Field Trip

So, you may be thinking: "Wow, Bruin already went on his first field trip?" But actually it was my college field trip that I am referring to. For my college Biology class we had a not so "optional" field trip to the Dana Point Harbor. As a class, and along with my professor's fifth grade class we took a boat out off the coast to take some samples from the ocean floor. I took Kirk along with me to join in the "fun." Which I didn't realize would actually be such a memorable experience.

We started out by going off the coast a couple miles. As we were going out to sea Kirk and I went up to the top of the ship (where the captain is). There were some nice benches up there, and it was nice to be away from the children (since we had left our 3 with my mom for the day). As we were sitting up there we noticed that the captain was talking to some other captains about the unusually large swells. We asked him about it, and he just said it was just a little rockier than had been predicted. I was just hoping at that point that I didn't get sick!

Kirk on the top deck

Meanwhile we see him looking into his binoculars over and over in the same direction. He would drive a little and then stop and look again. He then announced that we were going to see if we could catch up to a pod of dolphins that he had spotted. I was instantly excited! I was thinking, "neat, we are going to see a few dolphins out here." Little did I know that this pod was giant! As we approached the pod there were tons jumping out of the air and swimming swiftly opposite our direction. When I say tons, I mean hundreds! The captain turned the boat around so that we would be traveling in their direction. He explained to us that some of them may "bow ride" if we were lucky. By that point I had gone down to the bottom deck and grabbed my camera hoping to get a good shot of some dolphins. They were just too fast for my slow camera- sorry to disappoint. This is the closest I got to getting a good picture of them. You probably can't tell that there are two of them swimming under the water there next to our ship.

Several dolphins decided to "bow ride" as the captain had explained, which was really neat to see them swimming along with our vessel. My professor yelled, "any college students who are interested, there is some mating going along on the right side." I briefly saw the interesting sight of dolphin mating, which I had never thought much about. I'll spare you the details, but there are some videos on you tube if you are interested. Toward the end of the dolphin adventure the captain told us that he thought there were about 600 or so dolphins! It was a neat experience that I will never forget, and all thanks to my college biology class. Who knew a bio class could be so much fun?

The trip ended well with us pulling up some samples and sea life from the bottom of the ocean. These are a couple of the interesting fish they pulled up. The one bent in half is not dead, its a defence mechanism they use when they are being "attacked." The flatfish on the bottom left is an interesting creature. It is all white on the side facing down, and has eyes only on the one side of its body. When it is hatched an eye is on either side, and then one eye "migrates" to the preferred side where it remains. They are referred to as either left eyed or right eyed depending on which side they chose. Kirk and I were lucky to feel well throughout the entire ride (while some of my classmates were not so lucky). One poor girl in my class could not wait to get off the ship, and as soon as she did she was losing her breakfast into the ocean. I felt bad but didn't want to watch (since I had already seen enough puke this week with my sick kids). Below I wanted a picture of this pirate looking ship to show Bruin.
I love being on the water, so this trip on the ocean made me even more excited for my cruise next week. Kirk and I will be off for a few days with some friends on a Mexico Cruise relaxing and celebrating our 7th anniversary.

Thanks mom for watching the kids while we were off watching the dolphins, regardless of Hudson being a little sick still. We really had a wonderful time, and could never do things like this without such a supportive family to leave the children with.