Kealia Pond!

Kealia Pond Fun!

Introduction:

Kealia Pond National Wildlife Reserve is home to endangered species. The water in the pond is brackish because it is connected to the ocean. In the summer the water line shrinks and leaves a salt mark. Thus, Kealia Pond means “the salt-encrusted place”. The endangered birds, the Hawaiian Stilt and the Hawaiian Coot, nest in the plants when the water is low. California Bulrush is overtaking and killing those plants. If this goes on, the endangered birds will be extinct. California Bulrush spreads very easily by the seed pods on the top of the plant. The wind carries them all around. This study is significant to science because it helps us to know how to get rid of this plant everywhere. It will also help the birds to thrive which will in turn bring tourism to Kealia Pond.

California Bulrush

Kealia Pond Site

Full Picture of Keaila Pond

Our Study:

Our study was located at Kealia Pond. We were trying to see how we could get rid of the California Bulrush that invaded the area. There were three methods we used to try to do this. The first on was cut. We cut the plant just below the water line. The second method was spray. They sprayed the test area with herbicide. Then the third method was cut and spray. We cut the plants in our area to about our knee height and then sprayed it with the herbicide. We also had a control plot to determine the results of the study. Here are graphs of the results of the height of the plants and the density.

Conclusion:

We went back to Kealia Pond about two weeks later and found out that most all of the methods were successful. The cut method killed about half of the plants in the plot. The spray method killed almost all of the plants and the cut an spray method killed about a quarter of the plot. In my opinion, the spray method worked the best, but you still have to pull those plants out. If you do not want to do that, cut and spray would be best.

Hawaiian Stilt

Cutting

Cailtin With the Clippings

Hawaiian Coot

REEF Survey

REEF's mission is to conserve marine ecosystems by educating divers and letting them do the surveys. This helps REEF to keep good records of the fish abundance and variety in certain areas around the world.
For outdoor science, we went to a fishpond near our school to do an abundance and variety of fish survey there. The area that we swam in was inside the actual fishpond. We used masks and we swam all around in the water and looked for fish. The plan was to record the fish that we saw and then send that form into REEF.
When we got there and in the very cold water, the water was all murky and disgusting. We did not see any fish, partly because the visibility or turbidity was very low. The mud on the fishpond floor was sticky and gross. I think that the reason for all of these bad results was that there had been a big storm a few months ago that brought a lot of sediment into the fishpond and stirred up the water in it. Some say that before the storm that there was a lot of fish that lived in the fishpond. I don't think that it would be a nice place to live anymore. The fact that we saw no fish shows to REEF that this area has had a decrease in the fish population and needs help in restoring it.
For more information about REEF, please visit http://www.reef.org/

Fishpond Fun!

Loko Kuapa




What is the cultural significance of the loko kuapa?



It was used to get food (fish) for the Hawaiians to eat. The women had very little to do with this fish pond. They could only pick the limu(seaweed) or the algae. The men worked on this fishpond. The men built and harvested this pond. The Loko Kuapas were designed well, because they made the harvesting easy. The pond was made with an opening in the wall that held a gate. The openings in the gate were just big enough so that juvenile fish could enter. Then the Hawaiians would feed the fish a lot of food, and when the fish would try to leave the pond they were to fat to fit though the gate. These types of fishponds were found along the shoreline. They were part of the kai fishponds.


What types of species live in the Loko Kuapa?



Five of the Species that are in this fishpond are:


The Porphyra Algae-

Aholehole-

'Ama'ama-








Moi-

Papio-











Here is a food web of the species mentioned above:

What is the Loko Kuapa made of and how is it made?


The Loko Kuapa is literally translated as a walled pond, so it has a wall around the perimeter of the pond. The wall is made out of basalt, coral, and coraline algae that is used for cement. There is a makaha or gate that allows the small juvenile fish to get through but when they eat and grow they are too big to go through the gate back to the open ocean. The wall was built very level so that access to the makaha was very easy. The wall also allowed the water to circulate throughout the pond. The pond had sea water coming in through the gate and fresh water coming from a stream so that this brackish water was made. It took about three years to build this fishpond.


Here is a picture of a hand made model that we made of the Loko Kuapa:

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: