It was a beautiful day with a tiny breeze when I got to school. After all the hustle and bustle inside the school getting ready to go, our grade split up into two buses and set off for the hour and a half long bus ride. I sat with Lia and we made a handshake and talked about Nordic Skiing. When we got there, we immediatley set off into the ocean. We found crabs, sea urchins, sea grapes, a lobster, and much more. Once we got hungry, we had an early lunch, checked in with the teachers, and went to the bathroom and the playground for a little while. Then, we went back in the water, and soon, it was time to leave! On the ride back, we stopped for ice cream and waited in line for twenty minutes, but it was worth it! The ice cream was huge and delicous. On the way back we sung, then the teacher yelled at us, and then we talked about basically everything. Finally, we got back to school just in time for the bell to ring.
Tides happen because of when and where the moon and the earth aline. The earth has water bulges on two sides. When the moon goes over a bulge, it causes high tide. When it passes over one of the bulges, it causes low tides. It does this twice a day, and that is why there is two high tides, and two low tides.
The first Intertidal Zone is called the black zone, also known as the splash zone. The only reason it is black is because of the hydrocloric acid which turns the rocks black. This zone only gets *splashed* by big waves or storms.
The second Intertidal Zone is called the white zone. This zone’s rocks are actually black, but you see a lot of white because of the barnacles which turn them into a splotchy white.
The third Intertidal zone is called the brown zone which is only brown because of rockweed and knotted wrack, which are types of sea kelp, that drift up onto and around the rocks with the water.
The fourth and final Intertidal zone is called the red zone, which is basically always submerged in water. It is red because of the Irish Moss that covers all the rocks and turns them red.
On this feild trip, we saw a lot of things. We saw lobsters, baby lobsters, starfish, sea urchins, sea grapes, crabs, barnacles, limpets, mussels, knotted wrack, rockweed, all the intertidal zones, nudibranchs(maybe), the drowned forest, which was a ton of really old tree trunks, horsetail kelp, sugar kelp, and hermit crabs.
I think the tidal zone with the most variety is probably the subtidal zone(also known as the wet zone), because that is where we found lots of different kinds of animals, but also irish moss, knotted wrack, sugar kelp, horsetail kelp, and rockweed. I also saw a lot of limpets and barnacles there too. I think that is because of how healthy that area is. Its basically always soaked in water, but it also has a lot of plants to eat and other animals to prey on to help keep the species there healthy.
