Ian
Harley
We spent a week at Santa Catalina Island with classmates to find out more about
the island’s marine environment. At Howland’s Landing, where our
class stayed, the Catalina Environmental Leadership Program (CELP) guided us
as we did all sorts of activities such as high ropes and hiking, as well as science.
One scientific activity was kayaking. The other was snorkeling that we used to
not only collect data, but experience the environment first hand which was a
spectacle. I had never seen so much color in one place. I was staring at so red
and purple sea urchin, the bright orange garibaldi, blacksmith, packs of gray
anchovies and sardines, baby blue opaleyes, and many others as well as kelp.
We
asked the question, ‘what Channel Islands fishlive on sandy bottoms
and what fish live on rocky bottoms with kelp?’ I used was what I saw
on snorkels as well as the roving diver fish count as data for my project.
I also
used GPS to mark, which fish live where.
With our research we found that larger, less colorful fish such as leopard
sharks or shovel nose guitarfish live in the sandy, less kelpie regions.
Small, very
colorful fish tend to live in the rocks and kelp beds; some of these fish
may be garibaldi, blue-banded goby, kelp fish, or senorita. Our map shows
the areas
around Hallon’s landing and the fish that live there.
We had very little difficulties doing this project because it was very
straight forward and not to broad. The only difficulty we had doing
this project was getting
the data that showed where the fish live around Hallon’s landing. We saw
many fish when we snorkeled but some were not out and it was hard to get the
data on the ones that we did not get to see.
Our Project could have definitely been changed to due climate changes
or El Nino. Many fish do not like warmer (or colder) water and migrate
to a different area
that was not normal for them to go. The season could also affect the kelp growth,
sometimes there is a lot some times there is barely any.
http://web.nps.navy.mil/~brutzman/kelp/fish.html#Black%20Rockfish
Our Sketches
