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 have been up to during the month of July.
Eelgrass Surveys
We had an exciting month of eelgrass surveys in July. Our monitoring staff helped CalPoly Professor Jenn Yost collect eelgrass samples for genetic analysis.
Thanks to Tenney Rizzo from Cal Poly for some great group shots!
Fish seining at Windy Cove
We also got to help CalPoly graduate student Erin Aiello seine for fish at Windy Cove. This seining was done in conjunction with the Smithsonian “Bitemap” project to look at the population of fishes inside and outside of eelgrass beds to help develop a global map of feeding activity by fishes.
Once we caught the fish, we quickly put them into buckets of water and sorted by species. Each fish was weighed, measured, photographed, and then released back into the bay.
Fun with bugs
Karissa attended the Saturday Scientists Macroinvertebrate workshop at the Morro Bay Natural History Museum. Over 25 members of the public attended this fun, family-friendly workshop to learn about aquatic macroinvertebrates and what they can tell you about your water quality.
Equipment swap
Karissa and Shane pulled out a pressure transducer, a sensor used to measure water levels, from one site and will be installing it at a different site later this month. Turns out there is a lot of equipment involved!
