West Carleton, Sir Robert Borden & Earl of March Schools - 2019

This week on campus we had Grade 11 & 12 students from West Carleton, Sir Robert Borden & Earl of March Schools from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. We were very happy to welcome students from Sir Robert Borden High School for the first time!

The students were introduced to the diversity of the marine environment through the collection of live specimens in different habitats and observations in the lab. We were based in St. Andrews, with an overnight trip to Grand Manan Island. Below are some photos from our week. 

Research cruise on the Fundy Spray to collect live specimens and oceanographic data.

Gathering benthic invertebrates.

 

Sea stars and blood stars!

Counting and recording what we collected.

How do you tell the gender of a scallop? Female gonads are orange, males are white.

We caught a glimpse of the replica Santa Maria that was in port.

Plankton collected while on the boat.

Identifying and drawing plankton in the lab.

View of phytoplankton through the microscope at 100x magnification.

View at 40x magnification. In this view is copepods and also a brittle star larva. 

Beautiful day to head to Grand Manan Island on the ferry. The ferry is 1.5 hours.

Swallowtail Lighthouse greets us on the island. Students visited this lighthouse, which has been recently restored.

While whale watching we got to see the abandoned Gannet Rock Lighthouse. There were lots of seals in the water and on the seaweed! 

Lobster fishing 101 with Captain Peter.

Traps being prepared for the upcoming lobster season.

Creating a dichotomous key of seaweeds collected from the shore.

There was a competition to find the longest seaweed with the holdfast, stipe and blade.

Visiting the museum at the Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station. Baleen whale jaw bones at the entrance.

Grey seal skeleton in the museum.

Humpback whale flipper bones.

Nice view of a herring weir as we departed the island.

Invertebrate classification lab using the live animals the students collected.

Presentation on the life cycle of a lobster.

Behaviour experiment: the effect of temperature on the feeding rate of barnacles.

Testing the strength of different echinoderms, including this sunstar.

Does size affect the flipping rate of sea urchins?

Bell ringer quiz to see how much they remember from the week.