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.

Creek Restoration at HBP

We planted Primrose along the creek behind HBP that we grew from seeds collected in our area. We also seed started several other natives from seeds collected in our watershed for planting later in the year. November 15, 2012.

Creek Water Quality Testing Downstream

We tested the water quality of the Maria Ygnaicio Creek downstream near the intersection of the bikepath to UCSB and Patterson Ave. on November 8, 2012.

Ocean Guardians/Water System Epic Field Trip

We took a full-day field trip to visit our local water system with the Water Systems class lead by Dave Bothman on November 2, 2012.

Area i at the Santa Barbara Airport

We visited Growing Solutions' incredible restoration project on the Goleta Slough near UCSB and the Santa Barbara Airport on November 1, 2012.

Creek Cleanup at HBP

We spent the afternoon surveying the creek downstream from HBP and picked up quite a bit of trash. This was on October 25, 2012.

Creek Water Qulaity Testing Upstream

We tested the quality of the water upstream near the "headwaters" of the Maria Ygnacio Creek at Bjorklund Ranch on October 20, 2012.

Pacific Mole Crab Study

We continued to study the Pacific Mole Crab at Goleta Beach on October 18, 2012.

Creek Water Monitoring at HBP

We tested the quality of the water in the Maria Ygnacio Creek behind HBP on October 4, 2012. There was a strange amount of water flowing in teh creek even though it had not rained. Probably from some agricultural runoff.

Coal Oil Point Gas and Oil Seeps

We went on a trip sponsored by Venoco Oil to visit Platform Holly and the world famous Coal Oil Point gas and oil seeps on September 29, 2012.

Welcome 2011/2012

Dear Visitors

This is my last year in the Ocean Guardians class here at HBP (HomeBased Partnership*). This class does a variety of fun activities and field trips to many places around Santa Barbara and Goleta conducting tests and observations.

A watershed is an area of land that drains many dispersed bodies of water into one large body of water. Bjorklund Ranch, is the headwaters of our Maria Ygnacio watershed, behind the school is the halfway spot in the watershed (it’s right in the middle of it), and where Patterson Ave. and the bike path intersect is pretty much at the bottom just before it empties into the Goleta Slough. According to our chemistry results, the water got progressively worse as we went down the watershed. If you look to the right you will see, Results from Each Site Over the Seasons, and you will find our chemistry results there.

This year and last year, we did some rapid trash assessments. That means that we go up and down the creek getting all the trash. The trash is especially harmful to creeks because when there’s a big load of trash in the creek and the rains come, where does all that trash end up? In the ocean! We noticed that those assessments made a big impact on our creek.

When we do our testing, we record our data on our Quantitative Analysis Cover Sheet. That’s where all the chemistry results on this blog came from. It has spots where you can record and note all the results from the test at hand.

I hope that this blog will help you understand a little bit more of what we do in this class. We have a blast learning about our creeks, cleaning them, and helping to keep them healthy. But most of all, we want to help others to keep our creeks, and other creeks
clean and healthy.

— John

*Associated with the Santa Barbara Charter School