Last trip to Santa Rosa Island of my Undergraduate Career

This weekend I went to Santa Rosa Island for the last time to survey beaches and collect data for my capstone project. This weekend was forecasted for rain all day Saturday, and it was going to be tricky finding a way to get out to the far west end of the island that day, so I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to collect the last bit of data I needed for the seasonal comparison. But thanks to Robyn, we were able to get a truck on Friday afternoon and survey Arlington and Sandy Point on Friday instead of Saturday.

Robyn, Brice, Ryan, and I left the field station around 12:30 on Friday afternoon and headed straight to Arlington. Last time I surveyed Arlington in the fall it had the most debris out of any other island beach, and this time around it was still the worst in terms of marine debris but it also had more debris than it did in October. We found a thresher shark washed up on the beach as well with a satellite tracker on it. I am excited to call Monterey Bay Aquarium and see where this shark was before we found it.

After that we booked it to Sandy Point to survey the beach before dark. Unfortunately, a group of elephant seals hauled out in my first transect so we couldn’t survey the first transect. It was pretty sad to see them literally laying on top of trash, but stressed to me why it is so important to address the issue of marine debris. The second transect was just as littered as the first one we weren’t able to survey, and it was surprising to see a few of the same items I had found in the fall survey still there. I marked items that were too heavy to bring back in the fall with a zip tie, and many of them had not moved since October, which was interesting. After Sandy Point we hiked back up to the truck, and started the journey back to the field station. It was hard to walk away from that amazing sunset over San Miguel, but we also didn’t want to be stuck in the dark either. It was a super long day but equally as awesome.

Saturday was rainy, as expected, so I used the rainy day to work in the lab. I managed to process every piece of debris we picked up the day before. In total, there was more debris just from Arlington, and two transects of Sandy Point than there was from all the beaches (Arlington, Sandy Point, Cluster Point, and Skunk Point) during the fall surveys. Not a bad view to work in the lab with!

On Sunday, Ryan and I headed out to survey Skunk Point. Cause dropped us off in the morning and we hiked back after we surveyed the beach. This beach didn’t have much debris in comparison to the others, and we were able to finish it fairly quickly. The hike back was beautiful as well.

Overall, it was the perfect weekend to sum up the data collection for my capstone. Unfortunately we couldn’t get to one of my Sandy Point transects or to Cluster Point, but overall it was a very successful trip!