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.