Earthwatch-Teacher Fellowship on Catalina Island: Day Three!

Greetings everyone! Good day to another beautiful day on Catalina Island. Daylight savings so slept an extra hour, missed the sunrise this morning. It rained during the night, so the day was fresh and clean. Took a quick walk before breakfast, here's our cute houses we're staying in and there's the cafeteria, sure eating a lot here! Then on down to the dock to get some seawater samples, documenting the temperature, salinity and pH of the water. Up to the lab to look for some specific plankton critters, mainly we're looking for the ones that when in abundance cause the harmful alga blooms. I didn't see any of those but did see my favorite zooplankton dudes, the Calanoid Copepods, they zipped around on my petri dish and I tried to follow them with my microscope. Quite a skill to focus the microscope and find all the different plankton, especially the smaller transparent plankton; saw lot's of diatom chains. So hey, guys, if you don't know what a diatom chain is, look it up, there's your challenge. Later in the day, we went to the other side of the isthmus we were on, (quick, remember the land forms? Isthmus?), and did a MPA walk. What's a MPA? A marine protected area and we were assessing the impact of human activity, so that means we looked for human activity and it's impact on nature. We counted boats, any people we saw, anything that might impact the ecosystem. Finally, we ended the day by checking out Two Harbors, the tiny town here that has a one room schoolhouse! Can you imagine going there? The biggest class they ever had was 10 students, all in one room with one teacher, all the ages together.

Hope everyone had a great weekend, I hope to video conference with you tomorrow.