Catalina Kelp Goers

Wyatt and Kevin

 

 

Links

CELP Camp

 

Franko's Kelp Creatures

Sketch of Kelp Forest

 Map of Howland's Landing and Emerald BayThis map shows the kelp forest and were the kelp grows. It also shows were we took are data from. Coming back from a good data collection snorkel.
Snorkeling in the kelp forest.
Kayaking and collecting data.

In the midst of a roving diver fish count.
On October 17 2005, "while most people are on fall break" we went with almost my entire grade to the Channel Islands. To be more specific we wento Howland's landing on Catalina Island. The purpose for our journey was to learn more about the kelp beds and animal life around the kelp beds. My science teacher, who was the leader of the trip, escorted us to Howland's landing so that we could gather information with the help of her high-tech tools such as GPS, water quality instruments, palm pilots with sensors etcetera.

The basic purpose of the trip was for us to track down the data so that we could input it into MyWorld, a system used to display information on a map. We split up into groups and researched on our own. My group's particular question is, Which types of marine life live amongst the kelp forest and their abundance?
We collected data from two locations to answer our questions. First we went downs in Howland's landing and collected our information. We kayaked out there to start our data collection. We first took out our GPS so that we could know were we were collecting this information. We utilized the waterproof paper and pen and then recorded the weigh point. We wrote what we found and then bigger groups of us tracked the size and polygon of the kelp beds using the GPS. We did the same thing at our second location, Emerald Bay, except at this location the data was mostly collected when we were snorkeling. We tested turbidity and depth of different sites in the ocean. Then we had to locate the kelp forest and what fish were in the forest, so we took a roving diver fish count and wrote down what animals we saw in the kelp and abundance. We then swam out side the kelp beds to find what types of animals lived there. What we ended up with a very clear set of data for the most part and we had come to find that there were lots of different types of animals in these forests. We also got a polygon of the kelp at its stage for 2005 and we were ready to map the on my world so that we can show this to people and learn from this. Our map shows us that the most common marine animals in the kelp forest are Garibaldi's, Blacksmith, Opal eye, Kelp bass, and the Striped Surfperch.
The information we had was solid but there were some uncertainties for instance some of the animals lived in both the kelp forest and sandy bottom such as horn sharks. It was also very hard to spot some of the animals before they would swim away but overall we ended up with the information needed to answer our question. We would tell someone who gets this same question in the future to really scan the Kelp forest so you can get every inch of it covered. Maybe go to the location 3 or 4 times before gathering a complete set of data.
We think that our information would change dramatically during an El Nino year. The kelp forest would shrink to a much smaller size and some animals my not be their. We also might see a growth in a different group of animals called urchins. They might stop the Kelp from ever growing back. If this happened Howland's landing would be a much different place. Also some information such as which animals live where would change because the kelp forest would move.