Greetings and happy holidays from the ROV team! We have been busy with all types of fun and interesting activities. On Friday, November 21st, the team went to the Channel Islands National Park Visitors Center with students from Frank Middle School and Channel Islands High School. We participated in an intertidal ecology lesson at the Visitors Center, where they have a tide pool display with live creatures!
Following the lesson, we went to the mouth of the estuary and taught the students how to perform some types of environmental science research. The students were able to learn how to conduct sandy beach monitoring, study geomorphology using surveying equipment, learned about water composition and conducted water quality monitoring, and learned how to use compasses/GPS units to navigate on land. We are now beginning preparations to start work on an ROV component with the students.
We also had the pleasure of having Mr. David Haynes of Channel Islands High School and some of his ROV competition students visit our lab and see what we’ve been working on. Each year Channel Islands High goes to the MATE ROV competition. This year, the high school students will be serving as mentors to the middle school students, just as our group will be serving as mentors to the high school students.
