Dr. Judith Pederson (Judy), Director of the MIT Sea Grant Center for Coastal Resources, started us off this morning with an overview of marine invasive species issues in the Gulf of Maine. She gave us some biological background, invasion histories, some of the ecological and economic impacts of a group of particularly pernicious invaders, and key characteristics to watch out for during our observation activity and intertidal investigation.
We learned about the marine invasive rapid assessment surveys that Judy has been organizing for the past several years throughout New England, and she showed us the MIT Sea Grant Marine Invasive Species Web Pages where we can post information and photos of our observations to help scientists track the presence of marine invaders in Maine.
Next, we used the Look More Closely Activity to investigate our classroom tank of marine critters. They’d been waiting patiently all week for some attention, and we gave them a thorough examination! We did a gallery walk after we finished our individual observations to learn from each others’ hypotheses, drawings, and microscopy investigations.
At high noon....
....we visited the floating dock, and Judy led us in a mini rapid assessment of the fouling communities on the side. We found tons of critters (plant, animal, and in-between) after just a couple minutes of searching! We looked quickly at UNH Professor Dr. Larry Harris’ fouling plates, without disturbing them, just to see an example of something we could try with our students.
The Intertidal Quadrat Surveys were the culminating activity of the day. We tested our hypotheses about the marine intertidal communities next to the Darling Center dock, by searching for three animal and plant specimens in low, mid, and high intertidal quadrats. Several members of the Apple, StudyWiz, and the MLTI teams joined us to learn about how we were using their software to enter our data into the Apple Noteshare program.
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