Photo Credit: Shannon Lee
Duxbury Reef continues to amaze and inspire visitors and locals alike. This winter, there were fewer red octopus sightings than last winter, but the variety of sealife—from brightly colored purple urchins to delicate nudibranchs—treated visitors to a magical experience. We are so lucky to have such dedicated volunteers on our docent team to help educate visitors about the fascinating marine species, reef habitat, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), and protective tidepooling practices that will safeguard the reef’s biodiversity for future generations. This is especially important as climate and ocean changes will continue to stress marine life in addition to the impacts caused by high visitation.
This winter, we trained and welcomed 9 new docents to our team! Joining us from the East Bay, Marin (including West Marin and Bolinas), Sonoma, and San Francisco, they are eager to help educate the visiting public while they continue to learn about Duxbury Reef’s species and habitat. Spending time and serving at the reef is a lifelong learning adventure! We are so grateful for all of the docents' dedication to protecting this rare and special place on our coast, one of the largest shale reefs in North America.
We have also expanded our program by adding a tabling option to facilitate visitor education as people head down to the reef. Docents who don’t feel up to standing on the reef on any particular day now have the option to educate visitors at the trailhead, where we have set up access to a fold-out table, information materials, and a dry touch-table box. The touch box enables people to handle the shells of animals found at Duxbury (but not collected in the MPA), which we hope will deepen their understanding and reduce the urge to handle live marine life on the reef. We’d love to expand our tabling team; if you are interested in educating visitors at Duxbury Reef, but can’t invest time for the full docent training, please contact leslie@eacmarin.org to learn how to become a Duxbury Tabling Docent.
Thank you to all the instructors and guest speakers who helped train the docents this year, including Kent Khtikian (community volunteer and Duxbury Docents co-founder), Kathy Ann Miller (UC Berkeley), Shannon Lee (Sonoma State), Terry Gosliner (California Academy of Sciences), Paul Hobbi (NOAA Greater Farallones), Dave Press (Point Reyes National Seashore), Scott Moller (Marin County Parks and Open Space), Nathan Kemp (California Department of Fish and Wildlife), and Dean Hoaglin (Coast Miwok Tribal Council).
When you visit Duxbury Reef, keep an eye out for docents in green vests, and please remember to protect the reef with these recommendations: Observe with your eyes and avoid handling the marine life, leave everything in its place, and try to avoid stepping on living things that are often hidden and camouflaged. By walking slowly and taking time to look closely, you will see the incredible variety of marine life that calls the reef home.
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Duxbury Docents
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