Cristina Veresan
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Plankton Party!

2/6/2015

 
Focusing on Micro Life
Yesterday, all the middle school students had a chance to explore the macro organisms in the coastal habitat of Sandy Beach Park. Today, 6th grade students will turn their attention to the micro creatures floating undetected in the seawater that surrounds us: plankton. Tiny animal plankton (zooplankton) eat plant plankton (phytoplankton) and are eaten by other zooplankton. Some animal plankton (holoplankton) are plankton their whole lives such as copepods and pteropods. Other plankton (meroplankton) are only plankton when they are larvae then develop into adult forms (fish, crabs, oysters, etc...).  
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Mr. Raphael helps prepare slides
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Plankton tow complete!
To obtain the plankton for the lab, I went down to the Ala Wai boat harbor last night and conducted a plankton tow from a dock. I attached a tow line to a plankton net,  a funnel shaped, very fine-meshed net connected to a plastic bottle. When I towed the plankton net through the water for awhile, I got a concentrated sample of plankton in the bottle.  I even shined a flashlight at the opening of the net while it was in the water in order to attract more plankton. Once the bottle was emptied into a bucket of seawater, I was ready for class this morning! 
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Using field guides to identify plankton
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Miss Anuschka of Kahi Kai and her Cell Scopes!
Guest Scientists
I participate in plankton outreach with a local marine education group, Kahi Kai ('one ocean' in Hawaiian), and so Kahi Kai's co-founder and University of Hawai'i scientist Anuschka Faucci helped facilitate today's lab. She brought some novel tools to help us observe and record plankton. These tools for mobile microscopy are called Cell Scopes and were developed by a lab at UC Berkeley. The Cell Scope contains powerful optics and easily connects to an iPhone or iPad in order to document the plankton. Kind of like iMicroscopes! Scientist Raphael Ritson-Williams of Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology's Gates Lab also joined us and assisted students with slide preparation and plankton identification. 
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Recording a tiny Jellyfish with the Cell Scope
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A copepod (top) and a polychaete worm
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A crab larva (zoea)
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A tiny jellyfish pulses into the frame
The Big Picture (of little Plankton)
Students were really excited to use the Cell Scopes to take pictures and video of the plankton. Many students commented that they did not realize there were so many little creatures in ocean water. A few students remarked that they have swallowed seawater and asked: "Have I drank plankton?" We all marveled at the diversity of the unique forms and appendages of the plankton, from the spiky-headed crab larvae to the delicately tentacled jellyfish. "It was surprising that such little creatures can eat, move, and grow just like us!" a student named Jack told me.  Remember, we depend on plankton for about half of the oxygen we breathe and plankton are the base of marine food chains. Our plankton study also relates to our ongoing investigation of climate change, as this global issue threatens these tiny life forms and all the ecosystems they support. 
Mahalo to Mr. Raphael and Miss Anuschka for helping us see the "invisible" world of plankton!
kyler
2/11/2015 03:25:48 am

thank you Ms.V I learned so much at the lab all the plankton were super cool to look at. Mahalo!

Arnold
2/11/2015 03:26:02 am

I wish i was there!!!

BOB
2/11/2015 02:21:51 pm

(HEHE)

Matthew horiuchi
2/11/2015 03:32:53 am

Thank you so much Mrs.V This helped us so much about the studies about phytoplankton and zooplankton. also this field trip was very fun and it helped us learn about living stuff and marine dibrie.

Sam
2/11/2015 04:07:36 am

I remember doing that lab in 6th grade it was so much fun looking at all the creatures in the ocean!!!

Rina
2/11/2015 04:12:56 am

Hi Ms. V!
The plankton lab looked so cool! I remember when we did this in 6th grade but I've never seen a Cell Scope! I also liked the picture of you after you were done with your plankton tow!
:)

Kainalu
2/11/2015 04:16:47 am

OMG! I remember the day we did that! It was So Awesome Ms.V I wish we could have done that again!

Kayla
2/11/2015 04:25:51 am

Ooo I remember doing that! I wish we could of done that again! I hope the 6th grade had fun.

Isabelle G
2/11/2015 07:23:34 am

I remember this lab! it was so much fun!

Ely
2/11/2015 07:26:34 am

I remember doing this lab. I enjoyed looking at planktons in the microscope.

Sydney
2/11/2015 07:30:41 am

I really liked the plankton lab in 6th grade and I remember that we did a little bit in our spare time in 7th grade :)

Akoni
2/11/2015 07:57:20 am

I wish that when we did this we had those awesome "iMicroscopes"!

Lance T.
2/11/2015 08:08:58 am

I remember doing that in 6th grade! It was a blast looking at all the plankton in sea water! Cool stuff!!!

Taylor
2/11/2015 08:18:36 am

I loved doing the plankton lab, it was such a remeberable experience and I hope I can do it again.

RachelSuh
2/11/2015 08:19:01 am

The pictures of cell scope are cool! I really enjoyed doing it when we were in 6th grade

My name Jeff (abner)
2/11/2015 08:19:56 am

Doing this in 6th grade was a blast I hop we do something like this in 7th grade

Lloyd
2/11/2015 09:01:32 am

I really liked finding all the sea creatures in the tide pools

David
2/11/2015 09:02:51 am

Thanks Ms. Veresan for putting me on the page and for all the images along with the Typing that you did for us

Thomas link
2/11/2015 09:08:06 am

Thanks Ms. V I got to see lots of plankton they were very cool

Lloyd
2/11/2015 09:20:20 am

Looking at the ipads and being allowed to bring our phones in class was really fun it was cool to see the jelly fush plankton it was moing a lot i never knew that all animals come from plankton

Jack H
2/11/2015 01:24:30 pm

dis wuz very cool. i wish i could do it again. thx ms.v 4 da awesome experience

Lim
2/11/2015 01:26:56 pm

It's awesome! Thank you for this amazing experience.

Jack H
2/11/2015 01:33:08 pm

I especially liked the part when i found a big crab(or shrimp) larvae

kylee redoble
2/11/2015 02:00:52 pm

thank you for letting us have this wonderful experience about the plankton and it was really cool to see plankton especially the jelly fish one !!!!!!!

JOHN LEE link
2/11/2015 02:20:54 pm

THANK YOU MS. V FOR SPENDING YOUR TIME TO FIND AND SET UP THE PLANKTON SO WE COULD LOOK AT THEM. (OUR GROUP HAD LOTS OG DEAD ONES)

M Dawg (Melia)
2/11/2015 04:10:13 pm

The plankton lab was so cool! I remember doing it and trying to figure out how to adjust the microscope. It was so cool to see what see animals looked like before they actually grew to older creatures. I really miss this and I wish we could go back and do it all over again! Thanks for helping out with all our labs V dawg!

Krista
2/12/2015 09:09:44 am

Thank you Ms.V it was so much fun and I learned a lot about plankton. Thank you!

Harrison
1/6/2020 01:54:34 pm

The species are so unique and the sea lions are so cute! A shout out to Christina to putting in so much effort!

Tiffany
1/6/2020 01:57:16 pm

I really liked the pictures of the animals from the Galapagos.

Dared Yootska Ah Stooka
1/7/2020 02:13:56 pm

I really enjoyed your blog
Nice Job

Dared Yootska Ah Stooka's Brother
1/7/2020 02:15:21 pm

Nice Blog

Dared Yootska Ah Stooka's Sister
1/7/2020 02:16:16 pm

Nice Blog It was great

Dared Yootska Ah Stooka's Cousin
1/7/2020 02:16:48 pm

Epic Blog

Dared Yootska Ah Stooka's Dad
1/7/2020 02:17:17 pm

Your Blog was Awesome

Dared Yootska Ah Stooka's Mom
1/7/2020 02:18:09 pm

Blog=AWESOMENESS

Dared Yootska Ah Stooka's SISTER"S SISTER
1/7/2020 02:40:24 pm

EPIC

yoyoyoyoyoyo
1/7/2020 02:14:07 pm

I wish i was there

Brooks
1/7/2020 02:15:34 pm

That looks so fun! I wish I was there. Hope you had a great time.

jojo seeewa
1/7/2020 02:16:35 pm

that es cool

Pablo
1/7/2020 07:14:39 pm

This blog was amazing!!! Thank you for putting the time and effort into creating this blog. The best parts were definitely seeing all of the reptiles and blue-footed boobies! Most of all I loved seeing the sea lions all over the place, especially when they are in places where you would never expect them to be!😊


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Cristina Veresan
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Science Educator
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