Marine science field trip, 4 nights and 5 days
What it actually looks like
What the children do
A residential marine biology field trip on the BMSC campus. The published price includes accommodation, meals, instructional programming, laboratory and classroom facilities, and educational materials, and the site describes it as an estimated cost per person starting at $1,275. Final pricing is based on group size, accommodation requirements, season, and selected educational activities, and transport to and from Bamfield is not included. Bookings must be in multiples of 12 people to meet Transport Canada vessel capacity rules. This is the only length that can include the Reproduction of Marine Invertebrates lab, where a culture of sea urchin or sand dollar embryos set up on the first day is checked for about ten minutes each following day.
They live on campus for five days and move between the labs, the docks and the shoreline. They fertilise sea urchin eggs on the first day and come back each morning to watch the embryos change, identify seaweeds with a key, and design and run their own experiment with animals from the tanks before presenting what they found. Outside they crew a skiff for oceanography, dredge from the Alta, spend three or four hours in the tide pools at Brady's Beach, walk the rainforest trail, and make prints and cyanotypes from things they collected.
Good to know
Meals are cooked on site and eaten in a peanut free dining hall that handles most dietary needs, everyone sleeps in campus dorms, and there are washrooms and showers on each floor. How many adults have to come, whether chaperones pay the same, step free access and where a bus parks are not written down, and the price is quoted per group, so ask for a written quote before you apply.
Getting there
100 Pachena Rd, Bamfield, British Columbia, Canada, V0R 1B0