This past weekend I chaperoned 27 students from my old high school's AP Biology class to Santa Catalina Island off the coast of southern California down near LA. The class has come here nearly every year for a long time (I did the trip as a senior 7 years ago), and this is my second time chaperoning. The focus of the trip is marine biology so we went snorkeling and did a number of hands-on labs on different groups of marine organisms, led by instructors from the Catalina Island Marine Institute. (The picture is me holding a spiny lobster, with a glove on.) The weather was bright and sunny and the water rather cloudy, so there wasn't very good visibility during the day but we still managed to see some pretty impressive giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) beds and a lot of fish: topsmelt (Atherinops affinis), kelp bass (Paralabrax clathratus), señorita (Oxyjulis californica), a school of blacksmith (Chromis punctipinnis), garibaldi (Hypsypops rubicundus), opaleye (Girella nigricans), and halfmoon (Medialuna californiensis). We did a night snorkel as well, and the cloudy water translated into spectacular bioluminescence by plankton in the water. I would wave my hand and myriad tiny sparks of light would flash in front of my face.

On land we did a hike up to a grove of island ironwood (Lyonothamnus floribundus), a tree that once ranged over California until the end of the last glaciation 12,000 years ago. Now it survives only on four of the California Channel Islands. They're weird trees with sticky-looking bright green leaves, large dead flower heads, and extremely stringy bark. The climate on Santa Catalina is a lot drier than up in the Bay Area; it is mostly scrubby with various kinds of oaks (Quercus), prickly-pear cacti (Opuntia littoralis), lemonade berry (Rhus integrifolia), and laurel sumac (Malosoma laurina). Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia), a shrub on the mainland, becomes a full fledged tree on the island, and Catalina cherry (Prunus lyonii) is another full-sized tree whose nearest relative on the mainland is a shrub (holly-leafed cherry, Prunus ilicifolia). Mr. Hammack and I noticed that toyon leaves are less serrated than on the mainland and toyon lacks its characteristically pungent almond smell; we wondered if this might be a loss of anti-herbivore defenses. In addition, Catalina cherry leaves are not serrated, whereas those of holly-leafed cherry are.

I really enjoyed hanging out with the students (they were a lot like the people I used to hang out with when I was their age). A lot wanted to know how I thought Harvard compared to Berkeley. I was struck by how much less cliquey they were than my high school peers had been. Regardless, after the trip I was left with no nostalgia for high school. College was a lot better, so was Japan, and so is grad school.

The highlight of the trip though, was the dolphins. On the ferry ride over we passed through a pod of at least a hundred common dolphins (Delphinus delphis), leaping into the air, doubling back toward the boat, swimming under and alongside the keel, and leaping back out of the way of the boat. Absolutely enthralling; I don't think I've ever seen anything more dramatic in the natural world. Closer to Santa Catalina, we passed by about five or so bottlenosed dolphins (Turisops truncatus), the first I had ever seen. On our ride back to Long Beach, we passed through three pods of about fifty common dolphins each, including one in fairly polluted water.

(Photos taken by Kim Burlinson, the other chaperone.)

One of these days I'm going to have to go visit some of the other Channel Islands...