Rohan Woods - Day 3

Another bright and sunny day for the students here in New Brunswick.  This morning in the lab the group studied echinoderms, animals with spiny skin, such as sea stars and urchins.  We conducted an experiment to see if the size of the animal affected the rate in which it can flip itself right side up.  The students did great and found that sea stars seems to be faster than urchins.

We were into the theatre for the remainder of the morning to learn about lobsters.  Junior, our demo lobster did a good job representing her species and the students had lots of great questions.  One of the students was blown away by the fact that lobster used to be food fed to prisoners and servants.  He was so shocked!

In the afternoon we headed out to a muddy beach in search of marine worms.  Armed with our buckets and shovels we found blood worms, red-lined worms, acorn worms, opal worms, and bamboo worms.  There were lots of shrieks of shock and excitement when a worm was found and even more shrieks when the blood worms shot out their proboscis.  

Then we moved to the rocky part of the beach to mark the invasive green crab species.  We collected data on this species such as the size and gender.  The students did great and found about 50 crabs.

Experimenting with sea stars.

Wow, sea stars are really acrobatic!

Determining the size of the sea urchin.

Urchin mid-flip.

Up close and personal with a lobster.

Junior

Playing cards while they wait for the girls to be ready.

Colourful boots!

Worm hunt!

Searching through the mud for marine worms.

Looking for piles of worm poop.

Watching a blood worm shoot out its proboscis...cool!

Bucket of worms.

Searching for green crabs.

A marked specimen.