Today started with a very interesting article about the echolocation behaviors of porpoises. The experiment was done by tagging the fish and monitoring it’s clicks before, during and after the catch of a dead fish. The article pointed out that as the fish got closer, the clicks became more frequent and the decibels decreased. As a class we determined that this may have been due to the precision the porpoise was trying to obtain. The next article concerned the affect that increasing water temperature had on the elk horn coral. They placed coral larvae in water at 28, 30 and 31.5. By performing this test, it was determined that the higher water temperature causes the coral to mutate more and has a greater affect whereas the lowest was more ideal and allowed the coral to thrive. After discussing this, we watched a video about another problem elk horn coral face: white pox disease. This disease was affecting coral in the Florida keys, however, a solution is in progress as water maintenance plants provide cleaner water. We also completed our dissections of the dogfish shark. All we had left to do was the brain. We were able to determine what each part of the brain was as well as its function. Tomorrow we will be presenting to the class information regarding certain animal species we will be seeing in the BVI. I cant wait for that and learning more about these animals.
