Coming and Going

We have had a great time on the islands, and have had many successes, but unfortunately all things have to come to an end (for some of us). Team leader Paul and Dr. Dilly’s intertidal team headed back to the mainland, while team members Chris and Rebecca, stayed behind to complete the 3 weeks worth of surveying the MPAs. Even though the university is on spring break, the research must go on!

The intertidal group came back early because they will be presenting their research which is titled “Channel Islands Intertidal Ecology: Past, Present and Future” at a Council on Ocean Affairs, Science and Technology (COAST) undergraduate research conference.

April marks a very busy month for us, as we are going to be doing a lot of STEM outreach, including building ROV’s with high and middle school students, along with mentoring some middle school robotics club students! We will be making three short trips to the Channel Islands with the kids, aboard the NOAA research vessel the R/V Shearwater and deploying ROVs!

We’ll be posting up videos soon with some of the highlights of what we saw, as mentioned before, here’s the video of the harbor seal headbutting our ROV!