After listening to the groups present today, I learned a couple of interesting things which could affect marine biologists everywhere. The first group discussed mimic octapus and to a lesser extent oysters. From their topics I learned that mimic octapus evolved so that they can use their camoflauge and shape their body to impersonate other marine life, such as flounder, lionfish, and sea snakes. This allows them to escape many predators. One interesting question the article they discussed brought up was if the octapus, a very intelligent marine orgamism, used any of this intelligence to develop this ability or if it was purely genetics. This group also mentioned the amazing strength of the adhesive oysters use and suggested that it could be used to lower resistance of a boat hull making it more efficient or as a medical glue. I think that this oyster adhesive would be interesting to research and develop into something useful and I wonder how it will be used.
The second group talked about the effects ecotourism has on species and particularly the great white sharks near seal island. I found it interesting that their studies, although incomplete and preliminary showed that the ecotourism near seal island does not show a noticable impact on the sharks behavior. This study could be futher tested by testing the effects of ecotourism on sharks in other locations and by studying the effects it has on more of their behaviors.
The final thing we did was disecting a perch, and to begin disecting a dog fish shark. While disecting the perch it was interesting to see how hard the scales were. The dog fish shark was also interesting to disect because it felt completly different since it is primarily cartilage and muscle.
