Every summer, students in the Marine Biodiversity and Conservation MAS Program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego spend a week on Catalina Island, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California. Here, the students learn to identify local algae and fish species as well as how to measure their populations using belt transects.
However, this year’s most innovative experiment was rooted more in gastronomy than ecology or marine biology. After finding an excellent specimen of elk kelp (Pelagophycus porra) during an afternoon transect, the class decided to make kelp pickles.