Today I caught the ferry at Letete and headed to Deer Island to visit the grade 5/6 students to complete their Ocean Discovery Program. It was a pleasant crossing and I arrived at the school to a group of 10 students eager and excited to see what I had brought with me!
The students thoroughly enjoyed the flipping experiment with the sea stars and urchins. Most of the animals flipped pretty quickly but our largest urchin took almost 20 minutes to flip over! Even the teacher had fun, admitting that she had never seen a live urchin before today. The students learned that sea stars and urchins are echinoderms, which means they have ‘spiny skin’ and that flipping is automatic as these animals have no brain. The students finished their follow-up learning about the pros and cons of different technologies used to study the ocean.
Check out the pictures and videos below of the Deer Island students’ sea stars and urchins in action.
For more information on The Grade 6 Ocean Discovery Program visit our website, www.huntsmanmarine.ca/html/grade_6.html.
An urchin completing its flip.
Almost over!
Urchin with its soft tube feet extended.
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