Intertidal Lab

Intertidal Lab

Introduction:

The intertidal zones are very important for us today. The creatures that live in the zones there provide food for other fish in the ocean. It also gives baby critters a place to grow up, before they head out to the open ocean. There are 5 zones in the intertidal zones. The first one is the splash zone. This is the uppermost part of the beach. The next one is the upper-intertidal zone. This zone is still on land except at high tide. Next, we have the lower-intertidal zone, which is only exposed at extreme low tide. The next zone is the tide pool zone, which is has permanent collections of water. The last zone is the sub-tidal zone and it is always submerged in water. Life in the intertidal zones is a hard one. You would have to very adaptable to whatever may come your way. The temperature changes a lot, and the salinity of the water is very unpredictable. Some critters need to hold water within them, so that when the tide goes out, they still have water with them.


Research:


Procedure:

1. Create a question.
2. Gather materials needed(quadrat, refractometer, thermometer, net, notebook, pen)
3. Go to Waipuilani tide pools.
4. Find a testing area for area 1.
5. Put quadrat on the tidepool portion of area 1.
6. Count the number of crabs you see.
7. Take the temperature and salinity.
8. Record data.
9. Repeat steps 5-8 for lower intertidal zone.
10. Repeat steps 5-8 for upper intertidal zone.
11. Repeat steps 4-10 for next 2 areas.
12. Clean up all materials used.


Results:

In our study we were trying to see where the most amount of crabs were. The areas for examination were the tide pools, the lower intertidal zone and the upper intertidal zone. We found out that there are more crabs in the tide pools zone. The average number of crabs in the tide pools is 2.34 crabs. The average number of crabs we saw in the lower intertidal zone is 2 crabs, and the average number of crabs we counted in the upper intertidal zone is .34 crabs.


Here are a few pictures of our study:

This picture show us walking to the testing area at the tide pools.

This is one of the hermit crabs that we counted in our study.

Here we are testing and counting how many crabs there are in each segment.

Here is one of the crabs that we found. He was one of the coolest ones we saw.

Here are graphs that show the number of crabs we found in the tide pools, lower-intertidal, and upper-intertidal zones:

This graph show how many crabs were in each segment of area 1.

This graph show how many crabs were in each segment of area 2.

This graph show how many crabs were in each segment of area 3.

Plankton!

Plankton Mania!!!

Introduction:
Plankton is defined as organisms that cannot swim against the current. They have to drift along with the current. You may ask, Why is plankton so important? The reason is that if we didn't have them, we wouldn't have anything else in the ocean. Phytoplankton (plant plankton) is at the bottom of the food chain (or web). The phytoplankton gets it's energy from sunlight. So when other plankton and fish eat the phytoplankton they get their energy from it and so on. Now the zooplankton eat the phytoplankton. Other fish and sea creatures eat the zooplankton and that is why it is so important for us today because it lets us eat the things we do such as fish. The reason why we studied it was because it is so important to know what is all around us in the ocean.

Research:

Procedure:

1-Gather materials needed for this project such as; a refractometer, turbidity tube, digital thermometer, water bottle, microscope , plankton net, pipette, Petri dish with a grid , detain.

2-Go to your sample site, we went to the Kihei boat ramp.

3-Put your plankton net into the water and drag it through the water. Put that sample into a bottle.

4-Now take the refractometer and place 2 drops of water from testing area of the refractometer, put the plastic layer over the water and point towards the sun. Record data.

5-Take the turbidity tube and go to sample area. Fill with water and look through it until you can see the secchi disc. Record data.

6-Take the digital thermometer and put it into the water and then pull it out. Record the data in Celsius form.

7-Go back to the lab and examine your sample in a grid pitri dish and add detain, then view it under microscope with the pro scope technology and record the amount of plankton for both testing grounds.

8-For individual plankton you see that are moving too quickly, remove with pipette and put in individual container, view under compound microscope and record data.

9-Put all used material away.

We went to Kihei Boat Ramp and had a sample from Ho'okipa. Once we were there we did what the procedure above has said. We took samples and went back to school and examined the plankton.

Results:
The average number of plankton we found was 20. We took samples of each location (Kihei Boat Ramp and Ho’okipa) and counted the number of plankton in each sample. We found 19 plankton in the Kihei boat ramp sample and found 21 plankton in the Ho’okipa sample.

Here are some pictures of the plankton that we saw:

This is a copepod that we found.

I don't really know what this is but it's a really cool plankton.

Here are two more copepods that we found.

Here is a graph of what we found: