An old growth log from Oregon’s ancient, and now largely non-existent, forests. This 500-yr-old log has famous historical events labeled on its rings, and makes the Revolutionary War seem like it happened yesterday!
One field trip took us to the intertidal mudflats searching for clams and worms. The mud was so deep and gooey, several students had to be rescued.
The rocky intertidal is famous for dense collections of beautiful animals visible at low tide, but otherwise hard to observe in nature. This rock face has sea anemones, sponges, worms, snails, and sea stars.
The class holds lecture in the intertidal zone, where our heads would have been 8-ft. underwater just six hours ago.
The Pacific Northwest beaches are littered with old trees and logs, which have slipped into the ocean from cliffside forests. Here our class root-climbs for a picture.
Our laboratory had a sea table to keep the animals we collected cold and happy. Visible here: red urchins, octopus, instructor, and student.
Student Abbie Stehno ’14, views seals and sea lions from a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
There are so many mussels exposed at low tide at mussel point, you can easily walk on them without harming them.
Enormous pools retain water as the tide goes out. Crabs, mussels, anemones, starfish, and sometimes medium sized fish get trapped or live in the pools.
By getting urchins to spawn in the lab, you can mix the sperm and eggs on a microscope slide and watch life begin – wow!!
A botanical garden on the cliffsides overlooking the Pacific Ocean, built and planted by one of the most successful Pacific Northwest logging barons.
In the distance, Florida Tech students monkey around on an overturned tree, overlooking picturesque oceanside cliffs.
Unspooling cable allows the trawl net, dragging behind the boat, to sink to the bottom, where it will start to catch flatfish, shrimp, and clams.
What’s the matter, haven’t you ever see a walrus skull before?
One of the most beautiful and important coastal habitats – the salt marsh. Another lecture in the heart of nature.
Microscopic plankton can get so thick in the bay that it clogs the plankton net and looks a bit like greenish mud.
We ate a lot of big yummy crabs with garlic and butter.
This preserved deep-sea fish, in the specimen museum at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, has very big, very sharp, teeth.
A puffin is a colorful bird that looks surreal in person – a mascot of the Pacific Northwest coast.
Abbie Stehno, ’14, trying on the deep-sea diving helmet. Claustrophobia, anyone?
The two-week course in environmental studies, “Pacific Coastal Environments” on the rugged Oregon coast, gives students used to exploring warm Florida waters a welcome change. They survey salt marshes, tour temperate rainforests, take in tide pools, climb cliffs, meander through mudflats, clamber after crabs, search sea lion caves and delve into deep sea biology on a research cruise. When they visit a mammal and bird lab/museum for a look at vertebrates, they may find such specimens as a Loggerhead Turtle heart and Harbor Porpoise fetus! Students call a cracking good cook-it-yourself crab dinner and s’mores at the beach campfire a major highlight. Course leader, Associate Professor Kevin Johnson, shares his passions for marine invertebrate ecology, zooplankton and invasive species. Just for fun, he and his grad students dress up like their favorite plankton each year. His enthusiasm can make a student who lags like a sea slug feel like a sea star. If your heart beats faster when you find chitons, sea snails and salamanders, not to mention puffins and other bird life, this experience is for you!
