While the high desert may seem an unlikely hub for marine studies, Western New Mexico University continues to provide a comprehensive education in the field, bolstered by the return of its signature, hands-on regional expeditions. First stop, San Diego, where students recently returned from a four-day field expedition using the Pacific coast as a real-time laboratory to witness the accelerating local impacts of climate change. The annual April excursion is a cornerstone of the WNMU Department of Natural Sciences’ field curriculum, this year preparing students for an even more rigorous upcoming voyage to Sonora, Mexico this June.
The regional trips, co-led by WNMU Professor of Biology Manda Jost, Ph.D., and Assistant Professor of Biology Caleb Loughran, Ph.D., give students direct access to coastal ecosystems. During the San Diego trip, students balanced urban car camping at Sweetwater Regional Park in Bonita with biodiversity surveys at Sunset Cliffs, Point Loma, and the intertidal tide pools of La Jolla. The June Marine Biology course marks the return to the exhibitions for the first time since COVID.
“The expeditions can as a professional rite of passage. Long before reaching the coast, students are fully immersed in the logistics of fieldwork, showing up hours in advance to remove van seats, organize field kitchen kits and secure delicate laboratory gear to roof racks. Once on-site, they manage everything from base camp assembly to shared cooking rotations,” Jost said.
A typical day begins at sunrise with an early-morning field session, consisting of tide pooling, swimming, snorkeling, or hiking to collect ecosystem data. Following a midday siesta during peak heat of the day, students transition to afternoon data logging, daily quizzes and lectures, concluding with a second field session at dusk.
To document marine life while snorkeling, students use dive slates — rough plastic boards paired with standard pencils — to sketch the precise body shapes and fin positions of fish for later identification.
“We very quickly create an experience where, if you intend to become a professional biologist, and you’re going on field trips, you have to do these kinds of things,” Jost said. “A van’s not going to pull up and say, ‘Hop in.’ You need to prepare the gear in advance and be part of a team. Once you get out in the middle of nowhere, you can’t just run back and grab something you forgot.”
This year’s San Diego expedition provided a critical, sobering lesson in modern marine ecology. Faculty and students noted a dramatic drop in biological diversity across the intertidal zones compared to previous years. Jost attributed the change directly to El Niño conditions, which raised local water temperatures by at least 5 degrees above normal.
The department plans to integrate these observations into its expanding long-term data sets. Jost noted that a modern course in marine biology must actively focus on how changing oceanic temperatures alter food webs and organism distribution patterns.
The lessons learned in California will be put to the test almost immediately during a four-week course featuring a two-week wilderness camping research expedition to the Gulf of California in Sonora, Mexico.
The Mexico trip offers an intense, remote survival experience. Students must haul all their own water, food, and shade structures to a rugged desert beach located up to two hours from the nearest medical facilities. Faculty leaders are trained Red Cross lifeguards and wilderness first responders to manage the risks of the isolated environment, “student safety is our priority,” Jost said.
“Students have said that this course is simultaneously the hardest thing they’ve ever done, but also the most rewarding thing they’ve ever done as a student,” Jost said. “They come home as field biologists who worked for it.”