Santa Catalina, again

Last weekend I chaperoned the LGHS AP Bio class to Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles. This was my fourth trip to the island and my third as a chaperone. As always, Catalina is an idyllically beautiful place. On the ferry ride there and back we didn't see any dolphins, but two bald eagles flew out over the ocean to greet us when we arrived!

There was amazing visibility (>10 m) when we went snorkeling, the best I'd ever seen! We saw loads of kelp bass and female sheephead (Semicossyphus pulcher), a halibut, rock wrasse (Halichoeres semicinctus), schools of juvenile señoritas (Oxyjulis californica) and topsmelt (Atherinops affinus), adult and juvenile garibaldi (Hypsypops rubicundus), opaleye (Girella nigricans), three kinds of surfperch (black, pile, and kelp), kelpfish, and scorpionfish (probably Scorpaena guttata). On the night snorkel we saw several California spiny lobsters, more scorpionfish, squid (Loligo opalescens), and a large red kelp crab. I'd never seen sheephead, rock wrasse, halibut, or scorpionfish before. After a summer in French Polynesia, it was also kind of cool to compare the fish communities and see the lone Californian representatives of fish groups that are very diverse down there in the tropics (garibaldi in the case of damselfishes; sheephead, señorita, and rock wrasse in the case of the wrasses).

On Sunday, while out on a boat, we pulled up a mass of floating kelp that turned out to contain a pipefish (probably the kelp pipefish, Syngnathus californiensis). This slender fish is a relative of seahorses that is colored to blend in with kelp (other species camoflage themselves to look like seagrasses).

On the same boat ride we saw a California sea lion eating a mackerel. It dove below the water and back up again several times while manipulating the fish in its mouth to be able to eat it without it getting stolen by a bunch of gulls.

We also went on a hike in the hills. Prickly-pear cacti (Opuntia) were fruiting. The fruit taste surprisingly like apples, but are mushy and full of hard seeds.

Somewhat more adventurously, our instructor tricked the students into thinking that pieces of PowerBar were fox scat, and then dared about half of our group into eating some. Everyone remarked that it tasted surprisingly like PowerBar.I'm pretty gullible, so I have to admit that I thought it was fox scat, and refused to eat any.

There were 39 students on the trip. They were pretty awesome, especially for putting up with me giving them educational lessons about fishes and endemic plants. Here are some of them in a grove of island ironwood (Lymnothamnus floribundus, a genus of trees endemic to the California Channel Islands).