fourth day here we went down to Choya Bay. I really enjoyed this exploration and the zone was by far my favorite environment to explore. It was still an intertidal zone, but the difference here was that much of the land was muddy. There many water and air sockets scattered alongside the terrain. Essentially we were exploring the bay at low tide, which was a large vast exposed area of muddy intertidal zones. It was very surprising to see the amount of life, and how they are able to survive under extreme conditions. We found a lot of snails, octopus, crustaceans, and my favorite, sand dollars. The challenges of many intertidal area are desiccation, or water loss, which causes many organism to station in small tide polls if available until the tide is high again. The temperature changes can be extreme, the salinity changes, there is interrupted feeding, limited space, and oxygen availability and build up of CO2 is limited at low tide. Regardless, the organisms of this terrain...

  On our third day we went to a rocky intertidal zone. It was really cool driving there. The view was spectacular where we park, which was on the side of a clif, and there were stairways which lead downwards towards the coast. This place was by far the most interesting zone in the sense of diverse and abundance of the organisms. We found everything from Sponges (phylum porifera) Cnidarians (phylum Cnidaria), there was a long of Sean anemones which look liked a tripohbias nightmare, Flatworms (phylum Platyhelmithes), Molluscs (phylum mollusca), and Arthropods (phylum Arthropoda) to name a few. There was also a huge tide pool towards the top of the rocky zone, and it was so refreshing. The water in the pool was also crystal clear, but I am sure it was teaming with life under those rocks. 

On our second day of the trip we woke up pretty early and went down to the intertidal zones down the hill from Cedo. An intertidal zone is the area between low and high tide, sometimes called the littoral zone. Here we were exploring the area to observe the organism of the intertidal zone. The organisms are know as Epifauna, organisms that live on the surface of the substrate, Infauna, organisms that live in the substrate, and Meiofauna, organisms so small that they live between the grains of the soft substrate. During this exploration we found a couple different types of crabs, sea stars, octopus, shrimp and snails.

     Two of the most memorable watersports we took part in during our trip were kayaking and the boat trip. The day we went kayaking, just the drive alone up to the estuary was an adventure, our vans got stuck in the sand on the wrong road for a solid 20 minutes, but once we got to the right spot we headed out and began the tour. David from CEDO was our guide and he told us a lot about the importance of estuaries in the environment. We spent a while on the water under the hot sun, but it made swimming in the bay after the kayaking so much more enjoyable. The day we went out on the boat to Bird Island was an early morning, we met the crew at the docks and headed out for a slow but steady three-hour ride to the island. When we finally arrived, we were greeted by hundreds of sea lions who seemed to never get tired of barking. Four of us were scuba diving while the rest were snorkeling and kayaking at the surface. Visibility was a struggle at the bottom, especially when sea...