Crestwood Preparatory College - 2019

The field season has begun! This weekend we welcomed Grade 11 students from Crestwood Preparatory College in Toronto to the Huntsman campus for an immersive marine biology field course. During their five days in St. Andrews the students are introduced to the diversity of the local marine habitats, animals and seaweeds. All of the introductory time in the field and lab gives the students a foundation of knowledge to complete a behaviour lab. Before leaving the students presented the findings of their experiments. 

Benthic (scallop) drag on the research vessel, the Fundy Spray.

brittle star

blood stars & common sea stars

Hermit crab missing its shell (it picked a new one back in the lab).

A few different species of phytoplankton viewed through the microscope.

A type of zooplankton...perhaps a polychaete larva?

Exploring the intertidal zone at low tide.

The students found lots of sea stars & urchins underneath the rocks.

Behaviour experiments in the lab. Studying osmoregulation in intertidal organisms such as sea stars, green crabs & seaweed.

How does temperature affect the feeding rate of barnacles?

Does size determine the time it takes a sea urchin to flip right side up?

A fun & unexpected find when working in the lab. A toad crab zoea! 40x magnified. 

Searching for invasive green crabs.

Crabs are marked and then data is gathered on the size and gender. Mostly tiny crabs found during this field study.

Making a dichotomous key of seaweeds.