When people think beach, I think most imagine warm summer days filled with water play and sand castles. One of the things I love most about the beach is that it makes research evident. It’s not unusual on a low tide day to find scientists and students out in the tidepools with measuring tapes, notebooks, and cameras capturing the status of sea life and ocean conditions.

Recently, UCSD researchers have been conducting research where they put non-toxic pink dye in the river mouth that leads to the beach so they can document how the water moves. (I’m sure there are many more details involved, you can read more about it here.). Luckily, on one of the dye dumping days, my husband happened to be at that beach and snapped a few pics.

After a cliff failure (unfortunately this disaster happens all too often), research trucks with equipment mounted on the hood drives along the shoreline. And today, it was an ATV-like vehicle that seemed to have a camera or some other device mounted on it. It cruised up and down the coast, at times doing figure eights leaving deep ruts in the sea softened sand. At one point, the vehicle came back with another trailer-like device attached on the back. What kind of data were they collecting?

Making research visible and regular reminds us of the wonders that nature has to offer and also of the fragility of this amazing resource we call ocean. I love that I get to see research in action as a regular part of my daily routine…and that my students do too!