Norwalk students dive into marine biology classes |
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Written by MARYLISA BOOSE, Special to the Chronicle
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Friday, 06 June 2008 01:00 |
NORWALK—How many high school students learn to propogate, or grow, coral and how to take care of saltwater tropical fish, a shark, a hermit crab and an eel?
Norwalk Catholic School (NCS), in the second year of its marine biology program, offers those opportunities and others. High school students also take care of five fresh-water tanks in the elementary school and give the younger students tours of the five salt-water tanks in the high school to spark an interest in marine biology at the lower grades.
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Students play with a starfish in one of the classroom tanks in an
elementary class at Norwalk Catholic School’s St. Paul campus. (Photo
courtesy of Cindy Wilde) |
NCS offered marine biology for the first time last year with a class of only four students. This year, 30 students signed up for the program so Mike Wasiniak is teaching two sections of the course.
Mr. Wasiniak gives much of the credit for the success of the course to Scott Lee, a friend who is a construction worker by day, but has always had an interest in marine biology. He built the five tanks at the high school and helps to maintain the program.
One reason Mr. Wasiniak was able to add the marine biology classes to the science program at NCS is the addition built onto the school two years ago. The science classrooms were expanded to add the latest equipment and Mr. Wasiniak’s classroom, which had a tank 3 feet high, 3 feet wide and 2 feet high, had room for more tanks.
“I joked to Scott that I wanted a tank double the size and he did it,” Mr. Wasiniak says.
The classroom now has a state-of-the-art system that ties five tanks together with the same filtering and cleaning system. The tanks hold about 600 gallons of water and organisms that are compatible are kept in the same tanks.
The largest tank has about 90 pounds of coral rock, made up of almost 40 species of live coral that continues to grow. A cat shark lives in this tank with several other large fish, but the shark usually hides in the coral.
Tank 4 is the touch tank.
“We have several species of starfish,” Mr. Wasiniak says. “They [the students] can stick their hands right in the water and pick up these organisms. The star fish don’t hurt at all, but you can feel slight suction on the hand if you hold your hand very still.”
During the process of setting up the tanks, there have been some interesting experiences.
Mr. Wasiniak says one tank was split into thirds to house a hermit crab, an eel and an anemone that had a symbiotic relationship with two clownfish. When the hermit crab destroyed the lattice splitting the tank to get into the eel’s section, Mr. Wasiniak moved the crab to its own tank, leaving two-thirds of the tank for the eel.
During the change process, the anemone slowly moved up the side of the tank and ended up in a neighboring tank, leaving the clownfish on their own.
The current hermit crab is the second the class has studied. In jars, Mr. Wasiniak has five different moltings of the hermit crab the class studied last year, including the molting in which the crab died. He says the original crab lived for three years.
“Man can control some of it,” Mr. Wasiniak says, “but it still changes.”
This is one of the lessons he wants to teach his students.
“We want to keep teaching the kids that nature is cruel, but you have to cope with nature,” he says.
Not all of the classes’ projects have worked out perfectly. An octopus laid about 30 eggs in November. By March the eggs had hatched, but the mother died and the class wasn’t able to keep the babies alive. The class also had sea horses that died eventually.
“No matter how hard you try, some things don’t make it,” Mr. Wasiniak says. But even failures are used as lessons. And the classes have more successes than failures.
Propogated corals, which students separated from corals in a larger tank, are thriving and filling another tank and the eel has grown to 2 feet long. A cat shark egg obtained last October hung on the side of the tank for eight weeks. Just before Christmas vacation students saw the embryo start to move and the shark was born on Christmas Eve. It is now 10 inches long and will eventually grow to four feet.
Once his marine animals become too large to fit in the school’s tanks, “We have some decisions to make,” says Mr. Wasiniak, but he welcomes the challenges. He says he may trade the large animals with zoos or dealers for smaller organisms for his students to study.
Last fall he had a special exhibit thanks to a NCS student who has a 2-foot fresh water alligator. Mr. Wasiniak brought the alligator into the classroom for several weeks for students to study the species before returning it to its owner.
Mr. Wasiniak can name the many species of marine organisms in the tanks — pencil urchin, narscisus snails, spiny lobster, sea cucumber. The students recently added a small mangrove to see if the class can grow that plant species.
Students in the marine biology class don’t just watch the plants and animals, they also take care of them. Mr. Wasiniak says some of the species, such as the cat shark, must be fed individually. He has a freezer full of food for the various species and students use long tongs to entice specific animals to eat.
The students also clean the skimmers for the tanks daily and must control the saltwater balance of the tanks.
Jared Missler, a junior, says he originally intended to take a regular biology class, but thought marine biology sounded more interesting.
“This year has been fun,” he says. “We’ve learned a lot — how the fish interact, water movement, filtration, the prime levels for the fish and the coral to do well. It is neat to learn about and actually see it in progress,” he adds.
The students also take care of the fresh water tanks in the elementary building. Julie Fries, a second-grade teacher, says both the fish tank and the interaction between her students and the high school kids are wonderful.
“It has made the kids more interested in fish,” she says. “They’re taking out books in the library on fish. They loved the trip to the high school [for a tour of the saltwater tanks]. It is also great to see the interaction between the high school students and the second graders,” she says.
After the high school students serviced the tank in Mrs. Fries’ room recently, the second graders crowded around to watch the fish.
Joseph Wise, 7, says having the tank in the classroom has been educational.
“Sometimes the fish stare at me when I look at them,” he says. “There were some fish I never heard of. I think they’re all interesting to learn about.”
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Last Updated on Monday, 22 September 2008 09:14 |
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