Plankton

Introduction to Marine Plankton

When you think of plankton, you may think of tiny little creatures in the ocean or a mean, one eyed organism always trying to steal a secret recipe. Either way, neither is 100% accurate. Plankton are any organism that moves with (not against) ocean currents. They either don't possess the ability to move or it's so limited they are still carried around. Plankton comes from the Greek planktos, which means 'wanderer' or 'drifting'. Plankton can either be tiny microbes or meters long. (Like a jellyfish)

Question: How many different species of plankton will we find in the Kihei Boat Ramp?

Hypothesis: I think we will be able to identify/distinguish 5-10 different types of plankton in one sample.

Materials: Nets, journals, oxygen tester, pH tester, thermometer, phospate tester, and nitrate tester. And of course, your brain.

Procedure:(Collecting plankton and testing water)
1. Grab the needed kits to test the water. Since I personally tested the nitrates, I will explain how to do that.
2. Fill the pipette up with water
3. Fill the container with the water to the needed volume. It will specify how much depending on your jar.
4. Add a 'nitrate pill' to the water, shake it.
5. Add another 'nitrate pill', shake until it dissolves completely.
6. Wait two minutes
7. After two minutes, compare the color of water to the chart you are given.

Procedure:(Viewing and observing plankton - proscope)
1. When using the proscope, grab a petri dish and add the water until it covers the whole dish.
2. Add some of the gooey stuff (scientific name coming later) so the plankton don't squirm around too much.
3. Hook the proscope up to the USB port on the computer and lower the lense into petri dish until submerged and focused. The critters will be on the screen swimming around.

Procedure: (Viewing and observing plankton - microscope)
1. Take the pipette and insert a few drops into each microscope slide.
2. Add gooey stuff.
3. Plug microscope into wall and put the dish under the lense.
4. Focus and look through lense - there should be plankton swimming around.

Data:

Wind-
Weather-
Wave action-
Temperature- 25.2 degrees Celsius
pH- 8.4
Tide- Low
Salinity- 21%
Dissolved oxygen- 2
Nitrates- 1
Phospates- 1
Turbidity- 0JTU

Plankton data: I saw over 5 different types of plankton, but less than 10. I only identified two.

Conclusion: I asked how many different species we would find at the Kihei Boat Ramp. My hypothesis was we could be able to identify and distinguish 5-10 different types of plankton. Although I did not identify but two of the plankton, I saw 5 different types of plankton. My hypothesis was correct.

Possible sources of error: It's possible we didn't see a certain species of plankton that we caught or did not identify them correctly.

Beach Profiling

Beach profiling is measuring a beaches sand and observing it's structure, such as the dunes and crevices in the sand. Ideally, you would want to start at the top of the beach and work your way down to the 'foot' where the sand makes a sudden drop off.

What affects a beaches profile? There are a lot of things that can contribute to it. Erosion can play a huge part in beach profiling. Another thing that can mean the difference between lots of sand and very little is the amount of dunes and vegetation to support it. The more plants you have, the more likely the sand will stay in place and will not move. Lastly, storms or huge waves can almost completely wipe sand off a beach for months at a time.

When we profiled a beach in South Maui, we took two sticks, a compass, and a GPS to record our data. Both sticks had a bubble vial on them to make sure we were measuring the sticks while they were level (very important). After taking the data to see how many centimeters higher the sand was in one area versus another, we moved down the beach and kept recording the information. One of the team members actually had to go in the water so we could measure the foot of the beach. We took the GPS location and direction when we first started.

Taking the measurements(upper left) and posing for the camera (lower left).

5.9.11 Update: We chucked a rotten guava into the ocean and watched how the current moved it. Here is a digitized picture of our data. The beach profile graph w/ excel data is below that.

Sand Origins Lab

When we go to the beach, the only thing we tend to want to do is lay down our towel, get out the tanning lotion, and relax for a full day of tanning, surf, and sun. But what few people wonder or care about is where the beach came from, where it's going in the future, or what it's made out of. (Probably be better not to tell them anyway, there's a good chance they are laying on parrot fish poop anyway)

There are two different types of beaches. Detrital beaches are formed from rock or other material that was never alive. Biogenic beaches come from things that used to be alive, such as coral. We will be testing sand with vinegar for the presence of calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is found in alive or once alive particles.

Question: Which beaches originate from rock and which ones originate from life?

Hypothesis: I think that Big Beach will be a biogenic beach, while Oneuli (black sand beach) will be detrital.

Materials: Vinegar, pipette, sand, and a jar or cup to hold the sand in.

Procedure: After collecting sand samples from the two beaches, we will bring them back to lab and test to see if they contain calcium carbonate. We will be doing this by pouring 20 drops of vinegar in the sand sample. If it bubbles and makes a popping sound, it has calcium carbonate in it.

~Update~

Conclusion: Results from the lab test were a little different than my hypothesis, but not at surprising to me. My hypothesis was that Big Beach would be biogenic, while Black Sand would be I was sure that the black sand beach would be detrital, and even though it was(partly), it also had some biogenic materials in it as well. there was also some biogenic material in there as well. Big Beach was a biogenic beach as I predicted. The results and observations from the lab were:

Big Beach: The beach is big and is mostly a tannish color with some debris sprinkled in from the surrounding trees and other plants. Big offshore reef. Some lava rock is in the area, but does not contribute to sand or sand color. The results from the test were that there was sufficient crackling and popping. The beach is biogenic.

Oneuli (Black sand): The color of Oneuli is reddish black. It is right up next to a cinder cone hill which feeds the beach. Some offshore reefs can be found. There was some crackling when vinegar was added, but the only conclusion that can be drawn is that there is a combination of detrital and biogenic sand there.

Possible sources of error could include the lack of sand that we tested. Maybe it would have been different if we had tested different parts of the beach. Other sources of error could be we had traces of plants in our sand samples, which could add to the crackling.

Overall, it was a fun experience and a great way to explore the beaches that are in our own background.

Picture from Big Beach: The sand from Big Beach appears biogenic because of its color and the offshore reefs, but as this photo shows lava rock is not scarce in the area.

Whale Watch

Whales have many aspects that are still a mystery to humans. One I personally wanted to research more was pod types. According to earthtrust.org, a pod is “a social group of whales.” It goes on to say that in Hawaii, a pod usually has 2 or 3 whales per pod.

My question was: "What type of pod is most often for whales to be in at different times in the season?" I thought mother and calf pods were going to be the most common since the whales come here to give birth. Whale babies are given a lot of attention, so finding them wouldn’t be that hard. I thought if we saw a lot of calf and mother pods on the initial observation, we'd see more on our second observation.

As you can see by the chart, the mother and calf group ties with the single adults and competition pods in the month of January. There were no mother and calf pods plus escort pods seen in January. The most frequently seen pods in March were the competition and single adult, followed by a mother and calf pod, with one mother, calf, and escort group.

Conclusion and possible sources of error: The mother and calf pods were not the most frequent in either month. It tied with two other groups during the first observation, but came in last on the second observation. My prediction was incorrect. Possible sources of error could include not being able to see as many whales on the whale watch (we were higher up in January), the possibility of seeing the same pod twice, and miscalculating the number of whales in a pod.

I really enjoyed the whale watch. It's great to be able to actually get out on the water and observe the animals in the their natural habitat. Some schools on the mainland (and even here) only wish they could do things like this, so it's great we got to take advantage of it. You can study about whales in a classroom all day, but it just won't be the same as actually getting to see them.

Pictures:

A whale of a winter (lame pun intended)

On Monday, we went out to McGregor's Point to observe humpback whales.

There is so much we don't know about humpbacks. They are mysterious, even to scientists who study them for a lifetime. Questions like why do they sing, who exactly do they sing to, how do they sing, how did they find Maui, and how did they come up with their unique feeding patterns baffle people, even with all the technology we have. And even though I (probably) won't be finding the answers to those questions anytime soon, I personally would like to learn about pod types.

Question: Which whale pod is most frequent?

Hypothesis: I think mother and calf pods are going to be the most common since the whales come here to give birth.

My first observation was a lot of fun. We saw a lot of whales that day. Most were close enough we could even see a fin or tale. There were a few challenges, though. Sometimes it was hard to tell exactly how many whales were in a pod and our weight on the clinometer was flopping around in the wind and we couldn't get an exact angle to see how far away the whales are. Overall, though, it was a sunny day out in the field and I enjoyed it.

~Using the clinometer~

When using the clinometer, you need to hold it to where the weight is hanging down, appearing to be hanging from the peephole. (See pictures above)

With a partner looking at your clinometer to record the angle you're at when looking at whales (and making sure that the wind is not interfering with your measurement) write the angle down. Once you have that information, you need to know how high you are. Check your altitude with a GPS. With all this information, you can find out how far away the whale is.

Since you are at a right angle, one angle is at default 90 degrees. Your second angle is the measurement you got from the clinometer. The last angle can be measured from adding the your first two angles and subtracting from 180.

After getting this information, use this formula (plugging in numbers)

Distance = Elevation x tan (angle of inclination)

And voila! You have your distance.