While the gents at Deep Sea News get time on some of the best manned and remotely operated vehicles out there, the rest of us don’t have to sit it completely out. I think some time this winter Tammy and Johann and I will build a homebrew ROV to explore some of the local shores. Maybe we can find some of the stomatopods that live in the Mystic estuary for a test cruise.
Mantis Shrimp (Squilla empusa)
Originally uploaded by Littoraria.
I knew it would happen sooner or later, and truth to tell I wasn’t hiding it, I just wasn’t advertising it. Yet, they have found me out!
My first clue was when a certain picture showed up on the staff and students page for a lab, for which I am doing a summer internship that is turning into a longer term project. Hopefully, I can do some research at the lab as well. I would love to do a bit of research on survivability and development of larvae under severe conditions.
The professor is also my adviser, so when I saw him on Monday, I was a little bit nervous that the web site, or certain components of it, might be an issue. Fortunately, it isn’t an issue and he’s even linking it under my bio on the web page.
At the same time, Rick MacPherson, the Director of Conservation Programs for the Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL), has included The Other 95% in a salute to great ocean blogs. I have some serious respect for CORAL and the work they have done all over the world, genuinely making it happen, and Rick’s Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice and Sunset is one of my regular reads, especially the awesome That’s A Moray Monday series.
His list had some new sites for me, especially the international ones. If you’re at all interested in ocean science an conservation it is a highly recommended starting point for your cyber classroom and adventures.
Well if you know me, you know blue is my favorite color.
Any shade of blue indigo, the blues of Tammy and Johann’s eyes, and the many shades of the ocean.
Today the Carnival of the Blue #13 was put up at Blogfish, including two of my posts from The Other 95%.
So what is the Carnival of the Blue?
Well in the words of the Carnival Master of Ceremonies Mark Powell (Scientist, conservationist, the author of Blogfish, and in an odd twist, a former Avery Point Professor):
Carnival of the blue is meant to provide a community for ocean-related blogging and bloggers… [Where] ocean bloggers and readers will gather at the traveling carnival and share insights with each other and the wider world.
It is a monthly roundup of the best stories and writings by bloggers with a focus on the ocean and life within it. A year ago on World Ocean Day, June 8th, Blogfish hosted the inaugural edition of the carnival. Since then it has been to many of the top ocean blogs including many of my (almost) daily reads. Now as World Ocean Day approaches again, the 13th edition has gone up with 35 entries from 25 sites. My favorites are Craig MacLean’s story from Te Papa’s colossal squid dissection, a knit wolf fish (still trying to convince Tammy to knit the bone eating worms) and the wealth of sustainable seafood entries.
Yeah, no direct links… but if you go to the Carnival at Blogfish you can access all the Blue links you need to truly get your blue on…
This winter has been the season for learning about Antarctica.
Early this winter Johann’s great-grandfather went on a cruise around South America. At home we tracked the voyage on our big wall map and talked about some of the sights, cultures and especially animals we would encounter if we went to those locations. While his girlfriend was visiting some of the South Atlantic Islands, Great Grandpa took a flight over the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic Peninsula. We are still awaiting a report from him on what he saw, but we tracked the probable flight path and talked about Austral Summer, the long sunsets and sunrises and non-existent nights.
Now one of the professors from Avery Point, Dr. Patricia Kremer, is in Antarctica aboard a research vessel to investigate salps. Johann met Dr. Kremer during the day long Festival by the Sea at Avery Point. She was in one of the labs giving demonstrations of ctenophore bioluminescence. Johann surprised her when he knew not only what they were (common name is comb jellies), but also knew that they luminesed when disturbed. He told her about the experiment he performed, and had questions for her about the parasitic worms we found in about half of the ones in our experiment. (He also loved petting the Lion’s Mane Jelly that one of the Graduate students had on display in that lab).
Dr. Kremer is co-principle investigator for Dive and Discover’s Expedition 10 to Antarctica to study salps and their role in the changing trophic system of the Southern Sea. Dive and Discover is a program operated out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The Dive and Discover website has information and educational resources online for all ten of their expeditions (since 2000) and is an excellent resource for teachers and home schoolers as well as anyone who just wants to learn more about the oceans. In many ways similar to Ballard’s Jason Project, only a bit more focused on oceanographic topics. Johann has insisted that we spend time going through all of the expeditions after the current one is done. The team on the expedition puts up daily updates, slide shows, a critter of the day and interviews of personnel on the site, along with the current weather and ocean conditions. Johann was really excited to see Dr. Patricia as the first interviewee.
The program also allows classes and individuals to ask the scientists and crew questions by email. We told Johann about it and suggested that he think about what he would want to ask the scientists. Naturally he focused on the animals. He dictated his email to me and we sent off two questions:
Do salps have parasites like the comb jellies in Mystic?
Are there any penguins around the polar station?
Last night we got a reply from Dr. Larry Madin, the Chief Scientist and co-principle investigator of the expedition. Johann was very excited to get a reply from Antarctica (Penguin Post, we called it.) Dr. Madin informed him that salps do indeed have parasitic amphipods that affect them, and that there were Adelie penguins around Palmer Station, including a nearby rookerie that they visited.
We continue to make the expedition a daily part of school here. Checking first the daily update, tracking the expidition’s location on the map and comparing the weather there with the weather here. We also take a look at the slide show, “Dive Deeper” and the “Critter of the Day”. The critter of the day invariably leads us to our books to find out more about the critter. One of the highlighted critters — a copepod — led to us doing a predator/prey experiment. Afterward we both were running around the house as copepods trying to catch a variety of food items, including Tammy, who we “captured” by tickling with our maxillipeds (specially adapted appendages near the mouth for gathering food). It’s a game we’ve played before, but whenever copepods come up, it always leads to either that game or an often humorous discussion of the importance of copepod poop.
Eric and I both love science. Johann has the same innate ability and curiosity and has picked up the bug of enthusiasm from us. It’s good that he is advanced in math and science, but it sometimes makes him a handful, just like we were. We are always searching for new material to keep his mind occupied. Or as I like to say: he needs a lot of brain food. Homeschooling gives us the flexibility we need to continually challenge him. I still can’t believe there is no science in the Connecticut public school curriculum until the 4th grade.
Even if we weren’t homeschooling Johann, we would still do all the science activities we do, because we have so much fun doing these experiments together. We got an ant farm this past summer and conducted some ant behavior experiments. We raised butterflies again. I’ve taken Johann on countless nature walks. We often collect treasures off the ground, but at the same time, we are always observing. Eric took Johann outside to track animals around the building and found the footprints of cats, a deer, a skunk and a few rabbits. We made a marble contraption that goes around the apartment and tested which marbles go faster through the tubing and why. Johann learned more physics from the pulley system we set up from the ceiling and the cable car kit we had on the railing.
During an evening walk by the river, we noticed something bioluminescing in the water. Johann wondered what was producing the light. We thought about what animals we know live in the water there and which ones were capable of bioluminescence. Johann guessed it might be the comb jellies (Mnemiopsis leidyi). So Eric and Johann collected comb jellies near the local marina, brought them home in a bucket and we conducted an experiment based on the hypothesis that these critters were the ones bioluminescing in the river at night. We guided Johann through the experiment and figured out how and why they were bioluminescing. While we walked back to the marina to release the comb jellies, we walked him through the scientific process and he even wrote a summary report of his findings. We had him draw pictures of everything we did. When we can we like to allow him to learn the answers on his own, rather than just give him the answers.
After Eric learns something in oceanography or biology that we can boil down for Johann, we find a way to turn it into a family outing or an experiment at home. Johann discovered Eric’s litmus paper and wondered what it was for. Eric explained what he was using it for at school. The obvious question was, “What is pH?” Eric defined pH as measuring how acidic or alkaline something was. “What is acidic? What is alkaline?” I suggested we relate it to liquids Johann knows well: orange juice and milk. So we tested those two liquids and compared them. Of course Johann was curious about other liquids. What would they do? Next thing I knew, we were testing every liquid in the refrigerator and the pantry to measure their pH. Another day we tested our rain water and compared it to tap water and filtered water. We talked about why our rain water was so acidic (pollution).
We all went to Ender’s Island with a seine and conducted our own population count of the fish there in the shallows. We had a wonderful day at the beach and learned even more about the animals that live along that protected area. Eric’s day long field trip collecting data on the tidal levels of the Sound became bathtime fun with a contraption Eric made out of PVC pipe, a cork and a skewer. We measured the change in the level of the bathwater using Eric’s homemade tool when Johann stood in the water, versus when he sat in the water. Then we took measurements with Eric in the water. Then with both of them in the water. Eric used that demonstration to explain what he had done on his field trip and why collecting that data was important and how the scientists use the information.
Johann and I made ice cube castles using salt to hold the cubes together and later watched which ice cubes melted faster: the one in the bowl with the salt, the one by itself, the one wrapped in aluminum foil or the one wrapped in plastic wrap so that we could study the effects of salt and insulators on ice. With the melting ice cubes experiment we graphed our results. We froze one bottle of colored water and kept one at room temperature to illustrate how water expands when it freezes. Eric and Johann weighed bottles of cold and frozen water and compared them to the weight of a bottle of room temperature water. Eric and Johann did some water density experiments during bathtime with bottles of water, salt water, soda and diet soda, observing which ones sank and why. Eric put baking soda into the bottom of a tall glass, added vinegar and then poured out the carbon dioxide to put out a candle flame. We put baking soda into a balloon and put it over a plastic bottle with vinegar in it. After we shook the baking soda into the bottle, the balloon filled with the carbon dioxide that was produced. Johann loved those last two experiments so much that we did them multiple times.
One day another issue of Zoobooks magazine about bears came. Johann wondered how fast other animals run in comparison to a bear. Eric went to Google and found all the stats on the animals Johann wanted to know about. Then they created a bar graph that Johann colored in so he could clearly see which animals are the fastest and by how much. Our upstairs neighbor, who studied science in college, told us about an experiment his dad did with him when he was little. We made a little boat out of half a cork, some toothpicks and a birthday candle. That was placed in a bowl full of water. We lit the candle and put a short glass over the boat slightly into the water. It was fascinating to watch the water rise inside the glass as the flame burned up the oxygen. When the candle went out we had created a vacuum. Johann loved the suction sound as we took the glass back out of the water. We did that experiment at least 6 times before he was satisfied.
Our upstairs neighbor came down to hang out with us one afternoon. We showed him some of the science experiments we had been doing and Johann’s wooden dominoes toy that we got as an extension of the marble contraption. He jumped right in and played with us for a couple of hours. He said he’s never seen a kid as turned on to science as Johann is and he loves coming over because we always have something science-related going on. Our home was dubbed “The House of Fun” by our friend that day. While we are homeschooling we want to continue to keep science accessible, fun and magical. I overheard someone complain that our society isn’t producing any more Einsteins or Monets anymore and why was that? How can we if our public education system crushes the kids who are advanced, curious and always questioning? Those are the ones who might have been the next Einstein or Monet. Johann has said many times he wants to become a scientist when he grows up. What his focus will be changes, but he always wants to be some kind of scientist. We intend to keep it that way. And how could we not? After all, this is the House of Fun!
Shove Off!
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.
A juvenile common tern coming in for a landing on a small rock in the sound, forcing the adult that was occupying the rock off to find a new place to perch.
I spent an hour or so on one of the beaches down in Waterford the other day (the same place and day that the Mystic Whaler shot was taken). I just watched the sound and the shore birds along some of the rocks and jetties. The funny thing about many of these birds is that they see a place where another bird is “perched” and decide that it’s a nice spot to stop. Not that the rock itself is a nice spot - whether the rock is 20 square feet or a half a square foot - no, they decide to land in the exact couple of inches as one of the other birds.
The rock in this photo also was the site of this type of musical chairs game. Over the course of the hour I was there it must have been the temporary perch to at least 30 birds. Some left of their own accord to fly further down the beach, but most, like the adult in the photo, were “pushed” off by another bird landing. I watched cormarants, gulls and terns all displace each other, and even one female duck. It is often comical, especially if the “pushed off” one circles round and reclaims his spot. I watched one pair of cormorants (both juvenile double cresteds) play musical chairs like this with each other repeatedly on a piling in the Mystic estuary. They switched places about 10 times over the course of a 10-15 minute period.
Classroom at the Beach
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.
Johann is having an impromptu Shanti School (the name he has given our home school) class at the beach. Here he is talking to Tammy and another regular at the Enders Island beach. They had a good 15 minute long discussion about the food web of the ocean and the sound in particular. Together they collected crabs, shrimp, snails and a few small fish fry from around the seaweed clumps.
One of the nice things about Shanti School is tht it is everywhere. It doesn’t stop because we aren’t in our “school room” and while there are regular lessons now, we still have pick-up lessons when Johann shows interest in a subject or item. The lady in the picture above was impressed, because Johann knew that Green crabs were an invasive species from Europe, and that he even could describe how they migrated to our coasts. She said most locals (she’s from Stonington which you can see in the distance in the picture) don’t know that unless they’re fishermen. It was great talking to her for all of us. More confirmation that what we are doing for Johann is not holding him back, but helping him.
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