Field Trip

This past Friday, I brought my two Aquatic Science classes to Galveston. I had some room on the bus this year so I invited my mom, Aurora, and my girls to come along with us. In years past, I have conducted the field trip on my own. This year due to Ike, I decided to have our field trip conducted by the Friends of Galveston Island State Park. They did a wonderful job and I will probably have them conduct our field trips from now on. They did a bay walk and a beach walk for us. For part of the bay walk, due to high tide we got to walk through the water of the mud flats/salt marsh. After Naomi and Kaylee knew it was okay to get their shoes wet, they throughly enjoyed walking in the water and finding stuff. My high school seniors were more reticent about walking in the water and getting wet. We were able to see a lot of organisms that my classes studied this year including marsh periwinkle snails, comb jellies, sea nettles, cabbage head jellies, ghost shrimp, bean clams, brown shrimp, fiddler crabs, blue crabs, and mole crabs just to name a few. My students, the chaperones who came with me, and of course the girls and my mom all had a really enjoyable time. For those of you, who live in the area or if you come to visit, should really take advantage of these guided walks that the Friends of Galveston Island State Park do. They do the walks on Saturday and Sunday at 10 am. They meet at the Welcome center/Nature center at the Galveston Island State Park. Right now until the end of June it is free entry into the park. You will have to start paying again once the State Park starts running it again in July.

Kaylee looking for a marsh periwinkle snail

Kaylee with her periwinkle shell

Kaylee looking at the fish and other stuff we found in the seine net