Tag Archives: student

Students out for weekend

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Sunday, December 02, 2001
Good evening
TEMPERATURE: Max. 8.9C — Min. 5.1C — Reset 5.1C — Rain 5.5 mm
Human Interaction: A group of students under the direction of Laura Verhegge spent the weekend on Race Rocks doing some field work in environmental systems studies. Wanting to take advantage of the low tides which are occurring after dark the students arrived late Friday afternoon.The weather at times was cold,wet and windy -so windy in fact the the return to campus scheduled for 11:30 Saturday had to be postponed to Sunday forenoon.
posted by Carol or Mike S at 6:10 PM
Good morning
WEATHER: Sky Part Cloudy — Vis. 15 Miles – Wind East 8 Knots — Sea Rippled
posted by Carol or Mike S at 7:22 AM

Webcasting Crew out

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Saturday, November 24, 2001
Good evening
TEMPERATURE: Max. 8.5ºC — Min. 7.3 — Reset 8.1ºC — Rain 0.2 mm
HUMAN INTERACTION: Not the best weather for live web casting -however the “crew” arrived after a bumpy ride in the 2nd Nature and braved the very cold North Easterly.There were also the hardy divers on the ‘Juan de Fuca Warrior’ diving the West Race Area.
posted by Carol or Mike S at 6:05 PM
Good morning
WEATHER: Sky overcast — Vis. 15 miles — Wind north east 23 knots — Sea 3 foot moderate
posted by Carol or Mike S at 7:27 AM

Project week ends

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Saturday, November 10, 2001
PC STUDENTS: Our last full day in the kingdom of Race Rocks. We completed a little repair work on the line to the artificial tide pool as well as covered the pipe that leads to it. Kiprop presented his new film of our week at Race Rocks to our web audience. We enjoyed adding the music to the clips where we felt the tunes were most appropriate and laughed the entire time while making it. Cleaning up is complete and most of us are turning in for an early night. Hannah, Salla and myself (Sarah) are looking forward to the dive tomorrow. It has been a wonderful week even if we all are going to be blackmailed by Kiprop’s sneaky film clips of us at our worst moments. It’s been fun, we survived, ate well, slept lots and managed to get some work done in between. -Sarah
posted by Sarah Gross at 11:58 PM

Harlequin Ducks return

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Wednesday, November 07, 2001

MARINE LIFE: Over 150 Northern Sea Lions were on Middle Rocks in the mid afternoon, another 15 on North Rocks. Harbour seals are scattered in several little pockets an various islands usually no more than 8 in one area. Many of the Californian Sea Lions have moved to the rocky beach just South of the Tower. I also saw for the first time this fall, the flock of 20 Black Oyster Catchers high on the Rocky shore, to the sw of the engine room.
posted by Garry Fletcher at 9:53 PM
WEATHER: The day was part cloudy and windy with max. temp of 9.3 ºC and min. temp. of 7.1 ºC .
MARINE LIFE: Five Harlequin Ducks have arrived back for the winter. We were filming them as they patrolled through the kelp beds around the edge of Great Race Rocks.
PC STUDENTS: Our fourth day at Race Rocks has just ended. Today, we managed to finish off refilling the oil tanks and this should take us until April. Garry came over to deliver the G3 Powerbook for a webcast later this evening.
HUMAN INTERACTION: One boat with eight people passed by Race Rocks.
posted by Michael Kiprop at 6:43 PM

The Diving Service Schools Project 1999

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Link to our 1997-98 season of the Diving Service Schools Project.

 

 

In the spring term, 1999, the students of the Diving Service took groups of grade 7 students from the Sooke school district on field trips to the Marine Protected Area of Race Rocks Ecological Reserve.
GOALS OF THE DIVING SERVICE SCHOOLS PROGRAM:

  • To introduce students to the role of marine coastal ecosystems in the culture of First Nations people .a) Ceremonial interaction with the ecosystem
    b) Traditional sources of food from rocky intertidal ecosystems.
    c) Ensuring sustainability of resources.    To enable the students to identify and experience first hand the components of a complete functioning marine ecological system.a) Energy implications
    b) Invertebrate adaptations and escape responses of shellfish.
    (c) The local food web.To enable students to recognize their role in the stewardship of marine ecosystems.a)The “Adopt an Ecosystem” concept.
    b)Oil Spills and our responsibilities
    c)Things we throw into the marine environment.
  • To demonstrate the role of research in protecting ecosytems.(a) We can all do useful ecological baseline studies
    (b) Sustainability of Resources.
    (c) Marine Protected Areas
  • The program we are running consists of the following field lab stations.. click on the photos below for enlargements
  • ​​​
    2:15 pm Station A: The school group arrives at Lester Pearson College. A Pearson College student in the Diving Service meets the class behind the Pool and provides a worksheet on the gray whale skeleton for our first study station.
    (BRING PENCILS)     .

    		2:45 pm – Life jackets are issued, the students proceed to the docks and by this time the divers are prepared to take the students aboard the boats “Hyaku” and “Second Nature”and depart for Race Rocks.
    Appropriate warm clothing must be worn: (touques, gloves, waterproof boots, warm jackets- it does not matter what you look like. Even on warm days on land, it can be very cold out in the Strait of Juan de Fuca !!)

    		3:00 pm station b : Entering the Race Rocks Marine Ecological Reserve, we will view the elephant seals, California and Northern sea lions and harbour seals from the boat. Students will be asked questions about seals and sea lions.

    (
    		 (The ancestors of Debbie and her son Kyle in this picture were the Eastwoods.–lightkeepers at RR 1891-1919).

    3:15pm – Students arrive at Race Rocks. With the Pearson College students as guides, they will go in three groups, to three more field lab stations.
    Station C : With the divers in the boats and at the dock, they will get an understanding of how Diving may be used as a tool to study underwater life. They will also be able to see some of the facilities of the light station which are necessary to allow humans to be included in this ecosystem
    Station D : In our Science Lab-Workshop at Race Rocks, they will see specimens in the touch tanks and be able to study feeding, locomotion and escape behaviors on the specimens. It would help if students come prepared with a basic knowledge of some of the characteristics of some the major phylums of invertebrates.

    Sponges being fed a harmless yellow dye to trace water currents

    		 4:40 pm– Students return to Pearson College.

In order to make the experience more enjoyable and informative for everyone, we suggest that the students do some research before coming on the field lab. It would make things more interesting if they could get a basic familiarity with some of the possible species in the different phylums which they will be seeing at Race Rocks.

Some possibilities are :
Phylum Porifera:sponges,
Phylum Cnidaria: sea anemone, hydroids, corals,
Phylum Mollusca: mussels, abalone, scallops,
Phylum Annelida: tubeworms,
Phylum Arthropoda : barnacles, shrimp, crabs,
Phylum Echinodermata: sea stars,sea cucumbers, sea urchins,
Phylum Chordata: sea squirts, marine mammals and marine birds.
By researching elsewhere in the Taxonomy Files, they may find reference to some of these organisms that live in the Marine Protected Area – Race Rocks Ecological reserve .
The students of Pearson College in the diving service program are looking forward to the school labs program. With your full cooperation, enthusiasm and imagination, the school labs will prove to be very informative and exciting for all of us.
This page was originally designed by Eve from Quebec and Heather from Manitoba. They were the members of the diving activity who co-ordinated the schools labs in the spring of 1997. modified– 03/03/99

 

Transect Study- Environmental Systems Class peg-15

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PEG 15 TRANSECT
ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS CLASS

transect_gfApril 1998: For this Exercise, a section of gently sloping shoreline to the East of the Docks at Peg #15 was chosen.(large old original oil-barge docking post  This intertidal zone rock is exposed to the North West, but protected by the corner of Great Race Island projecting to the West. The transect was laid at a bearing of 285 degrees. Maximum exposure of the area occurs when the wind blows from the North East in the winter months. This work was done in April when the area experiences the first of the low tides in the early part of the day.

 

 

RoyalRoadstransectAlso see the images of the Royal Roads students working on peg 15 in the summer of 1999.

The following is the transect strip. It will take a few minutes to download the whole strip ..

The photos for the transect strips were taken in 8mm video by Sebastian and Garry after the class recorded the details of species distribution over the 50 cm strip, running perpendicular to the shoreline.

Images of the students were scanned from slides taken by Duane Prentice, a professional photographer who lives in Victoria and is an Alumni of Pearson College.. Images copyrighted, 1999 by Duane Prentice.

PEG 15 : PHOTO BELT TRANSECT
Bearing 285 degrees. This area has a fairly constant slope for the 12.5 meters over a vertical range of 3 meters.The photos, one half meter in length, were taken from a video at low tide, in APRIL 1998 by Garry and Sebastian.
Investigation: 1. Plot a profile of the shoreline given the information provided.2. Determine the percentage coverage of the different species of algae shown.3. The physical factors of the habitat of an algae living high in the intertidal zone like Porphyra changes with the seasons. In this area, our low tides occur in the daytime in the summer and in the night time during the winter. It would be revealing to compare the exposure during the daytime in February or March with the exposure in June. First determine from the profile drawn above, the range of tidal level where this species lives intertidal. Then go to the data page where you can access the Tidal Predictions for Race Rocks . From the tidal level profile for Victoria, you will be able to see a graph of the tide levels .Determine how many hours this Porphyra will be exposed to the air by recording the cumulative lengths of time that the water level does not go above the lower limit of the algae. If you do this for different times of the year, you will be able to quantify the time spent submerged or emmerged over a number of days. Be sure to take into account the time of the tidal cycle when choosing days to measure, because you will notice a two week pattern of Spring ( maximum range ) and Neap( minimum range) tides.

Based on your evidence, suggest a hypothesis that could explain why this algae disappears from this area for most of the summer.

BELT TRANSECT PHOTO

Distance in metres from peg 15 is at the bottom of the picture 
Comments and species identification follow the pictures

Notes: at 0.5 metres: This is the upper level just below peg15 The yellow lichen at the top by the peg is Xanthoria parietina
At 1.0 Metres : Life is very sparse in this high splash zone, although a prominent invertebrate that we find is the tiny red miteNeomolgus.sp.
At 2.0 metres: Life is very sparse in this high splash zone, although a prominent invertebrate that we find is the tiny red mite Neomolgus.sp
At 3.5 metres: A few barnacles are starting to appear in the moist crevices.
At 6.5 Metres :Barnacles almost totally cover this areas for several meters
At 8.0 metres: The sea lettuce, Ulva lactuca starts to appear.
At 9.5 metres: The brown algae here is Alaria sp
At 11.5 metres: The wrinkled brown algae: Hedophyllum sp.
At 12.5 metres : The green grass-like plant is Phyllospadix sp , (an Angiosperm, not an Algae)

See Transect A0050101
See Transect A0050102
See Transect A0050103

___________________________________________________________

Return to the Contents page for Environmental modelling with Transects..

Field Lab on Currents- Environmental Systems Class 1995

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n April of 1996, the Pearson College Environmental Systems Class planned a field lab which would enable us to present a profile of the currents around the Race Rocks Ecological Reserve. Michal and Arunas loading a drogue.A square piece of black plastic with lead weights attached to the bottom, hangs under the drogue in the water. Subsurface currents vary from the surface where wind driven currents may predominate. Michal and Arunas loading a drogue.
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Symbala lifts a drogue into the boat. We obtained these drogues as surplus from the Alaskan Oil Spill.
 The drogues were released on an ebb tide between North Race Rock and Great Race Rock. Here the class has a drogue drifting in the background. We also take time out to study the behavior of the sea lions hauled out on the islands of the Ecological Reserve at Race Rocks
currr We have fitted the  drogues  with radar reflectors so that we can determine the distances from the islands in our plotting process. The drogues were released on an ebb tide between North Race Rock and Great Race Rock. The students were able to map the current direction through the islands using the radar on the boat docked at the jetty

 

Wawa and Pearson College Students

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These pictures were taken in the fall of 1982 when Trev and Flo Anderson visited the college after their retirement as lightkeepers at Race Rocks where they had built and launched this boat in the spring of 1982. Many students were able to have a sail with them that autumn before as Trev and Flo were practicing for their trip across the Pacific in the coming year.

wawa2

 

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