Good estuary tours

As mentioned in previous blog posts, one of the main jobs for the interns at the Visitor Center is giving estuary tours to the public at 11am.  Diana, Nick, Julie, and I trade off giving these tours depending on who wants to do it on a particular day.  It’s not uncommon for one of us to give tours multiple days in a row when the other person is doing the Ocean Quest presentation for that day.   In general, I prefer to do the Ocean Quest presentation because it is very structured and straightforward.   There are very few surprises during the presentation. On the other hand the estuary tours are very unstructured and vary in topic from day to day.  This has its ups and downs and can make them pretty challenging.  In this blog post I am going to outline what a good estuary tour is like.

To start out with, I’ve found the number of people on the tour doesn’t really matter too much.  The level of engagement of the group is what really defines a good estuary tour.  I think this can be said of many things in life (I’m sure any teacher/professor could say the same thing).  I have just come to realization because of these estuary tours.  So step one, get an engaged group.  I usually take my tour through the doors leading to the education wing where I can then introduce myself outside the hustle and bustle of the Visitor Center.  I then usually head to the tank farm outside where I can give some interesting facts about HMSC such as the number of scientists working, the number of federal and state organization, etc.  Today was particularly cool because Dr. John Chapman, HMSCs Invasive Species Specialist, was at the tank farm.  He gave the tour a very cool rundown of what the current situation is with the Japanese dock that washed ashore earlier this year.  Nothing quite gets a group jazzed like a world-class researcher giving you a rundown on what’s going on in the biology world.

I then usually head past the US Fish and Wildlife building to the estuary trail and head to the mudflats.  I like to stop at the transition between the highlands and the salt marsh to explain how some plants have adapted to a salty environment.  There is a very distinct visible line where shrubs and trees stop growing and salty plants begin to grow.  I really like looking at this line and then heading down to eat some of the salt-adapted plants.  I try to get everyone to eat pickleweed which just tastes like salt.  After that little adventure we make our way down to the mudflat where we suck out some shrimp with a slurp-gun.  Nobody enjoys sucking shrimp out more than the kids.  They could do this for hours (I have actually had a family do this for an entire hour).  If the crowd looks up to it I head to the part of the estuary trail that has eroded and explain the different forces at work that cause erosion on an estuary and explain different techniques to mitigate erosion.

Lastly I’ll head to the water storage tank and to the saltwater stream and explain how the tank has more water in it than an Olympic sized swimming pool and the saltwater stream is unique because it’s a saltwater stream.  Then we’ll head back and call it a tour.

As I mentioned earlier what really makes a tour successful in my eyes is when the group is interested and engaged.  The more questions the better.  Everyday I hope that my group will be excited to learn about this stuff because it makes the tour way more enjoyable for me.