Ocean Guardians: 2013

Welcome

Welcome to the Santa Barbara Charter HomeBased Partnership Ocean Guardians blog. Ocean Guardians is an educational outreach sponsored by NOAA and The National Marine Sanctuaries. This is our third year participating in Ocean Guardians. HomeBased Partnership (HBP) is a school program for homeschooling families of k-8 grade students. The Ocean Guardians class is a science elective that meets every Thursday to make the connections between our watershed and the ocean. We have adopted the creek that runs behind our school (Maria Ygnacio Creek) and have tested its water quality every fall, winter and spring at the school site (mid run), upstream at Bjorklund Ranch (headwaters), and downstream near the Goleta Slough. We have done habitat restoration where the creek runs by the school (growing our own natives from seeds we have collected), as well as at Goleta Slough with Growing Solutions and out on the Channel Islands with Channel Islands Restoration. We have presented our findings regarding the state of our watershed to the Goleta City Council and to our school’s leadership. We also collect data concerning the Pacific Mole Crab (sand crabs) for LiMPETS at Goleta Bach. We are a busy bunch. We hope you enjoy our blog. Feel free to comment or contact us. Thank you

Preparing Plants at Growing Solutions

We had a great afternoon with Karen, Don, and Peter of Growing Solutions preparing plants for habitat restoration projects on the Goleta Slough, Malibu Slough and on Santa Cruz Island. We did some tip layering (separate from parent plant) of Shore Grass (17 flats!) and transplanted about four dozen one-gallon containers of Yerba Mansa (Anemopsis) and Horsetail (Equisetum). Lots of fun.

Pacific Mole Crab Goleta Beach 02/28/2013

We had a good day collecting Pacific Mole Crab data for LiMPETS. We did not find many crabs in our study but had a great time digging for them for fun afterwards.

Planting Oaks Along the Creek

I have a small nursery of Coastal Live Oaks so we took the opportunity to plant a half dozen trees along the creek shore.