Captain's Wheelhouse
Blog #4
Catalina Island
Welcome back my friends! It feels so good to be back in the blogosphere. School started on July 24th for all of us in the Southbay and for all Poseidon Academy students and that has kept me quite busy. But now that we are on Winter break it's a perfect time for me to drop another outdoor blog on all of you.
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| My friend Don and I at the Shrine (2015) |
I hope you have continued to explore outdoor spaces places and faces. From what I have seen on FB many of you have. I see people like my friend Chuck doing some canoeing, others are hiking, fishing, surfing and exploring. Remember that "outside is better than inside". Outdoors we get to breathe the fresh air, look at flowers, hike, run, climb and explore. These are things our bodies are designed to revel in.
In my last blog I wrote about my trip to Costa Rica with a fantastic bunch of people. Hope you enjoyed the photos. Since then I have taken groups of Poseidon students to our local beach and to the Tijuana Estuary. My goal is to share nature with children and challenge them to learn the names of plants and animals. In Septermber I had a chance to take my 10th grade class to Catalina Island.
Our tenth graders, which I have dubbed "the flying fish" went out to the Catalina Island Marine Institute at Toyon Bay. This private cove is 3 miles from Avalon and has great facilities, labs, dorms and hands on activities for students to do. We stayed for three days and did two day snorkels and one night snorkel. Kids also spent time looking at plankton through microscopes, identifying and pressing algae, touching invertebrates and handling sharks, skates and rays. (Don't worry, the sharks were less than a foot long and were not aggressive) Only about 10 of the 450 species of shark are even remotely dangerous to humans.
Some of the outdoor fun included climbing on the outdoor rock wall, playing in the gaga pit and hiking up the hill to an outlook called the shrine.
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| Noelani and Jeremy |
The Snorkeling was incredible on this last journey, however I did notice some effects of global warming. I have been taking students out to Catalina for over 22 yrs. What used to be a thriving kelp forest ecosystem has shown signs of shock due to higher than normal ocean temperatures. There was no kelp in the usual spots and the red algae looked faded. In addition, there was an abundance of smaller filamentous, epiphytic algae growing on some of the stalks of Eisenia Californica, or Sea Palm. On the bright side, lobster, sting rays, leopard sharks and eels were plentiful. The instructors at the institute did a great job of leading the group in finding and identifying a multitude of sea creatures.
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| The Young Men of Poseidon |
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| The Ladies of Poseidon |
