Summer Tech Field Notes – Summer Camp!
This is the third installment in our Summer Tech Field Notes series! Follow along with Ayla King, our Environmental Technician, as she assists the field team with restoration & monitoring – and sometimes helps out with summer camps!
July 27, 2026
By Ayla King
Over the past two weeks, I had the chance to join a couple of Project Watershed’s Summer Camps, including Estuary Day and Bug Day—and wow, what a fun couple of days! It was so much fun to spend time exploring our local ecosystems with the campers and seeing their curiosity and excitement firsthand.
For Estuary Day, we spent the morning learning all about our local watersheds and the impacts of pollution. One of my favourite activities was watching the campers create their own interpretations of a watershed. Their creations sparked some great conversations about what lives in our local creeks and rivers and how we can help care for these ecosystems. In the afternoon, we took off our boots and headed out to explore the Comox estuary! Running around in the mud with the campers was such a freeing and fun experience. Seeing the kid’s curiosity and excitement really reminded me of why I chose to follow the environmental path and I absolutely loved it!
The following week, I got to join Bug Day—and what a day that was! We started the morning learning about our local bees, and it turns out I had a lot to learn. Our incredible camp leader gave us a fascinating introduction to identifying different bees, and I learned that there are around 140 species of bees on Vancouver Island and more than 500 species across BC. How cool is that?! In the afternoon, we spent some time with the campers removing invasive tansy before turning our attention to the aquatic bugs that call our local waterways home. The campers were given samples collected by our camp leader and encouraged to carefully search through them for tiny aquatic critters, which we then identified together.
Getting to spend these two days learning and playing alongside our campers was such a joy and a great reminder of the incredible species, big and small, that can be found right in our own backyards. It was also a great reminder that you are never too old to kick off your boots and run barefoot through the mud!