Help Scientists Track the Dwindling Population of Monarch Butterflies

Monarch butterflies cluster on eucalyptus leaves in Sweet Springs Nature Preserve. Photograph courtesy of Michael "Mike" L. Baird, bairdphotos.com by Flickr Creative Commons license.

Monarchs come to the Central California Coast when cool weather hits Starting in October, monarch butterflies fill the branches of eucalyptus, Monterey pines, and other trees along California’s Central Coast. They cluster together high above the ground, looking much like bunches of dead leaves unless you use a spotting scope to take a closer look, or catch a flash of their black and orange wings as a butterfly moves away from its cluster to a sunny spot where it will open its wings and take in the sun’s warmth. Monarch butterflies come here to ride out the winter in …

Field Updates November 2018: Eelgrass Monitoring and Rainfall Totals

December 7, 2018 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program eelgrass eelgrass loss eelgrass restoration estuary field updates field work fieldwork MBNEP monitoring morro bay natural recruitment precipitation rainfall rainfall totals citizen science Field Updates

Fulfilling our mission to protect and restore the Morro Bay estuary for people and wildlife requires a lot of hard work in the field. At the Estuary Program, that often entails doing research, restoration, and monitoring work out on the estuary and along the creeks that feed into it. Read on to see what we’ve been up to during the past month. Eelgrass Monitoring In November, we went out and checked on all of our 2018 eelgrass restoration plots, as well as some planted in 2017. While we were out monitoring, we noticed lots of new patches of …

Rain Comes to Morro Bay at the Start of a New Water Year

October 5, 2018 Posted by Morro Bay National Estuary Program estuary MBNEP morro bay national estuary program precipitation rain year rainfall storm stormwater water year Blog Posts citizen science

First rain of the water year Rain returned to the Central Coast this week, bringing precipitation totals between one third of an inch and six tenths of an inch within the Morro Bay estuary watershed. This storm came after a six-month break in significant precipitation and just after the October 1 start of the new, 2019 water year. A water year is a twelve-month period of time that begins October 1 of one calendar year and ends September 30 of the next. The reason that the water year differs from the calendar year is that, in many places, precipitation that falls …