David's Diary: Thursday, November 8, 2001
School Field Project
Jocelyn's Field Trip
For school today, Jocelyn is working on the ecology section of her Science. She has to complete a field trip, documenting what she finds. She is expected to find at least ten biotic examples and four abiotic ones. We decided that the beach and marina around Cassis would be a good choice for this project. To make the project more interesting, we made it a family affair with Kevin, Allen, Jocelyn, and I searching the rocks and beach for wildlife.
Limpets
Since all three children have spent a lot of time at the beach in Vancouver they were all surprised at how little sealife there is in the Mediterranean by comparison. Vancouver has an average tidal change of three meters. This constant change in water flow provides a rich intertidal zone loaded with wildlife. The Mediterranean has no tides and with water flow restricted by the Straight of Gibraltar, we had to work a lot harder than we were used to find samples for Jocelyn's project.
We first found limpets, something that we are used to finding in Vancouver. Their characteristic Chinese-hat shape and small size identify them easily. The rest of our search was not as easy as we looked over, under, and inbetween the rocks on the beach for more samples. In some cases, we had to settle for shells only as we could not find any living samples. Cactus grew next to the beach and we found a hardy plant growing between some rocks that we were not able to identify. After an hour we had found the samples that Jocelyn needed for her project, but it was up to her to write up her results and use our onboard resources to provide background material to what she found. In addition to the formal project, Jocelyn also did an additional write-up for her teacher documenting ecology in the Mediterranean.
Marseille Fish Market
In Jocelyn's report she comments on fishing in the Mediterranean and the fish market she saw in Marseille. Every day at the head of the quay in the Vieux Port in Marseille there is a fish market. There are dozens of stalls all selling fresh fish, which we assume is all caught nearby in the Mediterranean. Given how many people live around the Mediterranean and how long it has been fished, we are amazed at the variety and abundance of the fish. Some of this is just because we are unfamiliar with many of the fish, but the fishmongers at the Granville Island Market in Vancouver will never quite look the same to us again.