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.