This is a map of the kelp comparisons of 1980, 1989, and today.
This year in eighth grade at PCDS I went to Catalina Island. It is an island off of the coast of California. The trip began on Monday morning when we had to get to the airport around four thirty am. Then we got on a plane to LAX, once the plan ride was over we took a bus from the airport to the dock where our boat took us to the island. Our first couple of days it rained extremely hard forcing us to do some activities inside. By the third day, the ran had stopped and we could begin our normal activities. During the trip we had a very fun time we snorkeled, kayaked, hiked, star gazed, composted, and much more. However, the most memorable part of the trip for me was snorkeling. I had never been snorkeling before the trip so I thought it was amazing, I could not believe how cool the ocean looked under water. It was like a totally different world down there. During the trip we had a very fun time and I thought it was the best trip in the entire middle school.
The thing that my partner and I were investigating was where does
the Kelp grow, why, what temperatures they like, and do they
prefer to be near shore
or away from the shore. Some of the things that we did to help answer
the question was we Kayaked around and took waypoints around
kelp forests.
We also took depth measurement with the tool provided for us. We will
answer the rest of the question by putting the data into MyWorld
and making a
project that has all of the layers we need and then we will answer
our question. Some of the data we found was that they like to
be farley close
to the water and they like the depth around 40-60 feet. The other data
we will find on my world by putting the waypoints in and then turning
the layers that we need on. When we made a My World project we
found out that
there was a lot of Kelp near the cost of the Channel Islands and then
in 1989 there was much less Kelp. There may have been an El Nino
year but
it is not certain. When we graphed out the most recent kelp forest
we realized they are closer to the shore and there is not as
much as there was in 1980
but more than there was in 1989. This is good because it says that
the Kelp is growing back. We also found out that the Kelp like
warmer waters
like around 70-80 degrees. We were pretty successful finding the data
however it was hard to press the buttons on the GPS machine.
It was also hard to
take depth because somebody (not saying names) dropped the depth device.
It was very fun finding the data that we found and I had a great time.
The data might have changed if this was an El Nino year in many ways.
First off we might not have seen the kelp because there might not have
been much.
Also there might have been so much rain that we would have been unable
to even kayak. This trip was extremely fun for me and I had a
GREAT time.
