By Jade Dean

Last week, we held our second beach seine of the summer with the Pacific Coast Environmental Conservancy at the Colorado Lagoon and Bayshore in Long Beach, CA. All of our interns are getting the hang of catching and processing the various species we collect during these seines. Miss last month's beach seine recap? Read all about it here!

Here are some of our results:

• Over 400 Topsmelt (Atherinops affinis) caught at the Colorado Lagoon.
• The largest fish caught at Bayshore was a  Bay Pipe Fish (Syngnathus griseolineatus) that measured 20.3cm or 7.9in.
• The largest fish caught at the Colorado Lagoon was a Bat Ray (Myliobatis californicus) that measured  41cm or 16.1in.
• Our Bayshore seine had the most species diversity to date. We caught: Giant Kelpfish (Heterostichus rostratus), Striped Kelpfish (Gibbonsia metzi), Diamond Turbot (Hypsopsetta guttulata), California Halibut (Paralichthys californicus), Bay Pipe Fish (Syngnathus griseolineatus), and Shinner Perch (Cymatogaster aggregata).

By Jade Dean

On Wednesday, Tidal Influence was represented by Jade Dean and Tia Blair at the ESRI User's Conference in San Diego, CA. They attended several moderated paper sessions and the topics ranged from: how to track African lions in a wildlife refuge, how to manage invasive species with GIS, and how to use LiDAR data to map vernal pools and monitor coastal erosion. On the EXPO floor, they discussed conservation efforts in southern California with representatives of Algalita, The Trust for Public Land, and NatureServe. The pair also attended meetups with the Southern California Chapter of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (SoCal Urisa) and CSU Long Beach's GIS Department. All in all, it was an awesome day for networking and learning the latest and greatest ways to use GIS for conservation!