The Intertidal Ecology research team is a multi-disciplinary group which has members in Biology and ESRM. The team consists of Dr. Geoff Dilly, Julia Dorosh, Ryan Newkirk, Paul Spaur (project lead for AARR), and Alexis Wallengren. The AARR is working with the Intertidal Ecology team to utilize Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) in adding subtidal in with the intertidal transects. These surveys will be looking at sea stars, muscles, limpets, marine plant life and more. The sea stars are of particular interest because of the Sea Star Wasting Syndrome which has decimated the population. (http://www.eeb.ucsc.edu/pacificrockyintertidal/data-products/sea-star-wasting/index.html)
National Park Service (NPS) scientists have developed an intertidal ecological assessment protocol over the past 20 years which they use to sample dozens of sites across the island chain to document the health of our island ecosystem. Our Intertidal Ecology team is currently establishing and surveying two new monitoring sites on SRI and they will eventually be proposed to be incorporated in the existing network.
The team went out to the Cat Rock area of the beautiful Anacapa Island, aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) research vessel the R/V Shearwater. The team went along with members of the NPS to run the existing Intertidal Ecology protocol, and was able to deploy the OpenROV “SCOOP” from the Shearwater to demonstrate its capabilities
The team then went aboard an inflatable boat and landed in the rocky intertidal zone to continue the intertidal survey.
