Catalina Field Project

Correlation between fish and kelp
Hannah and Ariel

 

C.E.L.P

Catalina Express

Images of Catalina Marine Life

Phoenix Country Day School
The 8th graders of Phoenix Country Day School went to Howland’s Landing on Catalina Island off the coast of California. We stayed at a camp dedicated to the research of the environment around them. This camp was named C.E.L.P., for the Catalina Environmental Leadership Program. Our group of about sixty students had an opportunity to hike, snorkel, kayak, and get water samples to learn more about the kelp and the environment around us. We also had a chance to participate in the camp’s composting program, and while we were doing this we learned the importance of reusing and recycling. All of these activities helped us to learn the four principles of the camp, which are Everything Runs on Energy, There is No Waste in Nature, Biodiversity is Good, and that everything is connected. These four principals are a summary of what we learned and took back to school and used on our projects.
Our team had to choose a question for our project, and we chose to research if the depth and location of the fish and the depth and location of the kelp are related. We wanted to figure out if the fish preferred to live in the kelp forest and if so, if they preferred a certain depth of water. We conducted our research in many different ways. When we were at the kelp camp, we observed the kelp and the fish that lived in it when we went snorkeling. When we went kayaking, we observed the area of the water that the kelp grew in. We also took water samples in which we looked for microscopic life. When we got back to school, we also used many resources to put our information on paper. We used the roving diver fish count, which was a summary of the fish that each group had seen while we were snorkeling. We put this data into the computer, and used it on our project. We also took and used many pictures while we were doing our project. We complied this long list of sources to make our project.
We have worked very hard to finish our project and answer our question. After doing a lot of research, we concluded that the fish liked to live in the kelp, and that both the fish and the kelp liked to live in the depth of ten to twenty meters in Howland’s Landing, the place that we conducted our research in.
Our group had many difficulties and uncertainties with our project, but it ended up working out successfully. At first, we had difficulties with the main goal of the project. We were not sure if we could solve it, and if so, if we could put it on paper and present in on MyWorld. We had to find and pull certain layers from projects. Once we found the layers, we had to put them in the correct order. We also had the major problem of losing one o our team members halfway through our project. She was an important part of our team, and she contributed a lot to us in the research stage of our project. It was hard picking up the pieces, but it the end the two remaining members of our group pushed through. However, our lab group has been able to pull through and make our project a success.
Our group believes that the parameter that our group had chosen would have been drastically changed if it had been an El Nino year. For example, the roving diver fish count would have been extraordinarily thrown off. The kelp might have died, or the fish might have gone away because of the high temperatures. This might have lead us to belive this inaccurate information. The same thing would have happened if there had been strange weather conditions that caused all of the information to be thrown off. This project helped us learn a lot about Catalina and the land around it.