Nov.+4

Free Journal Entry:
One of my assigned roles for my semester project is to focus on an abiotic factor. I chose the water/current. The ocean constantly rushes in towards the tide pools and usually hits the rocks that are closer to the shore break. The tide pools that we are studying don’t get as much water. Occasionally when the water or tide is high enough or strong enough the ocean water will go into the tide pools. When this happens the tide pools fill more and there is a chance that new life is brought into the tide pool from surrounding tide pools or straight from the ocean. It is obvious that the tide pools that are closer to the wave break are going to have currents in their water, but I the tide pools that are a little bit farther away are puzzling me. I’m confused because there are two tide pools almost right next each other and they are both the same distance away from the shore break. They both are almost completely enclosed and they both are getting about the same amount of water when it comes. But the current in one tide is more active than the other. This might cause one tide pool to have more life living in it than the other. My other assigned role is to observe the plant life. The plant life in the tide pools consists of algae, and other seaweed. The seaweed grows along the rocks that make up the outer wall the of the tide pool. It also grows on a couple of rocks that rest against the outer wall. The seaweed is a fuzzy hairy looking organism. There is also the occasional cone shaped seaweed. These both types are brownish green. The algae pretty much grows everywhere. It grows on the outer wall, on all the rocks and occasionally right next to the seaweed. The color of the algae ranges from dark forest green to a brownish green. I wonder if the color of the algae has to do with the amount of sunlight the algae gets or if it is a different color because it is a different type of algae. I’ve noticed that there isn’t seaweed in each tide pool but there is algae. And when there is seaweed it doesn’t grow everywhere but only in certain spots in the tide pool. Why does the seaweed grow in certain tide pools and in certain areas of tide pools?

Assigned Journal Entry:
The tide pools, that we chose to study, have a little bit of human interaction so when it comes to natural selection human interaction does play a part. There are families that come down to the tide pools that the little children bring the fish nets and plastic buckets to catch small fish and crabs. When children are trying to catch fish the faster the fish is the better chance it has of not getting caught. This has to do with natural selection because the slower fish will probably get caught and put into a bucket and perhaps taken away from their habitat. And being taken away from their habitat can mean that they die and can have offspring to carry on their variations. The faster fish that survive reproduce and pass down their ability to swim fast. We have seen some pretty big crabs crawling around the tide pools. These big crabs prey on the smaller, weaker fish. They don’t even try to attack the big fish probably knowing that they are out matched. Looking around in the tide pools I have noticed that most of the fish are medium sized or large fish. Remember a medium fish in a tide pool is about two inches and a large fish is about four inches. When you see a small fish it is usually trailing along with a bigger fish. In a way this shows two different aspects of natural selection. First the crabs eat the small fish, instead of the big fish. Then the small fish have “figured” out that if they stay near the big fish it is safer for them. I also witnessed a large fish jumping from one tide pool to another. These two tide pools were connected but where they were connected was an easy place for a fish to get across. It is important for fish to have the strength to get from one tide pool to another because say one tide pool doesn’t have enough space or food resources for all the inhabitants, all the inhabitants are going to slowly die off. But if a fish were strong enough to get from one tide pool to another it would survive. Then when it reproduced its offspring would also have to strength to do that. That strength is also important when a tide pool that an organism is living in doesn’t have enough water and begins to dry out.