Deer+Island+had+no+Deers

media type="file" key="deer island rap.mp3" width="240" height="20"Hi, I’m dlw106 6th grader at the [|Amigos School] in Cambridge, MA. I’m doing this as a school assignment documenting our science field trip to Deer Island at which we studied the shore ecosystem. We saw consumers, producers and decomposers, as well as examined the abiotic factors of the ecosystem. We looked at the energy flow of the tide pools and took various water tests for dissolved oxygen as well as the turbidity of the water, we did this in several different locations to compare for [|world water monitoring day].

On October 8th, 2009 23 6th grader piled onto their standard every day yellow school bus. We departed just before 10:00 and arrived at 10:30. It was sunny but very rocky. You might ask how we got on the island in a bus; well the answer is that Deer Island is now a peninsula after a strong storm in the early 1900’s. We used special tags and tablets to do different water tests like dissolved oxygen and ph.

At Deer Island we witnessed many different species of animals ranging from Sea Anemones to Knotted Wrack. Did you know that Dog Whelk was Carnivorous? Most of us didn’t before this field trip but now I know that it drills holes in it’s preys shells and then eats the meat. We found Blue Mussels who feed through a filter, making them omnivores. We saw Periwinkle, primary consumers that scrape algae off the shells of others and rocks. We found several different types of seaweed like the tangled Knotted Wrack, the blocky Sea Lettuce and the frizzy Irish Moss. We found decomposers such as bacteria (we knew it was there even though it’s invisible to the human eye), Slipper Shells and a rotting log with guess what, mold on it. Check out the awesome web and pyramids I made. So the trip was awesome, with organisms and other factors of the ocean ecosystem. Honestly I had no idea that Dog Whelk was a tertiary consumer and was shocked to find out that it drills holes in enemy shells. When we were searching for the crabs we got soaked and splashed until we retreated from the incoming tide. My favorite part was probably walking on the rocks but it was horrendous to find all off the discarded trash littering the jetty. It was definitely the best field trip of the year and is also in my top three of all time.