Whale Observation

     On Monday we went to McGregor's point to observe whales. The purpose of this was to use our clinometers to see how far the whales were from our point of view, and by using the formula Distance = Elevation x tan (angle of inclination).
     My questions is "will there be more whales earlier or later in the season"? My hypothesis is that there will be more whales earlier in the season because that's when all the whales are migrating and later they all will migrate back so we might not see as much.
     My experience and McGregor's point was interesting, my favorite part was looking for the whales and measuring them with the clinometer. One challenge was the when we looked in the clinometer it was some times hard to tell what angle the string was hitting because of the wind. We saw a bunch of whales that were spouting

Marine Phyla Lab Reflection

     In this unit we learned about all the different types of Phyla. There are nine different types of marine Phyla, they are Mullusca, which are clams, oysters, snails, and squids, Arthropoda are lobsters, crabs, and shrimp. Echinodermata include starfish and sea urchins. Nematoda are hook worms and round worms. Platyhelmithes are flatworms and tape worms. Cnidaria include coral, sea anemones and jellyfish. Porifera are sponge-like creatures. Annelids include earth worms and leeches, and Chordata refer to fish. What we did was we went to the fish ponds and layed down a quadrant five times in a random placement and counted all the marine phyla we could find and tallied them on our data sheet table, then we averaged them out with the wholes classes data to see which was the most present and more in diversity.

     My research questions was Which marine Phyla are going to be more present in the south Maui tide pools, and which one will have a larger quantity? My hypothesis was that the Phyla, Chordata, Echinodermata, and mullusca will be more present in the tide pools. My hypothesis in having to find mollusks the most in diversity was correct because that was the most that we found. Some sources of error were that we could have miss counted creatures in the quadrant, the tides could have been different either high or low at different times, or that some creatures might have moved out before we got to count them. 

     My favorite part of this lab was the experience of going out to the tide pools and finding all these marine phylum's that Ive never seen before. I also learned new skills on making a better lab and making pie graphs.