“Are they real?”
“Are those really alive?”
“Yes!” was our constant, emphatic answer to these curious-- and simultaneously dubious-- adults, as they peered into our mobile touch tanks, a temporary home for sea cucumbers, sea stars, and sand dollars alike. As an intern for the Biology Department at Concordia University of Irvine, I was helping run an educational mobile marine touch-tank outreach event at a local museum, whereat we were educating all museum goers-- children with their parents-- about marine science, through the creatures in our touch tanks. When adults looked even more struck by the sight of the sea critters than their own children, I was stunned: how was it that a coastal community, in the surf hub that is Southern California, was still so ignorant to sea life? This startling lack of knowledge within a coastal community about ocean life made me wonder if this lack of knowledge was even further exacerbated the more inland a community was; and if that were the case, there was clearly initiative to be taken to amend this ignorance. After all, conservation inherently has stakes in knowledge; the more knowledge a community member has about the ocean, the more they will realize how great of an impact the ocean has on them, and therein the more agency they may take to protect it! So, our Marine Touch Tank events aimed to make the public more literate about the ocean (Ocean Literacy), so one day no adults will question whether a beautiful, living, and healthy sea star is real.
Behind the scenes of the Marine Touch Tank events, I helped maintain the Marine Lab, which was a facility at the university comprised of a 2,000 gallon recirculating seawater system. There were over a dozen aquaria, housing approximately 50 local species, several collected from the region.
Many mornings were spent watching the beach culture shift from late-night bonfires to early-morning surfriders as we, donning our headlamps, conducted Field Work from 3am to 6am-- including digging through the sand for Pismo Clam Surveys and scouring rocks for mussel growth (in relation to starfish population) for Intertidal Surveys. The summer culminated in designing some preliminary trials for a research project analyzing whether the bean clam and hydroid relationship is commensal, in relation to predation.
As an aspiring marine biologist specializing in cetacean bioacoustics, this summer has been a very fulfilling experience, and I savored every moment of it!
“Are those really alive?”
“Yes!” was our constant, emphatic answer to these curious-- and simultaneously dubious-- adults, as they peered into our mobile touch tanks, a temporary home for sea cucumbers, sea stars, and sand dollars alike. As an intern for the Biology Department at Concordia University of Irvine, I was helping run an educational mobile marine touch-tank outreach event at a local museum, whereat we were educating all museum goers-- children with their parents-- about marine science, through the creatures in our touch tanks. When adults looked even more struck by the sight of the sea critters than their own children, I was stunned: how was it that a coastal community, in the surf hub that is Southern California, was still so ignorant to sea life? This startling lack of knowledge within a coastal community about ocean life made me wonder if this lack of knowledge was even further exacerbated the more inland a community was; and if that were the case, there was clearly initiative to be taken to amend this ignorance. After all, conservation inherently has stakes in knowledge; the more knowledge a community member has about the ocean, the more they will realize how great of an impact the ocean has on them, and therein the more agency they may take to protect it! So, our Marine Touch Tank events aimed to make the public more literate about the ocean (Ocean Literacy), so one day no adults will question whether a beautiful, living, and healthy sea star is real.
Behind the scenes of the Marine Touch Tank events, I helped maintain the Marine Lab, which was a facility at the university comprised of a 2,000 gallon recirculating seawater system. There were over a dozen aquaria, housing approximately 50 local species, several collected from the region.
Many mornings were spent watching the beach culture shift from late-night bonfires to early-morning surfriders as we, donning our headlamps, conducted Field Work from 3am to 6am-- including digging through the sand for Pismo Clam Surveys and scouring rocks for mussel growth (in relation to starfish population) for Intertidal Surveys. The summer culminated in designing some preliminary trials for a research project analyzing whether the bean clam and hydroid relationship is commensal, in relation to predation.
As an aspiring marine biologist specializing in cetacean bioacoustics, this summer has been a very fulfilling experience, and I savored every moment of it!
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