Plankton Diversity Project

INTRODUCTION

Plankton is, basically the foundation for life. They are the beginning of the food chain for ocean organisms. The word plankton comes from the Greek word "planktos" meaning drifter. Plankton drifts around the ocean or travels using the worlds ocean currents. Plankton is important because without them the food chain would disappear. We did our experiment to look into the diversity in plankton around Maui. We wanted to see how many different kinds and colors of plankton there are here in the islands.

WHAT WE DID

My group started at Kihei Boat Ramp to collect our first samples. When we arrived at the boat ramp we made our ways to the ramp. Along the side on the concrete areas we began to drag the nets back and forth to the end of the ramp to the beginning. We did this at least three times and emptied the contents into our plastic bottle. There were some troubles with opening the cap on the net to empty the contents into the bottle. After we got the sample we began to take the other measurements from the salinity of the water to the temperature, time, and our names. We were able to use the other tools to be able to take the measurements. We had to hurry with the samples because boats were beginning to come in and we had to make way for them. When we got back to the school we were able to use the microscopes and the computers to be able to more easily view and take pictures of the copepods and plankton that we would find. We used a electric microscope hooked up to the computer to be able to view the plankton.

RESULTS

The results that we found were, the most dominant color that we observed was clear. From both the boat ramp and Ho'okipa beach park, the most observed color was clear. The boat ramp had three green, nine black, thirty-five clear, four red, and no brown. At Ho'okipa beach park we found three green, sixteen black, eight clear, one red, and two brown. We also observed that the most dominant color at Ho'okipa was black. This could probably be due to the salinity in the water, temperature, or other organisms and plankton in the waters over there. In total though the most dominant color was clear. Our hypothesis was proven true. That is the data retrieved and what it means to our experiment.