An Introduction to Life on an Island

I just got back from an afternoon paddleboard. I packed away my salty 12ft board with my skirt hem a little cold from the water and a content feeling that everything is exactly as it should be. There were sea lions in the cove and being the pinniped-lover that I am, I felt compelled to go out and chill with them. Bait balls of anchovies and like fish spiraled beneath me and made the dark depth glisten. Brown pelicans dived from above creating a defined splash in the silky calm water as they filled their enormous bills. Yes, this is bliss. The sea life in our cove is incredible. I arrived on the island just at the end of whale migration season and Humpacks, Blue and Gray Whales were seen along the horizon. Boat runs before/ instead of breakfast out to see the Gray mama’s and her newborn were common. Fellow cetaceans such as common, bottlenose, Risso’s and Pacific White Sided Dolphins have also been abundant in our cove lately. Between 100-300 dolphins on a good day are spotted off the end of the pier. I have a few times now taken kids out on kayaks and rafted-up in the blue water together, and sat floating and giving a marine mammals class; giving a real life example of why odontocetes hunt and migrate in groups.

 Below the surface of the oceans around Catalina is just as abundant and invertebrates such as sea hares (both the cute Californian Sea Hare and the Giant Sea Hare), sea cucumbers, lobsters, urchins, dorids, nudibranchs and opistobranchs, octopus, sea stars and giant limpets exist in the kelp forest. Fish like garibaldi, blacksmith, senoritas, half moon, sheepheads and more school in and out of the kelp. Leopard sharks, horn sharks and swell sharks live in the rocks and along the sandy bottoms couples with thornback, round and bat rays. But step off the beach and hike up the steep mountains that enclose the cove and deer, Bison, endemic foxes and squirrels amongst birds and reptiles, can be found. The island is alive with endemic species of flora and you can treat yourself to lemonade berries, toyon berries, miner’s lettuce, prikely pear fruit, peppercorn trees, Bermuda buttercup and other edible flora on your hike up. The process of island formation, subduction and simultaneous volcanic activity mean the island geology is incredibly special; metamorphic, sedimentary and igneous rocks. Mixed into it all are semiprecious stones like garnet, quarts and serpentinite.

Right now I am sitting in the Lodge, the common area of the communal housing, and the girls are playing acoustic guitar and singing about Ursa Major, Canus Minor, Orion, Auriga and Cassiopeia in preparation for the astronomy class tonight. They will probably put on superhero costumes and bizarre accents to teach the class, and the kids will have the best night of their life. Others are gathering squid to teach a squid dissection and there will probably be a Marine Mammals and Deep Sea class tonight too.

There are 18 instructors (mostly females with except of about 5 guys – poor things!) and we rotate between being a ‘technician’ who prepares everything, lifeguards and is responsible for organization and safety, an ‘instructor’ who takes classes, labs and activities, and a ‘program coordinator’ who runs the program, overseas everything and is also simultaneously an instructor. We teach everything from Fish lab to Shark lab, Algae to Inverts, Plankton to Oceanography, Marine Mammals to Deep Sea, Fisheries Awareness to Squid Dissection, Island Ecology & History/ Hike/ Team Building, and from Snorkel to Kayak. Schools come and stay on the island with anywhere between 15 – 250 kids for either 3 or 5 days and we run programs, activities, lessons, etc, for them about Marine Biology and Island Ecology. Sometimes the groups want more of an activity-focused program, others want a more content-focused program. You never know what you are going to get!

Today we couldn’t go into town because the fog was too bad and the cove I live in ‘Fox Landing’ is only accessible by boat. The other day we had a school canceled due to gale force winds, or rather the boat was cancelled and the school couldn’t come out. Only later in the week to have a tsunami hit the island with kids in camp. Luckily our position and the geology of the island makes it near impossible for a tsunami to affect us here (when it comes from the west), nevertheless we had to initiate our evacuation plan and everyone moved to higher ground until we were given the ‘all clear’. Yes, I can’t reiterate it enough – you never know what you are going to get!

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After dinner we took the boat out to get more practice driving it. We did what we like to call a ‘blue water hunt’, where we go looking for whales, dolphins or other incredible animals to swim with. Unfortunately we saw nothing as the seas were starting to rise, but we watched an incredible sunset over the island as we drifted out in the channel between Catalina and Los Angeles.

There are no words to describe what a little ‘dream world’ I am living in. I am on an island, with incredible people, working to inspire kids, working with knowledge, working with my hands and my body in the fresh air, the ocean and the mountains. The community is so strong here – it has to be. Fox Mafia Family (FMF), we even have our own merchandise just for us. We often visit (or rather they often visit us) the other camp with the same company at Toyon Bay and take little adventures to the backside of the island to go surfing on our days off; chill at the beach and make quesadillas on a camp fire. Living by the ocean again and out in nature really inspires me. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing, and of course it makes me contemplate the future a lot.

As I lay down for bed, the warm breeze blows and I hear sea lions barking in the cove, as loud as if they were just outside my window. An introduction to life on the island…