Today we had the pleasure of working with the students from the Riverdale School from Northampton. Throughout the day all of the students toured the aquarium, viewed Snorkel and Loki having their breakfast, learned about lobsters and tides, and spent some time in our new lab.
I started the day with the youngest students. We had fun observing all of the different fish species that live in the aquarium while learning about camouflage. The students really liked the skates that camouflage by burying themselves in the sand and the sea raven that has fleshy tabs on its face to hide in the seaweed.
After we all had a beautiful lunch outside in the sun I was joined in the lab by the grade 7-9 students. They enjoyed naming their sea stars and urchins while coaching them to flip over (I think Puffball the urchin was the most interesting name choice of the day!). The students were testing if the diameter of the animal affects how quickly it can right itself. Some of the sea stars and urchins were really fast taking less than a minute to flip, while there were also a couple of stars that were in a race to see which one was slower; the slowest taking over 20 minutes to flip!
The last activity of the day for the grade 10-12 students was playing a game of plankton bingo in the lab. The competition was pretty brisk with quite a few students seeing at least 10 different species of plankton in their drop of water, while the winner spotting 19! I think he was very happy to get a sticker for his prize!
Thank you to all of the Riverdale students, teachers and chaperones for a wonderful day. We hope you enjoyed your day at the Fundy Discovery Aquarium!
Sturgeon
Snorkel and Loki had lots of observers for their breakfast.
Isn't it amazing what lives in one drop of water?!
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