Week 2 – Caladesi Island Field Trips, June 20-21
Payton Crandall, Peer
Throughout the Oceanography camp, the girls experience many excursions and field trips to interesting places. These trips strengthen their knowledge of the ocean. One of the places we go on our field trips is Caladesi Island. Caladesi is a natural barrier island, protected from human-imposed changes such as seawalls and beach renourishments, and effectively preserved. Once the girls take the ferry from the mainland to the island they split up into four stations on the beach. The first of these four is sediments, where campers take samples and make observations of the sediments in two semi-deep holes dug by the science mentors. The second station is plants, where the campers observe different types of vegetation on the island, most prominently near the sand dunes. The third station is the beach profile, where campers use a stadia rod and look through a transit to map out the topography of the back dune into the water. The last station is all about waves, currents, and wind patterns on the island. The girls tested different wave heights and learned about the science and processes behind them. They even used a fluorescent green dye to measure the speed and direction of currents in the water. Each year, campers assess their findings and compare them with other years of data in a field trip wrap-up later on in the camp.
