Today we welcomed to the Huntsman campus a group of 10 very excited students from the Triangle 4-H. They started off the day learning about the phytoplankton and zooplankton that make up the base of the marine food web. Using the microscopes the students were able to identify quite a variety of plankton including copepods and many species of phytoplankton. The winner of plankton bingo found 14 different species of plankton…great job!
After a quick lunch and a photo opportunity in front of the big sculpin sculpture the students were back in the lab to work with the live invertebrates. They had a lot of fun touching all of the animals and learning their names. It is hard to tell which was the most popular but I think the sea stars, sea cucumber and the crabs were the top three! The students did some wonderful drawings of the animals, despite the fact that live, moving animals don’t always make great models!
To be able to view some of the larger animals the students toured the aquarium. They really enjoyed the invertebrate and skate touch pools, watching the seals play underwater and seeing all the different species of fish.
To round out the day we headed out to the beach to explore and see what animals we could find hiding under the rocks and seaweed. Just before it was time to head back the students found what they had been looking for, crabs! They must have found 30 or more crabs! Great practice for our big crab hunt tomorrow morning. The only way we could get them off the beach was the promise of going back to the aquarium to watch the seal feeding.
Below are a selection of pictures from today.
Playing plankton bingo...how many can you find?!
Having fun looking at all the invertebrates.
Drawing an anemone.
Studying a sea cucumber under the microscope.
One of the invertebrate models...a spiny sunstar.
And a rock crab.
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