A turkey vulture circles overhead — gulls, cormorants, coots and ducks bathe and frolic in the salty marsh below. A pelican dives into the water and surfaces with a pouch full of fish.
This may look like the opening scene of a show on the Discovery Channel, but, for Cal State Long Beach students Peter Stearns and Hayley Zemel, this is their life.
While some students take part-time jobs at local restaurants or retail shops, Stearns and Zemel spend their working hours at the Colorado Lagoon, an urban wetland, located about one mile from CSULB.
As the lagoon’s nature interpreter, Stearns is responsible for educating and involving people from the community with the lagoon.
“My goal is to connect people with their surroundings,” Stearns said.
During estuary explorations, held on the second Saturday of each month, he leads intimate groups around the lagoon and shows them how to connect with nature.
“It’s like a fancy nature walk and I try to make it interactive,” Stearns said.
While Stearns focuses more on education and awareness, Zemel brings a scientific approach to restoring and maintaining the wetland area.
Zemel’s job as restoration and monitoring coordinator compliments her current studies of marine and wetland ecotoxicology. She is working on her master’s degree at CSULB and her thesis project will involve the lagoon.
Zemel uses ecotoxicoproteomics to monitor toxins in the shallow body of salt water. Ecotoxicoproteomics involve chemical analyses of protein expression in fish liver or muscle tissue. The goal is to determine what chemicals or contaminants the fish have been exposed to.
“It’s a work in progress and this is an emerging field of study,” Zemel said.
Zemel is also part of the Sharklab team on campus, led by CSULB professor Chris Lowe. The team studies the physiological and behavioral ecology of sharks.
The team was recently featured on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.
Monitoring water quality at the lagoon is a very important part of Zemel’s job. She said, with the help of CSULB professor Christine Whitcraft and other graduate students, she is able to do more water quality monitoring.
Whitcraft runs the CSULB Wetlands Ecology Lab and is able to provide a special instrument that can measure multiple parameters in the lagoon.
The team at the Colorado Lagoon has a combination of humanities and scientific backgrounds. Stearns said this seems to work well for the lagoon and the community.
Stearns said he has been a long-time advocate for the environment. He has been involved in protests, participated in demonstrations and was also employed by Green Peace for a while.
“Something clicked inside me one day and I wanted to not protest, but to help people get connected to nature,” Stearns said.
Stearns’ focus in American studies with an emphasis in nature awareness at CSULB has helped with his job at the lagoon.
He said, when he chose his area of study, it was important for him to somehow make nature the focus. He wants to get more people from the community involved and said that the lagoon is an unbelievable opportunity to connect with nature.
The restoration project is a major focus for the leaders and volunteers of the Colorado Lagoon. CSULB alumna Whitney Graves is the restoration technician and site manager and she oversaw the most recent part of the restoration project, which involved diverting nine out of 11 storm drains away from the lagoon.
Project volunteers have also pulled ice plants and planted native species around the entire lagoon. The lagoon relies on these volunteers for many aspects of the restoration.
“We have a tight crew of committed volunteers,” Graves said.
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