Marine phylums! And stuff.

A few days ago, we went to the Waipuilani tide pools to check out some marine phyla. We were looking for porifera, echinoderms, arthropods, annelids, nematoda, mollusca, arthropods, platyhlminthes, and chordata.

The question we were asking when we went out to explore the epic tide pools was:

Which marine phyla present in the tide pools of South Maui, and which phyla are most represented in diversity and quantity?

Before I did this experiment, my hypothesis was: “I think we are going to find a lot of specimens from the mollusca group. I also think we will find the most diverse phyla will be echinoderms because South Maui has a lot of sea urchins.

From the data results, I can say that I was correct about which group would be highest in quantity. There were over 1,000 in the mollusca group found, while the second most quantified was the arthropoda with 106 finds. I was incorrect about the echinoderms being the most diverse, however. We didn’t find but one echinoderm in the whole class.

Some possible sources of error we may have encountered were improper counting or estimation. It’s impossible to accurately all the animals you find, especially the pipipi. Another possible source of error is tide. If the tide is higher or lower than it was the day we went, it could produce very different results.

Personally, I didn't like this unit as much as our geocaching one. This one was fun, I mean who wouldn't want to poke around some tide pools and find a whole bunch of snails? No, I mean really, it was fun to explore some new phyla hands on. Not being from Hawaii, I could never see these creatures in their natural habitat and I thought it was a great experience for everyone. (except for the poor creatures of course) I'm not a fan of doing these lab write ups, though. That part was not fun.

An extremely angry crab

If you look really hard, maybe you'll see something cool...