Marine Metre Squared - Citizen Science

On Thursday, 28 learners and seven parent volunteers joined Mrs Daniel, Mrs Venville, environmentalist Mels Barton & marine biologist Emma on a beach trip with a difference.

We braved the thick mud of the Tamaki Estuary to collect data on the sea life. Our parent volunteers went above and beyond assisting with carefully recording data and retrieving children stuck in the mud. Thank you! Only one gumboot was lost completely.

Despite looks there's lots living down at the Rotary Walkway at low tide; shrimps, fish, crabs, sea worms, snails and lots of cockles. Ryan found an as yet unidentified bright green aquatic worm and Billy found an albino mud crab.  We'll upload our findings for scientists at Otago University to track trends in our marine health.

How cool is it to be hanging out with real scientists in the field and helping collect data for a nationwide study.

We're looking forward to when Mels Barton returns to Sunnyhills so we can compare our data with our last trip.

Dissecting Kutai

Today Going Gold dissected kutai (greenlipped mussels), as part of our prep for the Marine Metre Square Project.

Did you know the Hauraki Gulf used to be completely covered with mussels that filtered the water clear? Unfortunately humans stripped all the mussel beds destroying ecosystems and leaving the water murky. We wondered what could be done to fix this.

It was so fun to dissect the kutai and identitfy the parts. A mussel dinner will never be the same again! Did you know they have a foot? And the beardy bits are actually called byssal threads? They're the part that attaches the mussel to the rocks.

We found some surprise crabs in our mussels and did further research about them. They're called pea crabs. They use that mussel as a place to live and eat its food. Some of the crabs had eggs.

Valentina said its the most fun thing she's done in Enviro so far.

We wonder if we'll find mussels on our MM2 field trip ...

Middle School Marine Metre Square (MM2) Group Get Mussley!

Today the Middle School Enviro Monitors answered the call to become citizen scientists. We're going to collect data to help marine biologists save the Hauraki Gulf!

Find out more at:

https://www.mm2.net.nz/

Our first investigation was all about mussels. Mrs Daniel had collected two containers of water from the Tamaki Estuary. We saw how the water with mussels in was much clearer. Did you know the Hauraki Gulf used to covered in mussels until humans tredged them all? The water used to be way clearer from all the mussels filtering it.

Next we dissected the mussels to learn more about them. Here's some things we we found out:

Angus - Mussels actually have genders.

Sophie - Females are orange and males are white.

Isabelle - Mussels clean the ocean by filtering the water.

Amy - The white circle makes the shell stick together.

Kamden - If there's no mussels you can't see your feet in the water cause it's so gunky.

Liam - Mussels are closed out of the water and open in the water.

Next week we're looking forward to finding out more about those carnivorous whelks; cute but deadly to crabs! We're going to identify the shellfish we might find in the estuary too.