Service Learning Day 1

We are a group of juniors and seniors from Sage Hill School who acknowledge the need for conservation of our local marine habitats through scientific surveying. COAST, which stands for Coastal Ocean Advocacy Science Team, aims to serve nearby marine environments through monitoring of Crystal Cove State Park (CCSP) by surveying and collecting data from our local marine habitats while educating ourselves and others. With these efforts, COAST’s data can work towards conservation initiatives. Although last year we aimed at understanding the habitat and problems the Pisaster Starfish encountered, this year we are focusing our effort towards the Panulirus Interruptus (a genus of spiny lobster). We plan to get the rest of the younger student in our group scuba certified, and then construct traps in a way that mimics traps set in previous studies. Some traps we are looking into include bait and light traps to study the marine life off of Crystal Cove. We have a larger group this year, 17 in total. Therefore we are planning on diving in rotations in order to keep the number of students down. This will make it a much more efficient way to collect data and to keep everyone safe while diving. We plan on using sub grouping to go out into the water to dive so that we are able to rotate members in coordination with the traps we will be setting on certain dates. Thinking long term, if we want this to live year after year, we hope to take on new groups of upcoming seniors (current juniors) to take charge and continue the passion of the group. There is no shortage of topics to research in our case.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0By4OF7AtKq50c3BPTnN6djdrRVU?usp=sharing