I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated and inspired by the natural world. Now, as an ecologist, science educator, and illustrator, I strive to inspire others with a similar love and appreciation for science.
Today, a cadre of folks from College of Marin visited another local field station (just slightly larger than ours in Bolinas) : the Bodega Marine Lab. Students from three COM courses: Marine Biology, Organismal Biology, and General Ecology made the trek north to Bodega Bay, where we had a phenomenal tour by aquarium resources manager Karl Menard. A few other folks from COM (and beyond) joined us, and we had a wonderful day learning about the work they do at the BML.
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This page is an accompaniment to the sortable list of Bolinas Field Station specimens. Organized by phylum, this page has natural history profiles and additional photographs of the organisms that can be seen in our sea tables now or have been kept in the past.
All photographs are © Wendy St. John, unless otherwise noted.
(more…)One of the most special parts of the Bolinas Field Station is our aquaria – a set of live specimen sea tables where a variety of local organisms – mostly algaes and invertebrate animals – reside. Maintained by aquarist Karl Menard, I never tire of watching so many wonderful critters at such close range. I’ve thought that it would be great to create an index of the organisms we have in the sea tables, and this seems like a good place to do that. (I might eventually turn it into something that’s printed out and kept in a binder at the field station, but I need to start somewhere).
The list can be sorted by Phylum, Common Name, or Scientific Name, and there is a thumbnail for each species (work in progress). If you are trying to identify a specimen of a certain color, you can use the “Search” feature to filter all mentions of a particular color in the database.
There is also another page, sorted by phylum, where you’ll find additional photos for many of the species.
Today, I took my undergraduate biology majors from “Organismal Biology, Ecology, and Evolution” class (BIOL 111A) out to the Bolinas Field Station, and it was FANTASTIC! The primary focus of our visit was to get to know several phyla of Read more
News from the Bolinas Field Station: October 2026 Hello friends of the Bolinas Field Station, Thank you to everyone who joined us for our September 13 open house! More than 60 people came out, including members of the Bolinas community Read more
September 26, 2026
In my first semester teaching General Ecology at COM, I’ve got a small group (just 10 students), but they are AMAZING. Super engaged, super knowledgeable, and super fun – I’m really glad to be working with this group of students this semester. Unsurprisingly, our first trip of the semester was a fantastic day in the field at Abbott’s Lagoon. During the class meeting before our trip, we all made “predictions” about how many species of birds we would see (collectively). I guessed 24, and I was WAY off. (Keep reading to see just how wrong I was).
Note: this is a summary of our day. If you’d like to see more detail about all the things we saw, I made my field journal post on my personal blog, Edge of the Map: https://www.edge-of-the-map.com/2026/09/27/abbotts-lagoon/
(more…)Today, we hosted some very special guests at the Bolinas Field Station: students from our MESA program, along with program director Nicole McIntyre and physics faculty member Marceline Bonilla.
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Today, Dan and I put on our first “real” event – an Open House at the Bolinas Field Station. And IT WAS AMAZING! We had at least 60 people come through: folks from Bolinas and beyond, students and faculty from College of Marin and a couple of other institutions.
(more…)We had an exciting delivery to the field station today: a whole bunch of whale bones!
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Had a great time at the field station today when Dan and I hosted a Flex Session in Bolinas. All faculty at staff at the College of Marin are required to do a certain number of hours of professional development training every year, and for many employees, the bulk of these hours can be earned during Flex Week, which happens the week before instruction begins in both the Fall and Spring semesters. So, this year, Dan and I offered a Flex Session to give folks a chance to see the field station while earning flex credit for their visit.
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