Marine Invertebrates of the West Coast - July 2024

In this weekend field course get up close and personal with the invertebrates that inhabit the shallow waters of our western shores! In this Raincoast Education Society (RES) course, you will learn all about the fascinating strategies that they use to survive the rigors of the intertidal zone; their varied and often bizarre means of reproduction, the critical roles they play in marine ecosystems, and much more.

The RES is excited to be adding this course to the Raincoast Institute weekend field course options,  and they are thankful for having Dr. Gregory Jensen coming to Ucluelet to share his knowledge and expertise with everyone.

Friday, July 19th (7:00 pm – 8:30 pm)

• Presentation: Spineless Wonders: the amazing diversity and adaptations of invertebrates.

Saturday, July 20th (8:30 am -8:00 pm, with breaks)

Field exploration to explore invertebrates on Ucluelet’s coast and practice naturalist skills, including fundamentals identification.

• Collection of invertebrates on the outside of the peninsula, returning to the lab for the afternoon
• We’ll observe firsthand how they move, feed, and other behaviors, and discover myriad organisms that were too small to see in the field.

Evening Presentation at the Ucluelet Aquarium: What’s love got to do with it? Reproduction in marine invertebrates.

Sunday, July 20th (8:30 am – 1:00 pm) Putting it all together – field trip to identify seaweeds and their communities in nature, including opportunities to share what you’ve learned with the group.

• The group will explore the habitats on the protected side of the peninsula and the different suite of organisms inhabiting these sheltered waters, to compare and contrast how they differ from those on the more exposed side.
• Course wrap-up

About Dr. Gregory Jensen

Greg Jensen is a marine biologist who has spent the past five decades researching and photographing marine invertebrates of the Pacific Northwest.  His main research interest is in the ecology and systematics of crabs and shrimps; despite their great ecological and economic importance, remarkably little is known about the myriad roles they play in marine food webs.  Another facet of his work involves creating user-friendly identification guides to Pacific coast invertebrates and fish, and he is actively involved in the Reef Environmental Education Foundation, a citizen science organization that recruits divers to collect information on fish and invertebrate populations. It was his love for diving and photography that led him to publish his first book in 1995: an identification guide on the unique crab, shrimp, and lobster species along the Pacific Coast. Recently expanded, the new edition of Crabs and Shrimps of the Pacific Coast increases the total number of species described from 163 to nearly 300.  He is also co-author of Beneath Pacific Tides: Subtidal Invertebrates of the West Coast and Nudibranchs & Sea Slugs of the Eastern Pacific.

Photo credit: Raincoast Education Society