MARINE SCIENCE OVERNIGHTS at HIMB

Ever wonder what we do on our Marine Science Overnights? Recently Girl Scout Troop 840 was out and sent in some pictures. Take a look!

Although most folks camp out on the lawn for our overnights,it is not exactly backpacking or really roughing it. Whatever you can get over on the boat and then get into your tent is fine.

 Once the tents are up, we usually do a tour of the island,

 have dinner, then onto the lab sessions. Lately we have been focusing on night plankton.

We have gone through a number of changes in this lab. At first we had all of the students create their own small plankton nets and drag them back and forth along the docks - but this was only moderately successful. So after a bit of thought, we decided to build light traps - simple plankton collection devices that utilize the fact that much of the night plankton is attracted to lights - in our case to their detriment, but to our future marine biologist's delight.  The design is still evolving as each new set of young scientists makes comments and suggestions and we refine the results - but the current design is already quite successful!

Once the plankton is collected we head back to the lab and everyone gets involved -

 even the adults.

And the results are great.

So next time you have some spare time and interest - consider joining us for an amazing evening - where young and old scientists come together to do some old fashioned field work and exploration - at a HIMB Marine Science Overnight.

Aloha,

Mark 






The Fine Print: Many many thanks to D. Rosen for the images. Use for HIMB education or the scout troop. Image of the bed being shoved into the tent via K. Kerrigan!