April 22, 2014 Earth Day on Commencement Bay

In Tacoma, 

on the Thea Foss Waterway, 

at the Thea Foss Waterway Seaport, 

and aboard the "My Girl" 

the Navigators did a field study on: 

• The port of Tacoma history
• Ecosystems and food chains
• Puget Sound invertebrates
• Plankton

Perfect for Earth Day and for our year long study of

• animals
• ecosystems and environmentalism
• history

It looks like there will be a lot to see! 

Life vests and Coast Guard regulations for everyone

All carefully aboard!

Ready for our classes!

Learning about a watershed

Be careful what you put into the watershed.

The water "sheds" down Mount Rainier into the rivers

 and into Commencement Bay.

 

This history re-enactment fit in perfectly with the book we are reading, 

A Horse's Tale: A Study of the First Hundred Years of Washington State History.  

 

Studying early maps. Washington wasn't on this early map. 

We learned about Captain George Vancouver,

the Native Americans,

and other early movers and shakers

in the Pacific Northwest. 

We also learned about Puget Sound Critters.

Sea stars are not sea fish. 

Why? Because they are invertebrates.

Sea stars move by using a water vascular system. 

Water enters the starfish through a large pore 

 and is pushed into its tube feet.

It is very difficult for fish to eat 

when they have been caught in a gillnet.

Gathering plankton at different sea levels

The zooplankton are located at deeper levels than the phytoplankton.

Plankton doesn't smell the best. 

Putting plankton on a petri dish using a pipette

Setting up the microscope

Wow! Ooh! Ahh! 

The plankton as seen through a microscope

So fun to see both photoplankton and zooplankton

Another beautiful day in Tacoma. 

Shhhh, don't tell anyone it was supposed to rain all day!