Michael Helton
Day 5: Today our main goal was to retrieve our traps, I’m happy to say we achieved our goal. We went down to Los Alamitos Bay in Long Beach, California. On our last service learning day about 1 month ago we set our PVC traps off the dock with fishing line, this made it very easy to retrieve our traps unlike other groups who used the pillion to attach it. Because of our method we were able to retrieve the traps in about 30 seconds so 1 minute total then we put them in 5 gallon buckets and were off back towards Sage. After a quick and delicious breakfast at Rose Cafe in Corona Del Mar we came back and started the sorting process of what we had collected.
Day 4: Today we worked in 4 individual groups to achieve the task of setting traps, working on DNA analysis, and setting up new places to set more traps. The members in my group were Dylan Strode, Ian Morgan, Conner Hatz, and myself. Our primary task was to set up traps at two different locations, Huntington Harbor and Los Alamitos Bay. At these two locations were docks that we used to set up off of. We were using the pipe traps with 3 bundles of green twine zip tied onto the pipe as the design. All groups that went to set traps, two other groups went out to areas in Newport, with these traps setting 2 traps at each location. We used string that ran through the pipe with a knot, or zip tie if we used fishing line, at the end and tied the loose end to a cleat on the dock to ensure it will be there in a month when we go back. We were not originally going to use the string, we planned on using zip ties to attach the traps to the pylon. That was too difficult for the pylons at our docks because they didn’t have metal rings around them, like some do, which we would have used to zip tie the traps to. With the lines in Huntington Harbor we set them at an average depth of 3 feet under the surface of the water. We did that because the depth of the water below the dock was under 10 ft at a median tide height so we couldn’t set them too deep to the point that they could get stuck in the mud during a low tide. At Los Alamitos Bay the average depth we set at was 6 ft. We used fishing line at the Los Alamitos dock which allowed us to determine what depth we wanted to set at easier. It was also much deeper at this dock, averaging deeper than 15 ft on a median day, which allowed us to set at the deeper depths.
Day 3: Today in COAST we did what will be I believe our last prep day that we haven’t been in the water for. We planned out dive dates and the first date is in December which is before our next service learning day, so with some certain I can finally say that we are getting in the water. This excites me because I have been in this project for about a year and a half now and all the hard work put in before is going to turn into results fairly soon. We then focused on building more traps, this time with a much simpler design that we put 26 strands of twine together then zip tie them together at 3 places down a PVC pipe. We will attach those PVC pipes to docks around different area of Southern California and get results soon. The last part of the day was dedicated to learning how to sort and using microscopes to examine samples of water and dock scrapings that Ian and I took from Los Alamitos Bay in Long Beach last night. There was much more life in these scrapings than I first thought and that shocked me because we could all find lots of life. Overall I’m glad this will be our last day of mainly prep because that means that we very soon will be in the water and collecting data and helping serve the scientific community of Crystal Cove and Sage Hill.
Day 2: Today was our first official day of service learning and it was a very productive day that started with research about the organism we are planning on trapping. This part was productive because it was apparent that most of us didn’t know about the times that the lobsters are typically still in larvae or for how long and different trapping methods. After our research period we learned through other scientific papers and are now prepared to go out and collect the data for the park.
The sorting process began by cutting away the string from the PVC pipe and rinsing it with water so that the organisms would disattach from the string and fall into a glass bowl that we would sort through next by sight. After we washed a majority of the strings off we started to sort any living organism we could find using tweezers and occasionally pipettes. Whenever we found something that was alive we would move it into a jar of 100% ethanol, so they would die and we could preserve them. After they were in the main ethanol jar we tried to sort each organism by what we could tell into different viles with different color tops so when Dr. Haney goes through them it will be easier for him to sort through and prepare the specimen for DNA processing. Then we filled the the viles with ethanol and a larger jar with ethanol then put the put the viles in the ethanol so we can preserve the specimen for whenever we use them next. The picture shows the dock in Long Beach on satellite imaging where we retrieved our traps
Day 4: Today we worked in 4 individual groups to achieve the task of setting traps, working on DNA analysis, and setting up new places to set more traps. The members in my group were Dylan Strode, Ian Morgan, Conner Hatz, and myself. Our primary task was to set up traps at two different locations, Huntington Harbor and Los Alamitos Bay. At these two locations were docks that we used to set up off of. We were using the pipe traps with 3 bundles of green twine zip tied onto the pipe as the design. All groups that went to set traps, two other groups went out to areas in Newport, with these traps setting 2 traps at each location. We used string that ran through the pipe with a knot, or zip tie if we used fishing line, at the end and tied the loose end to a cleat on the dock to ensure it will be there in a month when we go back. We were not originally going to use the string, we planned on using zip ties to attach the traps to the pylon. That was too difficult for the pylons at our docks because they didn’t have metal rings around them, like some do, which we would have used to zip tie the traps to. With the lines in Huntington Harbor we set them at an average depth of 3 feet under the surface of the water. We did that because the depth of the water below the dock was under 10 ft at a median tide height so we couldn’t set them too deep to the point that they could get stuck in the mud during a low tide. At Los Alamitos Bay the average depth we set at was 6 ft. We used fishing line at the Los Alamitos dock which allowed us to determine what depth we wanted to set at easier. It was also much deeper at this dock, averaging deeper than 15 ft on a median day, which allowed us to set at the deeper depths.
Day 3: Today in COAST we did what will be I believe our last prep day that we haven’t been in the water for. We planned out dive dates and the first date is in December which is before our next service learning day, so with some certain I can finally say that we are getting in the water. This excites me because I have been in this project for about a year and a half now and all the hard work put in before is going to turn into results fairly soon. We then focused on building more traps, this time with a much simpler design that we put 26 strands of twine together then zip tie them together at 3 places down a PVC pipe. We will attach those PVC pipes to docks around different area of Southern California and get results soon. The last part of the day was dedicated to learning how to sort and using microscopes to examine samples of water and dock scrapings that Ian and I took from Los Alamitos Bay in Long Beach last night. There was much more life in these scrapings than I first thought and that shocked me because we could all find lots of life. Overall I’m glad this will be our last day of mainly prep because that means that we very soon will be in the water and collecting data and helping serve the scientific community of Crystal Cove and Sage Hill.
Day 2: Today was our first official day of service learning and it was a very productive day that started with research about the organism we are planning on trapping. This part was productive because it was apparent that most of us didn’t know about the times that the lobsters are typically still in larvae or for how long and different trapping methods. After our research period we learned through other scientific papers and are now prepared to go out and collect the data for the park.
The next part of the day was dedicated to making traps. The group was then divided into groups to make the original traps that the park used before. However there was an issue with these because it could take far upwards of 30 hours for the park to not even complete a third of the trap. However with a larger group we were able to finish about 3 times the work they did in about an hour to an hour and a half. But then Ian Morgan and myself went on the task of design a new trap that would take much less time and was smaller so easy to transport. We started with the base of a bucket and used a drill press (which took about 30 minutes to fix and adjust because it wasn’t in tip top condition) to drill holes in the bucket then weaved a matrix of twine on the inside that we believe will allow the larvae to attach to. We were able to finish an entire trap and were able to complete about a half of a second trap that we can finish in another 30 minutes.
Ultimately this was a very successful day and this success will hopefully carry
through the rest of the year.
Day 1: I am excited for the upcoming service learning year because our project is finally in the stages when we can actually get in the water as a group and work with Crystal Cove. It was hard last year having to sit and work on the boring logistical stuff for an entire year which adds to my excitement for the year ahead. It is good that we have such a big group this year with a good base of juniors so the project will have longevity.
We are going to be very connected to the community of Crystal Cove when we actually start putting things in the water making our relationship with the park and the park’s staff better and better throughout the year. After beginning to build the relationship last year we are only making it stronger and focusing on more things that they want done in the park and additionally in the back bay.
One main challenge will be learning the new information about the research methods needed to address or new task of monitoring the larva of the lobster in Crystal Cove and the back bay. This will be different because we will be using traps and plates rather than just observing like we had previously planned on. This excites me more because we will have more opportunities to gather data and we will have true scientific data
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