	Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre
	Canada's premier coastal and marine facility for teaching and research

Out in the field. Photo by Jeff Reynolds

Coastal Community Ecology 2009

Dr. KC Burns returned to Bamfield from New Zealand this summer to teach the Coastal Community Ecology course. The photos speak for themselves; thanks to student Jeff Reynolds!

KC writes:

"Left... Left... LEFT!!! It was too late. Everyone in the boat bumped a bit as the boat's skeg nicked the reef. The student driving the boat looked sheepishly at the rest of the coastal community ecology class. But everyone knew it wasn't Scott's fault.

I explained to the class that I had done exactly the same thing, in exactly the same place, a decade earlier when I first arrived in Bamfield. Every student at BMSC learns that the entrance to Dodger Channel is deceptively shallow at low tide. Traversing the shallows to land on the little island at its mouth is especially tricky. The key is to stay left, but Scott had just arrived in Bamfield and didn't know it yet. I wondered whether the bit of plastic that bumped off the boat's skeg would settle on the same spot on the reef where part of my skeg had found a new home ten years earlier.

We all knew what this meant. We would have to answer to Janice, the boating officer. Janice's job is to make sure that the station's fleet of boats returns each day intact, along with all of us of course.

Looking down at the station's fleet of boats from the cliff above the docks each morning was the favorite part of everyone's day. It's like looking down at a fleet of Hertz rental cars from the window of the airport you just flew into on holiday. Every morning we assembled our gear on the cliff before we set off for the day. Each day took us to a different part of the Sound to learn something new... everything from beach plants to intertidal invertebrates to island bird communities. As we gathered our gear, Janice watched nervously. None of us blamed her. Accidents happen in lecture theaters. Pencils break, computer screens go blank and microphones go silent inexplicably. These are familiar parts of learning at universities.

Accidents happen at BMSC too. But these involve soaked shoes, sunburns and broken boat skegs. Janice knows this best of all.

The most important lessons in biology cannot be taught indoors. Only by experiencing them first hand in the field can these lessons be learned properly. This is especially true in coastal community ecology. Perhaps nowhere else on Earth is the land and the sea more interconnected than in British Columbia. This connectivity forms the basis of the coastal community ecology course and BMSC is the best place on Earth to teach its lessons. "

KC leading the class, photo by J. Reynolds

Click here for the photo gallery.

Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre
100 Pachena Rd, Bamfield, BC
Canada, V0R 1B0
Phone: (250) 728-3301
Fax: (250) 728-3452

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