During your shipboard experience, you will
be able to explore the strange and wonderful world of plankton! In this station,
you will toss a plankton net overboard and see what tiny plants and animals are
floating around in the Chesapeake Bay. Then, you will make slides to examine these
organisms up close under our videomicroscope.
Some facts you should know for the plankton station:
Most plankton are microscopic
organisms that are free floating. Their movement depends on the tides and
currents.
There are two different categories
of plankton:
Phytoplankton (plants) - these microscopic plants, comprised
mostly of algae, convert solar energy through photosynthesis to provide
oxygen and act as a food source for the rest of the food chain. Sometimes
you can tell that there is a lot of phytoplankton in the water because
it looks so green!
Zooplankton (animals) - these often strange-looking animals consume
phytoplankton and smaller zooplankton, forming the next step in the food
chain. Most zooplankton is microscopic, but some can grow to be quite
large, like jellyfish.
Plankton form the base of the aquatic food chain. A typical food chain might be: phytoplankton - zooplankton - small fish - big fish
- osprey or man
Many sedentary species spend their larval stage as plankton, which aids in the
dispersal of these animals. Some common examples are barnacles, oysters, and clams.
At the conclusion of this station, you will
have a better understanding of the Chesapeake Bay food chain, how to prepare slides
and work a microscope, and how to recognize and identify different planktonic
organisms.
