Today was my turn to present an article. My article was over unusual adaptations regarding the mimic octopus and and a certain species of oysters. The mimic octopus has adapted to mimic other fish species such as a flounder, sea snake, crab, and a lion fish. The octopus uses these tactics to ward off possible predators. For example it becomes a sea snake to protect itself from small annoying fish. It also becomes a flounder to move swiftly along the ocean floor. The second thing the article talks about is this certain adhesive that these oysters have that allow them to stick to each other forming colonies of oysters. This could be significant because we currently don’t have a lot of effective water proof adhesives and by studying this one we could apply this adhesive to large ships to reduce drag from small organisms. The second article discussed the effects of tourism in areas where great white sharks live. More specifically, chumming in a areas of great white sharks. They tested this idea in Sea Island by sending boats out who would throw chum into the water along with a seal dummy. The article concluded that the behavior of the great white sharks didn’t change due to ecotourism. Following the article presentations, we moved to the lab to do our second day of dissections. First we dissected a perch. The perch was rather dull because the way it was arranged didn’t really interest me that much. It was really difficult to cut open the side of the fish because there was a lot of meat that was difficult to cut off. Second we dissected a dogfish shark. This fish was a lot more interesting but also very hard to cut. The most interesting thing about this fish was the fact that it was kind of difficult to tell what sex it was. The area that determined the sex of the fish was very well hidden. The dissections were very enjoyable. I can’t wait for another fun and interesting class tomorrow.
