One of the activities that we do with every school group participating in a Huntsman field course is a plankton lab. This lab allows students to gain an understanding of the base of the marine food chain and to learn how to use compound microscopes. Students are given some introductory information about plankton, i.e. they are drifters in the ocean, there are two types of plankton, phytoplankton the plants and zooplankton the animals. After the introduction the students use the microscopes to view the plankton they collected while on our research vessel. Depending on the age and focus of the students they will either play plankton bingo (and win marine stickers!) or draw the plankton they are viewing. This lab allows students to view a world most of them didn’t even know existed.
An interesting fact that usually blows students away: phytoplankton produce 65-75% of the world’s oxygen!
Our plankton samples.
Observing the samples in the lab.
View through the microscope.
A copepod
Our mascot in the lab
