Connor Beach '12

Today's class consisted of a lot of group work. First, we started off with a class discussion about coral reefs and the overpopulation of lion fish. Lion fish came about the east coast of the United States in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew damaged an aquarium. Using their fan-like fins, or "mane," they scare other fish and...

Today's class seemed to fly by because we broke our usual routine of taking notes for most of class. We listened to a couple of presentations about different parts of marine biology, one being the effect butterflyfish have on coral reefs. We learned about different kinds of invertebrates, including starfish and squids. Speaking of starfish and...

Class today: full of micro information, however I don't mean insignificant; I mean a topic on the smallest forms of life in the ocean: viruses and plankton. We learned about how viruses infect plankton and turn them into dissolved organic matter. Little bacteria eat this matter and are then eaten by plankton, which are in turn eaten...

Changes in ecosystems. That was today's topic of conversation, involving changes in temperatures, currents, and waves. We learned about everything from how the moon changes the tides due to the pull of the moon's gravity, to how saltwater that is closer to the equator has a higher concentration of salt. The reason for this is the...

Class today involved a lot of discussion because we talked about the origin of life and the topic of evolution. We also talked about plate tectonics and the layers of the earth. The innermost layer is the inner core which is a solid layer that rotates at a different speed than the rest of the world. ...

Today in class, we looked at several different fields in which a Marine Biologist might work. Some of the files we looked at were Ichthyologists, Fishery Biologists, Marine Mammalogists, and several others. The particular scientist that my partner, Will Schneider, and I looked at were Research Scientists. A research scientist is the broadest sense of the...

I've looked forward to this class since it was first announced by Mr. Kirby at a prayer service this past school year. Since I signed up, I have gone through a lot of preparation to get ready to learn about Marine Biology and prepare for a trip to the British Virgin Islands. As of yesterday, I am...