Island in the Sea - Catalina Island Conservancy

Island in the Seacontinued from page 1common to Catalina. To accomplish this often dauntingtask, the scientific research divers have loggedthousands of hours underwater. Key SpeciesMonitoring takes place at seven sites around the island:Cactus Bay, near the northwest corner of Catalina. Thisgeneral area is one of the most diverse and perhapsmost important underwater areas on the Island. It wasthe last area to be impacted by the El Nino conditionsof a few years ago and the first tocome back as the conditionssubsided. Team leader, JohnUlrich, has been leading divers tothis site for the past several years.Little Harbor. According to leaderRobert Newman, current CCD VicePresident, "This is probably thetoughest site we monitor as thisarea is constantly pounded by thenorthern cold water swell.”Church Rock. At the southernmost end of the Island, ChurchRock is frequently plagued bypoor visibility due to prevailingcurrents. All of the Key SpeciesMonitoring sites on the windwardside of the Island are surveyedannually, whereas the sites on thelee side are surveyed quarterly.Avalon, besides being another KeySpecies Monitoring site, is also thelocation of the SCUBA Trail designed to teachrecreational divers about the species they see whendiving at Catalina. The trail is periodically set up byGreg Heilig. Jeff Buchman, Ted Sharshan, and MikeDoran are site leaders in Avalon.Italian Gardens. Cindy Lipthay currently leads the diversat this site. It is a great diving area and often providesopportunities to see Black Sea Bass. These magnificentand amazingly curious fish, which were almosteliminated, have made a very encouraging comebackafter being declared a protected species.Steven G. BenavidesCatalina Conservancy Diver memberconducting research in one of themany kelp forests around Catalina.Marine Reserve, located around the Wrigley Institutefor Environmental Studies. The current reserve stretchesfrom Blue Cavern Point, just south of Bird Rock, alongthe coastline toward Two Harbors. Fishing andanchoring are restricted from this area, and it is a notakezone. The reserve is only one of two that currentlyexist in California. It is a major research site for CCD.Bruce Cook oversees Pumpernickel Cove, just aroundthe corner from Blue Cavern Point. Also in the reserve,CCD's Kelp Forest Monitoring Project, directed by JohnTurney, has been monitoring kelp growth and densitiesin the reserve since 1992. In the last El Nino, thereserve's kelp forest became a desert as the warm waterdepleted the nutrients neededby the kelp.Eagle Reef. JP Pylkkanen leadsthis Key Species Monitoring site.Probably the most heavily divedof all of our research sites, it is acommon stop for thecommercial dive boats. Here, asat all of our research sites, wemaintain thermographs. Theseinstruments record watertemperature on an hourly basis.They are retrieved andcalibrated periodically by CCDresearch divers so the data canbe stored and analyzed.With research sites scattered atall corners of Catalina, one ofthe challenges of the CatalinaConservancy Divers is gettingout to the locations. We havebeen helped tremendously bythe Catalina Marineros, anothersupport group of the Conservancy, whose membershave provided their boats to transport divers. (Ed. note:please see page 9 for more information about theCatalina Marineros.)If you would like tolearn more aboutthe CatalinaConservancy Diversand our projects,please visit ourwebsite atwww.ccd.org.Larry R. ThompsonGaribaldi, the California State Marine Fish.- Tom Turney,President, Catalina Conservancy DiversConservancy Times3