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The Phoenix Country Day School class of 2010 got to the airport at 4:15 AM to start an exciting trip to Catalina Island. After hours of traveling on plane, bus, and boat, we finally arrived to Howland’s Landing on Catalina Island. A friendly group of CELP councilors greeted us and an amazing adventure in the kelp environment was about to begin. We were split up into different CELP clans and were sent off to start investigating the whole new world under water.

What is the relationship between water temperature, water depth, and where the kelp is located? This is the question one individual lab team has to answer. The object of answering this question is to determine what type of environment kelp likes to live in.

To gather data for water temperature, the different CELP groups used water temperature collection data instruments at different G.P.S. points to figure out the temperature of the water where kelp was growing. While kayaking lab teams sank the weight down to the bottom and counted the number of meters on the string that was attached to find the depth of the kelp growth area. Finally, to locate the location of the kelp, lab teams kayaked around the kelp masses to form kelp polygons, which would later be plotted on the My World program. Every place we gathered data from, a picture was taken of the location for future reference.

After plotting the temperature, depth, and location of the kelp on a My World document, it was clear that kelp was located in cool, shallow water. This would make sense because the colder the water is, the more nutrients there are. The more nutrients, the more kelp. Also, kelp do better in shallow water because in order to get their energy from the sun, the kelp has to easily grow to the surface to absorb the energy.

At one point while collecting data, the depth weight was dropped in the water so we were only able to collect a certain amount of data. For the depth of the water to go back, we would hope to collect more information about the depth of the water near the areas of kelp. As for the temperature, more data points would make the final map more informative. Finally, there are probably more kelp masses than plotted on the map. Therefore, the next group that goes to Howland’s Landing hopefully would find more kelp growth areas.

El Nino is prone to make the water temperature in the area of Catalina Island a lot warmer. As a result, there would be less kelp growth because the kelp would not receive as many nutrients as it would from colder water. As for the water depth, the El Nino would not have an effect on it.