Cal Poly students research the ocean year round, but the Cal Poly Research Pier is only open to the public for one day a year for the pier’s Open House.
On October 10th, the open house presented the works of Cal Poly’s Center for Coastal Marine Sciences while families got tours of the half-mile long pier.
Dr. Nikki Adams, a faculty member for Marine Sciences at Cal Poly, says that outreach to the community is incredibly important and exciting at events like Open House. This year marks the university’s 25th anniversary of acquiring the pier and Adams says she has attended every single open house.
“We feel like we always want to get back to our community, and they see this long pier that they can’t come out to, and a lot of people always ask us, ‘what goes on there?’” Adams said.
The Cal Poly Research Pier was built in 1984 as the Unocal pier and was donated to the university in 2001 for research. The pier contains a classroom, dry lab facility, a second floor conference room, a flowing seawater system, and many more resources.
Through allowing the public to explore the pier, marine science students give the community a taste of the hard work and research completed at the pier. According to Marine Science Senior Olivia Halter, the Cal Poly Pier supports utilizing hands-on practice.
“This is our research vessel here at Cal Poly,” Halter said. “We use it for scientific scuba diving. Lots of our marine science classes get to come out and go fishing and explore the bay, and the wonderful Pacific Ocean that is right in our backyard.”
Students that completed research or are in the process of researching, have the opportunity to present their findings to the community. Inside the pier’s classroom, visitors can view different phytoplankton found in Avila Beach surface waters through microscopes with Dr. Alexis Pasulka.
Isabella Martinez, a fourth year animal science major, works in the PICO lab with Dr. Pasulka enjoyed explaining why they are studying phytoplankton.
“I think it’s just so good to spread awareness and education about what’s going on in our water, and most of the people that come in don’t even know how important phytoplanktons are to our ecosystem and all the marine animals we care about,” Martinez said.
This year’s Cal Poly Pier Open House drew more than 1,000 community members, to which Adams thanks the community.
“To see this many people here is just so gratifying that they appreciate and are interested in what we’re doing,” Adams said. “I think this is gonna be a record attendance for us.”
As the 25th annual event concludes, the Center for Coastal Marine Sciences will continue to research throughout the year for the understanding of our local ecosystem.