Jacob
Brock
Camren
links
Introduction:
Our eighth grade class left for Catalina Island early Monday morning October
15, 2007. We traveled to LA where we then took the ferry to Howland’s
Landing on Catalina Island. We took data for our science research project.
For our research question, we researched how La Niña affects the
marine fish such as a kelp fish and sardines that live near Catalina Island.
While in Catalina, had four snorkels and two kayaks. On these snorkels
and kayaks we took data that we needed for our project in order to observe
what’s really happening over there. The water in Catalina is normally
cool, this year its around 14 Celsius the water is about 2¾ Celsius colder
than normal due to the effects of La Niña. La Niña is when
the winds that normally blow from east to west, keeping the warmer water
off the coast of Asia, reverse, and instead of pushing the average warm
water to South America and Southern California it pushes slightly colder
water. This unexplained phenomenon is called La Niña. The opposite
of La Niña is called El Niño. An El Niño and La Niña
each occur about once every decade. The temperature only changes about
two to three degrees Celsius. This is important because if we understand
what La Niña or El Niño is doing to Catalina then we will
get a better sense of what it is doing to the World, once we understand
this we can know how to better prevent it or stop it, or at least figure
out what to do when it comes. Also find a way to fully predict when the
La Niña or the El Niño is coming.
Research:While
in Catalina we collected all of our data from five unique different locations.
One was from the kayak while the other four were snorkel data. We took
water temperatures from the kayak also our team collected water temperatures
from the seafloor and the surface temperatures of the ocean. To discover
the ocean seafloor temperature, we sent a Van Doran bottle to the seafloor
and closed it, capturing the water. Then we brought it back up in order
to measure the captured water to find the temperature. From this method
we were able to find the seafloor and surface temperature. We discovered
that it was much colder below the surface because the sunrays can only
penetrate through so much water to heat it, therefore, the water below
that point is left cold, the farther down you go it slowly gets colder.
From collecting the temperature we were able to observe about how warm
and cold the Catalina Island waters really were. The water temperature
ranged from 14 degrees Celsius to 17 degrees Celsius. The water temperature
has affected the amount of kelp in the area, therefore directly affecting
the amount of fish at Emerald Bay and Howland’s landing.
Kelp is one of the foundation species of the marine habitat. If the kelp
thrives, all the species below it do well. If the kelp dies, then all
fish that need kelp for their life will die and then all the fish that
eat those fish will suffer. Also we took a fish count during one of our
snorkel in the vast kelp forests of Emerald Bay. The reason for taking
the count was to get a sense of what fish have remained in the new colder
habit, what fish have left from their old warm habitat, also what new
fish have came. After taking the fish count we compared this years data
to last years data, from this we could see how La Niña has affected
the types of fish that are in the habitat. In order to conduct the fish
count we had to look at the specific area and then recovered how many
of the different types of fish we saw. We did so by going down underneath
the surface with waterproof pens and paper. We also used waterproof cameras
for taking photographic evidence of the spectacular fish that live there.
From looking at last year’s pictures to see what the habitat looked
like, we discovered there were no fish or kelp of any kind compared to
this year. But why is the number of fish such a large diffence? The reason
for this is actually in the water, its because of the La Niña that
occurred this year causing the water to cool a little more, even though
there’s not much of a temperature change. When we marked down our
information and compared it to last year, the difference was considerable.
Because of the colder water in the area it brought more nutrients to feed
the kelp therefore the kelp grows and is able to live in all different
habitats making it easier for fish to live.
From this information that we found we discovered that even just a few
degrees of change in the water temperature of an area could vastly affect
the types of fish and other species that are living there at the time.
To confirm our answer we asked our counselor who said during this summer
the island had an unusually large amount of fish especially compared to
last year, due to all the nutrients and kelp from the La Niña,
and this ties together with one of the main ideas that the “CELP”
program strongly believes in which is, “ Everything is connected.”
The principal is very true about our project because the amount of kelp
affects the fish which then affects the next fish and so on. Also we found
out that most of the fish that normally inhabited the area could still
stay even with the colder water, but there were much more fish then normal.
In Catalina we discovered many new things that we had never thought about
before. Now from this information we know that only a slight change of
temperature from La Niña or El Niño may not have such a
huge affect on the creatures that live there, but if the water temperature
changes more then just a few degrees Celsius it can seriously affect the
water habitat making it unable for the things living there to survive.
This made a big part of the data that our team collected for our research
question.
Conclusion: While in Catalina, we solved our question. Our answer was based on the idea that everything is connected. Because of the La Niña, the kelp grows and does well. This attracts fish because of the increased habitat, and the food that the kelp provides. After seeing all of our information we think a La Nina would be good for Catalina Island kelp forest and the world. If we would ever go back to Catalina, we would repeat the data collection in order to compare the new data. We would also make maps of the kelp and find out were there was small and large quantities of kelp. We also would find more evidence supporting what our research question states. Catalina was an amazing place to research and to just enjoy. We will always remember this wonderful trip and this opportunity to go to Catalina Island
