Exploring Coral Reefs, part 2

From Hope:



My project for the fair was a homemade ecosystem of the ocean. I obviously didn’t have all of the animals, but I had the ones most people knew about: fish, dolphins, sharks, octopus, crabs, starfish, sea turtles, and coral.

The idea of the game was that you would roll a die and the number equaled a problem that humans make for the coral reefs and their inhabitants. For example: Say you rolled a one, that means that the mangroves get logged to make new tourist locations. This means that all the fish hiding in their roots are now homeless and the barrier for much sand, debris, trash, ect. is now gone. Then with the player’s help I “acted” out the problem (in this case the mangroves being logged) so that they could see how bad the problem really was and how one problem led to the next in a chain reaction.

While making this project, I learned about the ocean ecosystem and how everything is connected, and what the different animals ate, more or less. I enjoyed making my project. It was hard, but fun all the same.

From Ben:

For my part in the reef event I had an exhibit about how and what makes coral reefs interesting. I had a documentary playing, and on the side I had information about the different types of fish that were talked about in the movie that people could pass around, including the lion fish, crown of thorns starfish, pipefish, harlequin shrimp, and humped-head parrotfish.

Exploring Coral Reefs, part 1

Our crew has been working for months now learning about coral reefs and the problems they face worldwide. We presented what we've learned at an event on February 7 called Exploring Coral Reefs. Following is a recap with photos and short explanations from some of the group.

Coral Reef Jeopardy



From Dexter:
Amby and I were in charge of a joint project about what the coral reefs do for us. My half of the project was to make a powerpoint presentation containing the information that the children would be quizzed on. The information I covered in the powerpoint was:
How the reefs produce oxygen, How much money jobs around the reef
produce annually, The size of the Great Barrier Reef, Recognizing different types of coral including staghorn, bubble, and starbust coral, and Things you can do for the coral reefs.

From Abe:



The Honduras travelers recently put on an educational fair about coral reefs. At the fair I presented about what people everywhere can do in their daily lives to diminish the negative effects that human activities have on coral reefs.

I talked about 3 categories of action that can be taken. First: Buying things that hurt the environment less than common conventional choices. These include locally and organically grown food, non-toxic and biodegradable products, and less meat. I also said that people should avoid all disposable and anti-bacterial products as much as possible because of their negative environmental impact.

The second thing I recommended was using less and being more efficient with energy and resources. Strategies included not using energy for heating our bodies or for hot water to wash our clothes or for drying them. Instead people could insulate themselves better, use cold water wash, and air dry their clothes.

Thirdly, donate to environmental organizations. All the other charities can wait until tomorrow. Our planet cannot wait!

From Jonah:

I researched issues affecting the reef negatively and how we contribute to them. I learned about cyanide and bomb fishing, overfishing, coral mining and other problems destroying reefs like rising water temperature and salinity due to global warming. Reefs protect the shoreline, so damage to reefs results in less protection to land areas and more impact to inhabited areas.

I also learned about how we contribute to these problems in our everyday lives by supporting unsustainable or poisonous fishing practices, contributing to global warming through CO2 emissions, pollution, and the general wastefulness that is part of most American's lives.