Post date: Mar 14, 2012 7:13:56 AM
“Nobody's this excited to get to the school before!”, exclaimed a student on the white Challenger bus pulling up the WPGA driveway towards the Senior School.
It was 5:25 on Tuesday, March 13th, 2012, and the bus carried grade 11 and 12 students returning from their 4-day Outdoor Education trip at Bamfield Marine Science Centre on Vancouver Island.
Four days ago, on Saturday at 6:45, the same bus pulled out of the same driveway with mostly the same people. Only I was missing – I managed to be late, and was mildly surprised when a drive around the school failed to locate the bus.
With no phone calls to help lead me back to the group, my mom, who was dropping me off, decided to chase the bus all the way up to Horseshoe Bay, where the ferry that would be taking us would depart. After half-an-hour of madly driving towards West Vancouver, interrupted by filling up the gas tank while watching the bus go by in front of the gas station, we caught up with the bus at the ferry terminal's toll booths, I jumped out, grabbed my bags, and was finally on the bus.
From there on, the trip down was uneventful. After discussing viral videos of toddlers dancing at hockey games, we boarded the ferry at 8:30, and it departed by 9 o'clock. During the one-and-a-half hour trip to Nanaimo, Peter attempted to teach me to play Bridge, a complicated card game. I almost managed to not learn a bit of it.
After the ferry ride, we had a two-hour bus ride to Port Alberni, a small town with a large paper mill. There, the bus driver, whom we nicknamed BDA – Bus Driver Aaron – dropped us off at a Tim Horton's for refreshments, and then drove off to fill up the bus with gas. Then, refreshed and full, we got back on to the bus and headed for Bamfield.
“Say good-bye to civilization!” Mr. Butler, the Biology teacher who came on the trip, shouted as we got to the gravel-paved logging road.
The students, who wanted to say good-bye using high-tech, crowded to one corner of the bus with their cellphones pressed against the wall in search of a signal.
After two hours, at 2:30, we finally met pavement, and soon, after making a turn, we were greeted with a few buildings and a view towards a sea with clouds and rain preventing it from shimmering.
We unloaded our belongings into the dorms, then we headed down to the boat dock in the inlet, put on life jackets, divided into two groups, and by 3:00, we were heading out into the bay for our first activity – the plankton trawl.
While we were out on the bay, Bamfield decided to give us a good taste of West Coast weather. Rain was blown into our faces by a combonation of wind and the boat's speed, and when we dropped a probe attached by a wire to a handheld display to measure salinity and temperature of the water, the probe, instead of going straight down, got pulled horizontally down the current.
Even though I was soaked after the activity – my pants were damp even with rain pants protecting them – it was worth it, as both groups netted a jar of small marine creatures, swimming like dust blowing in an unseen storm. We pulled off our rain gear and went into a lab to observe them.
After explaining what “plankton” means (floating marine creatures), and after learning about the different species, everyone was given a sheet with drawings of common marine plankton and a glass container with a drop of plankton-filled water. I took these items to my microscope, placed the sample above the microscope light, and turned it on.
What appeared to be quick-moving bits of dust were magnified to show little marine creatures: Long transparent tubes, short oval mostly-white swimmers, with bits of red on their bodies, antenna, and a tail, little triangular creatures with big eyes, and tiny bubbles of purple-green glass. The instructor explained that they were tube worms, copepods, crab larva, and diatoms, respectively.
After the lab, it was 6 o'clock – dinnertime. We went into the cafeteria, a wooden and glass structure across the road from the lab. Dinner consisted of salmon with some sort of yellow sauce on it – the white board stated that it was curry sauce, some rice beside it, some salad, and a choice of tea or a cup of either blue or yellow fruit flavoured drink. (I chose the yellow-coloured fruit drink, which turned out to be peach flavoured.)
After the lab, we learned about marine invertebrates in the Whale Lab. The Whale Lab is actually named the H. C. MacMillian Laboratory, but got its common name due to the collection of skeletons of marine creatures proudly displayed on a wall, with the star of the exhibit being a whale skeleton that stretched from one side of the room to another. On the tables in the lab were plastic tubs each containing a sea creature, and on the whiteboard was the heading “Marine Invertebrates”.
The instructor informed us about the different phyla of invertebrates, such as arthropods and molluscs, and then allowed us to walk around each station and touch the different animals. I was not brave enough to touch an animal, but others seized the opportunity. I had examined sponges, anemones and was looking at the small spring created on the water's surface by a small bivalve's water output port when everybody suddenly scrambled to the table next to me: a pair of hermit crabs had decided to have a duel.
Soon, the lab was over, the crabs were separated and returned, and we prepared for bed. The walk to the dorm was unfamiliar to me, and as I did not bring a flashlight along, I had to closely follow others to avoid stepping into a pool of water. Once, I stepped on the sloping shore of a huge puddle, and had to jump over it. I resolved to bring a flashlight from them on.
The next day was the first day of daylight savings time, so after adding one hour to my watch, I got ready to fall asleep at around 9:30 – excuse me, 10:30 -- pm. I wondered about next day's schedule and the new mistakes that I might make next day before I fell into dreamless sleep.
(To be continued)