Toronto Waldorf School 2019

This week on campus we welcomed Grade 11 students from the Toronto Waldorf School. During this year end trip students are introduced to the local marine environment and the history of St. Andrews by-the-Sea. Below are a selection of photos from their week.

Identifying the creatures collected from the beach at low tide.

Some of the students found a rock gunnel fish!

Drawing a beautiful purple sunstar in the lab.

Boarding the Fundy Spray to collect marine invertebrates, plankton and data on the temperature & salinity of the water.

Safety briefing from Captain Gary before leaving the wharf.

Using fine mesh nets to collect plankton.

The collected plankton.

Studying the plankton in the lab.

View of the phytoplankton at 100x magnified.

Exploring the diversity of animals that live in the sediments on a muddy beach.

The students found many species, including clam worms and blood worms. Both of these worms are predators and have teeth for catching prey!

Searching for the invasive green crab.

Data is collected on the green crab size and gender. In 45 minutes the students found 150 green crabs!

Observing a live sea urchin.

View of the sea urchin under the microscope.

Drawing and labelling the external anatomy of the sea urchin.

Conducting an experiment to see if size affects the time it takes sea stars and urchins to flip right side up. 

Learning about the amazing life cycle of lobsters.

Getting ready to walk across the ocean floor at low tide to tour historic Ministers Island.

Ministers Island was the summer estate of Sir William Van Horne in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He was responsible for the completion of the railway across Canada.

The bathhouse with a beautiful view of the fog over Passamaquoddy Bay. 

A new exhibit this year is Van Horne's model ship collection.

Presentation on marine debris.

Learning to make mats from repurposed fishing rope.

Beautiful mat!

Cutting up herring to feed the animals in the touch tank.

Creating art using lobster bands and shells collected from the beach.

One of the finished art pieces.

Touring the ARC; an ID lab and scientific museum of species from the North Atlantic.

Dragon fish. Many fish in the deep sea have very large teeth.

 

Juvenile blue shark

Deep sea shrimp. To deal with the lack of sunlight in the deep sea animals either have no eyes, tiny eyes or very large eyes.

Porbeagle shark head...did you sign the "kissing" chalkboard?