Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and animals requires a lot of hard work in the field. Read on to see what our staff and volunteers are doing on the ground.
A Busy Month
We went out and got our new Monitoring Coordinator, Shane, up to speed on our intertidal eelgrass monitoring efforts.
Shane joins Evan, our Field Technician, and Erin, a grad student at Cal Poly, to look at the density of eelgrass at Windy Cove.
We found a handful of what we believe are the egg collars of Moonsnails.
We found eelgrass starting to seed at Coleman Beach.
Monitoring Coordinator Karissa helped the Watershed Stewards Program (WSP) members and a CCC/NOAA Vet Program member snorkel Chorro Creek to practice their snorkel survey technique and fish identification skills. The data they collect on their snorkel surveys will be instrumental for our upcoming pikeminnow management project.
It’s important to purge your drysuit of air before hopping in the water!
They were excited to hop into Chorro Creek and look for fish. This is what a typical snorkel survey looks like.
Karissa and Jen went on a tour of the Morro Bay Watershed Roads Erosion Prevention Project. This project is part of a watershed-wide effort to decrease excessive sedimentation in the Morro Bay watershed. The project sites you see pictured below are all located on private land.
This is one of the armored fills that we put in during the project.
A beautiful view of Chorro Creek.
Wooly Bluecurls (Trichostema lanatum), one of the many native plants we saw on the field tour.