Introduction

Rapid decline of biodiversity has initiated conservation efforts to protect endangered populations, and diversity as a whole.  Protection of land, however, has some competing interests and must be planned rationally with data and clear outcomes to strive for (Cabeza et al., 2010).  The first step in this planning process is to provide quantitative estimates of biodiversity (Margules et al., 2000), one important aspect of which is determining population size trends though time.  This can also serve as a goal of conservation efforts if the species has a downward trend through time, with the goal being stabilization of population size.  For species that are not endangered, population dynamics studies can still be useful as a tool for guiding other conservation efforts.

The turban sea snail is a gastropod inhabiting the rocky intertidal zone from Vancouver Island to Baja California (Walker and Carlton 1994; Morris et al., 1980).  The population of turban sea snail is densely populated in these tide pool areas, so finding a method of estimating the population size is necessary to observing dynamic trends though time.  Though not considered to be an endangered population, sampling populations such as these could aid in other conservation efforts, such as a new field of ecological engineering.  A perfect example is shown by Firth et al., 2014, where measurements of population dynamics in different intertidal environments were used to promote the use of barricades and barriers made of natural rock simulating material (Firth et al., 2014; Chapman and Blockley, 2009; Browne and Chapman, 2011, 2014; Chapman and Underwood, 2011).    Our study will look to provide a robust population estimate with narrow confidence intervals, and compare the population size of tegula funebralis over a 2-week time period in the rocky intertidal zone near Morro rock utilizing area based sampling methods.