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It's all coming up right now on Alabama STEM Explorers Welcome to Alabama STEM Explorers.

My name is Mitch and I'm back here at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab with my friend Tina.

Hey, Mitch, it's good to see you again.

Thank you.

For you.

Yeah, thank you.

I know last time we talked about some of the technologies that scientists use to study the ocean.

This time, let's talk about some of the animals that actually live in the ocean around here.

You good?

Yeah.

All right!

Look, I've got some things laid out here on the table, and I know by the time you hit middle school, you td about some of the differences among all the animals that are out there.

Have you heard the term invertebrate invertebrates?

Yes.

Oh, awesome.

What's the difference between the two?

An invertebrate doesn't have a backbone in a vertebrate.

Does.

Right.

Very good.

So let's look at what we have in front of us.

All of these animals came from our beaches and our local waters.

Cool.

So tell me, what is invertebrate and what is vertebrate?

So I'm guessing most of these fish are probably vertebrates.

Exactly.

And probably the horseshoe crab over there is probably an invertebrate along with a sponge.

Very good.

Uh huh.

What else do I have on the table?

Do you know what some of these are?

Yeah, I think I know what some of these are.

I might be wrong on some of these, but.

Well, you were right on the horseshoe crabs, and you were right on the sponge.

Is this a sand dollar?

It is.

And it is also an invertebrate.

These are mainly invertebrates right around here.

They actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know what this is?

This is kind of special.

This is not from our coastal waters, but lives in deeper water plant and I'm guessing it's an invertebrate.

It is an invertebrate.

It is actually an animal that we call a glass sponge.

Look at that structure that they make.

Really cool.

But it is a sponge just like this one in.

And the sponge is a very simple kind of animal.

There is just a bunch of cells in a sponge held together loosely in some sort of structure with the ability to feed on material that's suspended or carried by the currents in the water.

Okay, cool.

The other animal I wanted to point out to you here is the Portuguese man of war.

So this is a preserved one, right, to allow people to study it.

We have actually put a preservative in here.

And you can see that one animal there, it drifts along with the current, which is a group of animals that we call plankton.

d in the latter part of today's show, we're going to talk a little bit more about plankton.

But I wanted to show that planktonic animals to you.

Don't they sting?

They do sting, yes.

Yes.

And it does hurt.

So when they're in the water, we do steer clear of them.

And they have these tentacles that hang them that have the stinging cells on them.

So, you know, you've got to watch out for your legs also.

But let's talk here about some of the fishes that you see.

Again, all of these were from our local waters.

And do they all look the same?

No.

Right, they do not.

What are some differences that you notice here in the fish?

Some are really small, like the seahorse over there.

Some are really big, like just the one next to it.

What about the form of the body?

Do you see some difference?

Some are more flat and some are or elongated.

Exactly right.

Yeah.

So these are all fishes whose shape tells us something about how they make their living in the oce Right.

So you said some are flat.

Look at this.

This is a flounder.

Right.

And if you look carefully, what do you see up there?

The flounder head.

Those are eyes.

Those are eyes.

How many eyes?

Two.

Two eyes.

But they're on the same side of the body.

Yeah.

Is that true for this one?

Not at all.

Right.

So as the baby flounder comes down and starts to live on the bottom, that eye rotates around so that it is looking up in the water over it.

And this animal lives in the sand or the bottom of the ocean.

Right now, it's pretty cool to have that.

I'm sorry.

That would be pretty cool to have a moving eye.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wouldn't be any good to have the eye looking right in the sand, right?

Yeah.

So what about this one here?

Hmm?

If you know that kind of way, animals live on the bottom.

Where would you guess?

The animal is probably on the bottom because it's probably pretty flat.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So this is actually an electric ray, like an electric eel.

It would give you a shock if you picked it up when it's alive.

And again, these are not alive.

Right.

We have preserved them using a special chemical that keeps them from breaking down.

But this is an electric ray.

And if you look carefully here, you can see its mouth.

Right.

And then these organs here are what generates that current.

But this is a ray, and it's more closely related to the sharks than it is related to these kind of fishes.

Okay, cool.

What about these two fish?

Tell me what you observe.

They this one has really it's really spiky, and that's probably its defense.

Oh, that's good.

Yeah.

Why would they need a defense?

What are they defending against maybe predators and things that try to eat?

Exactly.

Being eaten right.

And this is a fish called the fish.

uch those.

Yeah.

Would you want to do something like that?

I would not know.

Right.

What about this one?

They both have eyes on the side of their heads.

What about the general body shape?

It's kind of more not flat this way.

More flat this way.

Yeah, but if you compare it to this one.

Mm.

What do you notice?

They're both kind of stretched out in that sense.

Like they're both.

Their eyes are on the other side of their heads.

Uh huh.

And this kind of chunky.

Yeah.

They're both kind of.

Do you think this is a very fast swimmer?

Probably.

Probably not.

No, exactly.

So these are kind of rounded, if you look at them.

Right.

As that fish swims through the water, it's got that round shape to it.

So a lot of can't swim.

Really doesn't have like a really so like the water can go through.

It doesn't have any aerodynamics really.

Yep.

And you call it aerodynamics in the air.

But when in the ocean.

Yeah.

Hydrodynamic.

Hydrodynamic actually.

Because it's the water, right.

Yeah.

And that's what you're seeing here.

This is a mackerel.

Right.

This is the Ferrari or the jet plane.

Right.

This is a very fast moving fish.

And we know that because it's long and skinny and streamlined.

So it just kind of like cuts through the water.

Yeah, but this is called Cal Fish, right?

It's not anything like that.

This is not going to be your fast swimmer.

Of the.

Of the fish world, right?

Yeah.

Now, what is this?

That is a seahorse, right?

You recognize it as a seahorse?

It really is a fish, right?

That's not a who.

It doesn't look too much like any of the other fish.

Right.

And look at that weird mouth on it.

So the other thing about fish is we can tell you a little bit about how they eat, depending on what the mouth looks like.

What do you think that mouth eats?

Big, ugly, really tiny little small stuff.

Exactly.

And how does it eat them?

Things like it's a straw.

It's like a like a straw and it sucks them up.

And when we go over to the aquarium, I'll show you some live seahorses.

We had just had some seahorses being born.

So we'll look at those when we'r And then lastly, this is one of my favorites.

That's really cool.

Benthic or a bottom dwelling or one that lives up in the water.

Looks bottom dwelling.

Exactly.

How do you know that?

Because it's more flat.

Exactly.

So the fancy word that we have for that is benthic, benthic means living on the bottom and they live up in the water column.

We call that pelagic.

Okay.

Now, where are these fishes fins?

Every fish has fins.

They're kind of like back behind goes out.

Exactly.

And they kind of use them.

Look at the belly of the fish.

What do you see there?

Oh, they look like all human hands as they're like.

Like two more hands, almost.

Or little fins.

Like little.

Yeah, little legs.

And in fact, this fish lives on the bottom.

And just kind of walks along and crawls along the bottom.

Yeah, it can glide for a little bit with that tail, but not for very long, right?

Yeah, that's called a bat fish.

That's cool.

It's cool.

Yeah.

And I do think we have one of those in the aquarium.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So why don't we head over there and look at some live fish.

Okay.

So, Mitch, now we're in the Alabama Aquarium, and one of the exhibits I wanted to really show you are the seahorses that we talked about this morning.

Remember talking about seahorse?

Yeah.

Do you remember what kind of animal they were?

They are a fish.

Yeah.

So looking at those, we have both babies that were born recently and then adults seahorses down there.

How do you know they're a fish?

Well, you can see, I think they have those little fins by their ears and on their back.

Do seahorses have ears?

Not really.

But those are they're ear looking things.

They are, aren't they?

And they're right up there behind their gills.

Right.

And then if you look along the back, you see that other fin.

Right.

So seahorses live in seagrass meadows.

You look at that tail.

We talked this morning about how the shape of a fish tells you something.

Well, they use that tail to wrap around and hang on to those seagrasses.

So that's why we have sea grasses in this tank for them to grab on to cool.

The other neat thing in this tank I wanted you to observe was a fish that is the cousin of the seahorse.

Look back here.

Oh, yeah, that's not all curled up, right?

That's called a Gulf pipe fish.

That's.

And it reproduce in the same family of officers, and it reproduces the same way.

In other words, the male is the one that has the babies.

And that's what you're seeing up here is seahorse babies.

Are they cute?

They're really cute.

Yeah, very tiny.

You know, the other fish we talked about this morning is the fish, and it is over in the other Mobile Bay tank.

So let's go over there.

Okay.

So it'sthis is the Mobile Bay tank.

And in this tank are some of the fish, the types of fishes that live actually in the bay that you saw out that window there.

Oh, cool.

So we looked at some of those this morning, right?

Yeah.

And what I wanted to point out is this little guy, do you remember him?

What was he called?

Do you remember?

That's the fish.

All right.

And we talked about whether it was a really fast fish or whether it was kind of just kind of thing.

It was pretty slow.

Exactly.

Right.

But it's the one that had that spikes on it, remember?

Spikes.

Yeah.

And the spikes were for what?

They're for protection against.

Look, he's coming here talking to you, right?

Yeah.

He said now the other one is hidden.

I want you to see if you can spot it.

Remember the flatfish we use the term benthic, meaning living on the bottom.

Is that the flounder?

The flounder.

Do you see him?

There he is.

Oh, very good.

But look how well he blends in.

Yeah, right.

That's good.

So they can actually change their color a little bit to blend in with the bottom.

And why would that be helpful?

So ptors can't see them?

Yes, right, exactly.

So some of the other fish that you see in here, again, you know, we talked this morning about how the form of that fish tells you a little bit about how it makes its living.

So look at this one right here.

Do you think he's probably a fast fish or slow fish?

I would it he looks pretty streamlined, so probably fairly fast.

That's right.

And that was a really good word to use.

Streamlined, skinny from side to side.

So they don't have to take a lot of energy when they swim through the water.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah.

Mitch, do you remember when we were talking about the Portuguese man of War?

Yeah.

And the fact that we had a special word for this kind of animal in the ocean?

What?

Do you remember what that word was Invertebrate Well, it is an Invertebrate.

Yeah, but the word I'm talking about is plankton.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, plankton.

Plankton is a group of organisms that live in the ocean that are just carried by the current.

Maybe they can swim, but they're not powerful enough swimmers to control where they want to go in the ocean.

And the Portuguese man of war is an example of plankton.

But plankton are incredibly important in the food web of the ocean.

And so I want to show you a few more.

Okay?

Okay, cool.

So what we have here in this little dish, right, is probably a couple hundred planktonic organisms.

Wow.

And the most common plankton that we have in Mobile Bay is one called a copepod.

Right now, they're hard to see in the microscope.

And we're going to look at one under the microscope in a little bit.

But we've made a 3D model of one, right?

This is a copepod and this is probably one of the most important planktonic animals out there.

Do you know why?

It's a probably it's like a stable for the environment.

Is it like it's a critical, like a linchpin stable if all the copepods in the world went away, the oceans would be in trouble.

Right.

Part of the reason for that is the role it plays in a food web.

Do you remember talking about food webs or food chains?

Yeah.

Well, the food web, a food web is when some animals eat others and then that animal eats others.

And it goes just a little, little web or chain exist, actually.

You know, some people talk about copepods and they call them the cows of the sea.

What does a cow eat?

A cow eats grass, right.

And a copepod eats algae.

It actually eats single celled algae in the ocean that we call phytoplankton plant plankton, whereas the copepod is animal plankton or zooplankton, right?

So it is the one that eats the algae.

And then the fish that we were talking about before, eat this.

So critical part of the food chain.

Right?

So how do we catch the plankton?

This is a mini planktonic net.

You're going to be the boat, okay?

And I'm going to be the net holder.

But if you were to walk along that way, not here.

Keep the rope tight.

Sorry, and pull that right.

And if we were underwater, you go ahead and pull it towards you.

Right?

It's going to be carried through the water and it's going to capture all the stuff that is bigger than that mesh.

Right.

Feel that it's a cloth with little holes in it.

So anything smaller than the holes is going to go through, but anything larger than the holes is going to be trapped down here.

So that's how this plankton sample was taken.

Oh, cool.

Right?

Interesting.

Yeah.

These are kind of hard to see.

I mean, you can't see the individual parts of any one of those, can, you know?

You know what we've done?

We've actually made some models, some 3D models larger than life of different planktonic organisms.

And I wanted to share just a few of those with you.

I have three phytoplankton.

Okay.

Plankton examples.

And then these two.

Zooplankton are animal plankton examples.

Right?

So this is a single celled algae called a dinoflagellates, right?

It's photosynthetic.

So this is like the grass or the tree, like a plant.

Exactly right.

This right is another dinoflagellates that's called perennial.

This causes a harmful algal bloom or what we in the business call a have harmful algal bloom.

You've ever heard of those?

I've heard of them, yeah.

Yeah.

Are they for the environment?

Well, what happens is something gets in the water and we think it's a lot of excess fertilizer nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus.

And it causes the cells to divide and divide and divide and divide.

So we have millions of them for a little volume of water and they produce a chemical compound that is hazardous to people, hazardous to marine mammals.

And so we called them a harmful algal bloom.

That's not good.

This is about a thousand times bigger than it is in real life, and it kind of colors the water.

So the other term for one kind of harmful algal bloom is red tide, right?

Red tide.

Red tide don't have anything to do with the tide, but called red, because this animal is so many or this organism, there's so many of it, it makes the water kind of pink right?

Yeah.

We've got one more phytoplankton here.

This is a diatom.

That's a chain.

So they're single celled, but the way they divide it keeps them together to a chain.

So like a group.

And the important part I want to point out here is if these are phytoplankton, that means they're like plants.

And what do plants need to grow?

They need sunlight.

Exactly right.

So, you know, the ocean's pretty deep.

Right.

And if you think about the bottom of the ocean, it's dark.

So if you sink out of where the light is and you're Exactly right.

So these are actually spines.

What do you think those do?

Maybe they keep it floating.

Exactly.

They keep it from sinking in the ocean.

And that works because of what we call the surface area.

So if you're hanging in the pool, can I touch your earth?

Sure.

And you have your arm spread out like this.

Are you going to sink or.

Probably not.

Okay.

Yeah.

If I put your arms down by your side and you tuck your legs real close together, are you going to sink faster.

Mhm.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So what's your arms are doing.

Are basically increasing the surface area so you don't sink as fast.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

And these spines do the same thing now I'm going to challenge you.

Okay.

I want you to design a planktonic organism, okay?

That needs to stay up in the surfaf the ocean where there's light, but it can't float all the time.

Right.

Okay.

Because actually, if you float right at the surface of the water, you get a lot of damage from the sun.

Too much.

Too much sun.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So again, I got you some bits and bobs and I want you to build one that won't sink all the way to the bottom, but it won't float either.

Okay, cool.

So these look kind of similar to these legs, maybe a little bit.

And I could like.

Oh, we could cut them too, if you want, or bend them in half.

Yeah.

I'm going to kind of try to model mine after this one.

Oh, that's a good idea.

And, you know, people do do that.

They study nature to get design ideas to solve problems.

So I'm trying to make a little like a crossbars here, maybe to kind of keep it up as much as I can.

Okay.

I like it.

And then this is our little test here, right?

So you can test whether it looks like it will all sink so far.

Yeah, well, I don't know.

Try it again.

See the thing?

Let's see if we bend these in half.

We can test our individual parts.

Huh?

That's going to float, right?

Hm.

Interesting.

But if we do something heavier, that sinks radially.

And what you probably want is a combination of something to hold it down in the water, but something to help it sink more slowly.

So I think you're on the right track.

Okay, let's see.

Maybe something this this sink.

We know that, right?

But they're fairly small, so maybe two would work.

I like it.

Yeah, I put it.

We've got some unfold in here too.

And of course you got some beads.

What do you think is going to happen?

If I throw a bead in there?

It'll probably.

We'll see now.

You okay?

That's a scientist.

Do we make a hypothesis and then we.

I think maybe it'll maybe sink.

Let's see.

Oh, it floats.

Oh, okay.

Okay, well, let's see.

Let's see it.

The see, huh?

It seems to float right on the surface.

Right?

So maybe it's a little bit too light.

So we need something heavier, right?

Yeah.

Well, maybe.

Maybe the reason the bead floated was because it had a little hole in it.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It could be just that it's less dense than the water, too.

Oh, okay.

And that's what engineers do.

They don't design things based on how the parts work together or how the parts are behaving individually.

So you want a little, oh, there you go.

Now that sank and you have three paperclips.

Yeah.

Did it do when you had two on there it floated.

Okay so let's I've got little tongs so we don't have to get our hands wet.

Grab that, bring it up.

And how are you going to modify your design?

Well, two made it slow and three made it sink.

So I'm going to take this one off.

Let's test it again and see if two still floats.

Okay, let's see that time.

It's like, what do you think happened the way the thing was?

More water.

Exactly right.

Yeah.

Or average of water.

Mm.

So?

So maybe a bead or two.

Maybe.

So how could we get that on there?

Well, this one actually has a good hole.

Can you feed that pipe cleaner?

Maybe through that hole?

Yeah.

The beads.

That might work.

Let's try that.

Let's see.

Now, the other thing you need to do.

Maybe one bead too many.

Well, it is floating a little bit deeper.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Hm.

So what else do you have here that would float?

Something that would float.

Let's see.

This would float, I think.

Yeah.

Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

I see something else here.

What is that?

Oh, that's a cork.

So let's see if I put that.

Does it have a hole through the middle?

Not really.

Maybe we can make one.

Yeah, or we can use this wire.

Where is that piece of cork?

Here.

Maybe we'll stuff that through that.

Oh, there we go.

Okay, okay.

Okay.

But now that's going to make it float, right?

Yeah.

So maybe if we could add that around there.

Let's see.

So you tested out different designs.

Let's see.

I'm trying to get that perfect balance.

Too much float, too, but I like the way that it's hanging below the water.

Because maybe the active part of your planktonic organism is hanging below the surface.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So nature has come up with some great designs and the Copepod is one of those, right?

Not only do these antenna help it balance and swim in the water, but it's also transparent in real life.

That's cool.

Just like you see in this dish.

What advantage would being transparent predators can't see?

Exactly right.

If you're clear fish in the ocean waters, you can't be seen by a predator.

And these planktonic organisms are very important food items for all of those fish that we talked about this morning.

Yeah, in fact, we culture plankton over in the aquarium to actually feed some of the organisms there.

So when we went over there and saw some of the animals behind the scenes, the Aquarius, the people who take care of those animals were actually make breeding some plankton to actually feed them.

Cool.

Pretty cool, huh?

Very good.

All right.

Well, look, Mitch, thanks so much for coming back down to the lab.

I hope to see you again soon.

Yes.

When you're learning about science in your school, you can talk a little bit about what you know about plankton and how they make their living in the ocean.

Yeah, and share that with your friends.

Okay?

Okay, cool.

Come back and visit us sometime.

Definitely.

All right.

Thanks.

Thanks for watching.

Alabama Swim explorers.

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