Yesterday the Laval Liberty students finished up the afternoon with a presentation on the aquaculture of Atlantic salmon in our local area. They had a great discussion on the pros and cons of the industry and learned a little bit about the process it takes to grow the salmon that arrive in the grocery store. In the evening the students completed a seaweed lab and learned that lots of their favourite foods including ice cream and coffee cream include seaweed (look for carrageenan on the ingredient list). Yummy, seaweed!
Today the students awoke to a grey and drizzly morning so they donned their rubber boots and raingear to head to Holey Point to gather data on the zonation of the intertidal environment. The students did great counting the animals and seaweeds in their quadrate but they were definitely happy to get back to Anderson House to get warmed up during lunch!
This afternoon the students studied echinoderms (marine animals with spiny skin) in the lab. They focused on the green sea urchin and all of its amazing external anatomy such as the madreporite, tube feet and pedicellariae. After learning how the urchins function the students completed two behaviour experiments. First they flipped the urchins over to see how long it would take them to flip back and then they conducted strength experiments. The strongest urchin could resist about 55 times its weight! Wow, that is an impressive animal! An interesting occurrence for one group was when their urchin began releasing sperm into the water. Not something you see every day!
This evening the students will take the data they gathered during the zonation lab and put it into a poster they will present to the group tomorrow. Tracey and I always find it very interesting to see the themes and artwork the groups come up with to present their data. Some of these posters will eventually end up on the walls of the Huntsman education labs.
Exciting seaweed!
Searching for life during the zonation lab...
...at Holey Point.
The urchin releasing its sperm.
Getting a look at the urchin madreporite up close.
Testing the urchin's strength (at the end the bag was completely full of rocks!).
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