Santa Rosa Entry 1
“We are all connected. To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe, atomically.” Neil deGrasse Tyson, “Symphony of Science: We Are All Connected”
Santa Rosa is apart of the Channel Islands which contains quite a history. When we first arrived on the island we walked through a small portion and discussed the Chumash heritage and when the ranchers settled. This brief history lesson prepared us for our Saturday field trips with the faculty.
My first expedition of the day started with Professor Matt Fermanski his field of study is sculpture making. He began by explaining how science connects to every aspect of education including art. In order to capture the true essence of art one has to look at the history of science first. Professor Matt took us the part of the island where the fresh water creek met the sea salt water of the ocean. I couldn’t help but think what a beautiful thing to see two bodies of water meeting and intertwining. He said it is importance to know why and how something works is truly needed to understand the beauty of what we are seeing. He then told us about on of his pieces he did that he let the ocean waves create the image. He had used booies with LED lights attached and thrown them in the ocean. Than using a camera positioned on the sand he was able to capture pictures to than create larger images. This is when I truly saw that science and art are intertwined. He had used the motion of nature and allowed it to create art.
The next journey was with Professor Allison Alvarado who focused her study’s on the process of speciation. She took us around and showed us a variety of birds that call Santa Rosa their home. She taught us how to look and listen for the different birds and then how to identify them. She reminded us that being on an island requires birds to adapt to their surroundings, it does not happen over night nor years. It takes decades for birds to learn a new skill then to pass it on to their young which we call adaption. Her lesson stuck with me because I learned the birds on islands have very different behavioral traits and characteristics then birds on the main land and over time they learn to live in such environments.
The last lesson or adventure would have to have been my favorite. We did species data with Cos right along side the shoreline. This by far was the highlight of my trip because we were physically doing research and having so much fun while doing so. We were able to use clam guns and collect the different creatures from the sand and enter what we found in data sheets. We started in the dry sand and worked vertically into the water collecting data with clam guns every 10 meters. In doing so we came across blood worms and sand crabs we had to count them all and write our results. At the end of this process the data collected would be used to keep tract of the numbers of habitats on Santa Rosa. This again was a reminder of the life that the land holds and how it can prosper when left untouched by civilization.
