Webs Under Waves: Exploring Coastal Marine Life

What is Web Under Waves?
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Free On-Line Activities for Grades 3-5
Murre Maniac Newsletter
Farallon Fanatic Newsletter

Webs Under Waves: Exploring Coastal Marine Life

This coastal marine educational program explores the food webs of the central California coastal marine environment and teaches students about the habitats of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, Farallon National Wildlife Refuge, and Devil's Slide Rock, including adaptations of the common murre and what students can do to help protect the marine environment.

With the placement of remote video cameras on Devil's Slide Rock, this enabled us to introduce an even more exciting component to this new program. Now each student can observe ad record data in a science journal of common murres and other seabird activity from the live web cam during the mating and breeding season. With the newsletters from the Common Murre Restoration Project (Murre Maniac) and the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge (Farallon Fanatic), students can get current data from scientists' wildlife observations too.

History: Common Murre Restoration Project

Since the program's inception in 1996 through 2005, approximately 5,390 students from the San Francisco Bay Area have participated in the environmental education component of the Common Murre Restoration Project. The program served two main functions by providing environmental education to local children while assisting the project with murre decoy maintenance.

Education presentations covered a variety of topics ranging from the biology of sea birds, especially the common murre, to current and historical pressures affecting seabird decline, using hands-on activities and slide shows. The presentations also focused on the 1986 Apex Houston oil spill and its impact on the common murre colony on Devil's slide Rock as well as the social attraction restoration efforts. In addition, students had the opportunity to help the project directly by repainting murre decoys in preparation for redeployment in the coming winter.

With the success of social attraction efforts for common murres on Devil's Slide Rock, the project no longer needed to deploy decoys on the rock. Because students during the past 10 years helped to paint these decoys, the education program needed to undergo some changes. Fortunately, thanks to new partnerships with the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge, the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, and PRBO Conservation Science, a new program was launched on the heels of the former Common Murre Restoration Project education program!

On-Line Activities: From Webs Under Waves Education Program
(Coming Soon)

The Webs Under Waves Program is under construction. We encourage teachers to use the activities from the Webs Under Waves program as a supplement to their ocean education programs. All files are in pdf. If you need these documents in another format, please contact us at 510-792-0222.

Student Journal - Students analyze data collected by Farallon scientists, graph the population of the common murres on Devil's Slide Rock ask a Farallon scientist a question, and search for marine words in a word search.

Teacher Journal - Answers to the Student Journal

Seabird Adaptation Card Game (4-5 players) - Students play a game while learning how adaptations help seabirds survive in the ocean environment.

Pledge Card and Banner - Students commit to helping the marine coastal food web by making a pledge; placing the pledge cards around the banner shows what can be done to help out!

Newsletters - Click here Murre Maniac newsletters. This newsletter is available once a month during breeding season, April to August, with information and data about the common murres on Devil's Slide Rock. The Farallon Fanatic newsletter is posted every other month and announces what wildlife the scientists are observing on the Farallons.

View videos of murres on Devil's Slide Rock!

For questions or if your are interested in participating in our future program, please contact the Environmental Education Director at 408-262-5513 ext. 100..