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WHEN YOU VISIT THE MONTEREY BAY shoreline, you may come upon someone standing beside a pair of binoculars mounted on a tripod. If this person is wearing a royal blue jacket with "Bay Net" emblazoned on it, you have sighted a docent, trained and ready to answer your questions and point out plants, animals, and natural features of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
Docents used to be found mainly in museums, but their range has been expanding to shorelines and wildlife preserves, where they serve as goodwill ambassadors and interpreters, eager to engage visitors in conversations that will acquaint them with wild creatures and their habitats.
Since Bay Net was founded in 1995 by the Center for Marine Conservation, 127 volunteers have been trained and fielded in the Monterey area, and 90 of them are still at work, testimony to the program's appeal and success. They worked only along Monterey Bay until last autumn, when the program expanded to Piedras Blancas. The long-range goal, according to Bay Net program manager Rachel Saunders, is to extend a network of volunteers along the entire Sanctuary, from Rocky Point in the Marin Headlands to Cambria in San Luis Obispo County.
To become docents, volunteers take 40 hours of training in both field and classroom, and pledge to spend 100 to 150 hours on duty within a year. Field training begins in the coastal dunes and moves toward the ocean, introducing the various habitats and their particular species of plants and animals and explaining their interactions and the threats to their survival. These themes are explored further in the classroom, along with techniques for relating to people in ways that may educate and inspire them. Volunteers come from diverse occupations and backgrounds, and lately have included increasing numbers of couples and parent-child teams. Training sessions are planned in San Luis Obispo and Santa Cruz this spring. 
To learn more, contact the Center for Marine Conservation, 801 Lighthouse Avenue, Suite 108, Monterey, CA 93940; phone (408) 375-4509 or (408) 373-6396; web site: http://www.mbay.net/~baynet.
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