Diario de isabelasigala

This week my professor informed us of the low tide on Thursday and Friday so I aimed to head to pillar point/Mavericks area and check out the tide pools. I wanted to get there around three, however one thing led to another and I arrived closer to four thirty in the evening. Nonetheless a lot of the tide pools were still exposed and several people were headed out as well.

Mavericks beach is an awesome place to watch surfers ride some of the craziest waves, and at low tide several people gather to harvest seafood from the reefs. What’s important to note is that there are unmarked (or very poorly visible) boundaries where pillar point beach ends and the state marine conservation area begins. Here I believe only crab and squid can be taken opposed to the public beach where more species can be harvested. When I visited the tide pools on Thursday there were park rangers actively patrolling, checking bags and licenses in order to enforce foreging regulations. Personally I think they have gotten stricter this year with regulations and I’m guessing it might have to do with the increase of people harvesting very large amounts of seafood, which could ultimately hurt the ecosystems. I think simply looking at the tide pools and watching the surf is more fun because handling and shucking sea urchins is a process and the last thing you want is to get poked.

Thursday evening I headed out for a quick walk/hike at Edgewood park. I went towards sundown so I figured my chances of seeing animals would be pretty low. What I was primarily looking forward to was fungi since we’ve had a bit of rain these past weeks in San Mateo. It would definitely make finding mushrooms easier if you bring a friend along since they tend to blend in with the leaves and could easily be overlooked. The park itself is one of my favorites because it has pretty good parking given the amount of people visiting each day, clear paths, reception, and really nice views once you trail higher up. Since I went in the afternoon I noticed a lot of people come for the sunset. If I were to come back to view the sunset from the top I would probably aim to start around four o’clock since it would probably take me an hour and with the time change in fall the sun will set earlier.

This is my last journal entry for my iNaturalist class project! As I was forming a taxonomy table with my observations from the past weeks I noticed that in just visiting parks for a short amount of time I was able to find a lot of species. Wednesday and Thursday I revisited Edgewood and stopped by Wunderlich park in the evenings for a little bit of hiking and this time came across a lot of birds. I would stop often to look around for mushrooms and when I would walk by any trees/bushes, birds would fly out. They’re never still enough to get a good picture however I could probably find them on iNaturalist just by searching for birds observed in the area. Over the course of this project Wunderlich has become one of my favorite parks to walk through. After it rains I think it is the best time to head outside and hike a trail specifically with a bunch of trees, plus with all the rain there are a bunch of fungi popping up.