Fish Pictures

Pictures and Fish Descriptions

Our wonderful Catlina home

Some of the thousands of kelp plants

A Garibaldi swimming through the rocks

A shadowy figure of a Bat ray in the sand

This year for our class trip, our grade went to Catalina Island in the Channel Islands Chain off the coast of California. We stayed at a place called Howland’s landing. The camp was located between to fingers of land sticking about 200 feet out into the ocean. The Bay was full of kelp forests and thousands and thousands of animals. The trip was very fun and we all learned a lot about the environment and how we affect it. Three of the coolest experiences of the trip were: the night snorkel, the high ropes course setup behind the camp, or when a deer ran right through the middle of camp while everyone was outside. The night snorkel was the best part of the trip because of all the fish, sharks, and bio-luminescent coexisting in the ocean at night. That experience was what fueled our project to determine what kind of animals live in each of the habitats in Howland’s landing cove and Emerald bay.

Our question is: what kinds of animals live in each of the three habitats in the coves at Howland’s landing and Emerald Bay? We wanted to do this because of our experience in the water at night. As a group we saw hundreds of fish, some sleeping and some awake, four horn sharks, two types of stingrays, one guitar shark, and when we turned all of our lights off we saw bio-luminescent creatures. This was a really cool experience. Especially since I had only been snorkeling once before. We went on Kayaks and more snorkels and gathered data about all of the fish and kelp hat existed where we had been snorkeling.

The method that we used to gather data on the environment under and on top of the sea was through the use of Kayak expeditions and three snorkel trips. Our first snorkel adventure was used mainly to get us accustomed to the area and the snorkeling equipment. On our kayak trip though, we collected lots of data about kelp forest locations. Water properties, and what kind of things lived where (from a bird’s eye view). On our second snorkel expedition we went out to a place called Emerald Bay (it was he Bay next to Howland’s) and went snorkeling around a large rock formation in the middle of the water. There, we did multiple tests such as the roving diver fish count and the PVC pipe test. After we had thawed out, we then went on our night snorkel. This last snorkel was used to observe the animals and such that live their lives during the night.

With the research that we made, our group discovered that there are three main types of environments. These include the kelp forest, the rocky cliffs, and finally the open sandy areas near the shore. The large predators and large animals live in the open sands because that is mainly where the food that sustains them swims through. In the kelp forests live the smaller fish, which include Garibaldi, Giant kelp fish and Senorita. Also, scavengers and little invertebrates such as snails and lobsters live in the kelp. On the rocky parts of the ocean are similar beings to the kelp forests but are usually much smaller. The rocks contain hundreds of barnacles and many small fish. We found this information rather easily. But, once we had found it we had to make it viewable to all the other groups. That was the most difficult part of the process.

If the climate changed in the next year due to El Nino, our topic would not change much, but we would see a large influx and deflux of certain animals such as kelp and sea urchins. That is what makes this project so interesting, the fact that you can never go back the same place and have all of the things stay the same. The ocean is constantly changing and the species that live in it have to change if they wish to survive and that is why so many are interested in the mysteries that the ocean has to offer us.