Environmental Science students travel to Año Nuevo State Park to observe elephant seals

The field trip was the first to ever take place since the start of the pandemic.

Instead of heading to their usual morning periods on Feb. 10 and 11, most students in science teacher Kristen Thomson’s AP and regular Environmental Science classes boarded buses to Año Nuevo State Park in Pescadero to see dozens of elephant seals in their natural habitat.

The field trip, a staple of the Environmental Science classes pre-pandemic, was the fruit of Thomson’s efforts — she had been planning the event for months in advance, since first semester. As the only Environmental Science teacher, she handled the logistics of the trip by herself, as she had in previous years.

“I had to book the tours at the beginning of October and that is always nerve-wracking because I have so many tours and I have to book them two days in a row,” Thomson said. “I never know when we’re going because it’s always a race to get to the phones first.”

In addition to booking tours, she filled in field trip request forms, found chaperones and arranged for buses to and from the park. The most challenging part of the planning was collecting permission slips and donations from her students, she said.

Thomson was also concerned about whether the field trip would be possible due to the timing of the Omicron surge.

“I was really nervous that they were going to cancel it like they did two years ago,” Thomson said. “We were supposed to go the last week of school before lockdown, so it was tragic that we missed the trip by two days.”

Nevertheless, the field trip was able to proceed on Feb. 17 and 18 as positive COVID-19 cases began to dwindle.

To mitigate the possible spread of the virus during the trip, particularly from spending two hours in enclosed buses, students and chaperones were required to take rapid tests a day or two prior to leaving. Once they arrived at the park, students were required to keep their masks on if they were unable to maintain a 6-foot distance from rangers or other groups.

During both days of the trip, the buses left at the start of the school day and took a little over an hour to get to Año Nuevo. Once they arrived, students were able to walk around the park and visit the beach before their tours.

Depending on the day, the students were split into three or four different tour groups of around 20 that took hikes to the park’s ranger station. Once they met with a park ranger, the group would listen to the ranger provide background information on the seals and park environment and follow the ranger to a beach where the elephant seals resided.

Students walked two to three miles total on hiking trails and tours, returned to their buses and made it back to the school by 3 p.m.

Although hiking in 80-degree weather was tiring, Thomson said she was “glad to be back” to the field trip after a pandemic year and thrilled to watch the elephant seals. Due to the field trip’s earlier than usual date, there were more seals and activity than in previous years. For her, the highlight of the trips was seeing male seals fight for dominance on a Friday tour.

“We got to see some pretty cool elephant seals,” she said. “We got to see babies and females. We even got to see males fighting, which I’d never seen before. I mean, it was the busiest I’ve ever seen, so that was just fantastic.“

Senior AP Environmental Science student Lance Wong said he was glad to go to Año Nuevo and see practical applications of environmental science.

On the field trip, students were able to observe the remaining descendants of the dwindling population of seals, which was highly applicable to what students were learning in class about bringing certain animals back from the brink of extinction, Wong said.

“It was cool to see these animals in their natural, undisturbed habitat because it’s rare to see animals in areas without human interference,” he said.

Ultimately, Thomson was happy to give her students some exercise and said she was proud of those who went out of their comfort zones on the trip.

“I just hope the students enjoyed the trip, learned a little something and felt more connected with nature,” Thomson said. “It’s rare to give them a learning opportunity outside of the classroom. I think if students just have an experience that they have fond memories of, then I can’t ask for anything more.”