Plankton are NOT actually evil!

This time of year, the density of plankton in the upper Bay is really starting to pick up. Earlier in the spring, it is often tough to find both types (plants and animals, known as phytoplankton and zooplankton), but now that it's officially summer, both types abound.

We are currently running a joint camp with the Edgewood Sailing School, so students learn how to sail in the morning, then come to STB to learn marine science in the afternoon. On our way back from picking up campers at Edgewood aboard Save the Bay's vessel Swift, Captain Amy and I talked a little bit about plankton, and several of the campers said "Plankton is evil!" The only association the kids had with plankton was from the cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants, where a creature named Plankton hatches evil plans. At least they had heard of it somewhere.

So we decided to catch some, to show them what plankton really is.

We explained that the word plankton comes from the Greek "planktos," meaning a drifter, or wanderer. A good definition for plankton is that they drift with the currents. Most are microscopic, but they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes -- jellyfish, for example, can grow HUGE in some parts of the world. Some types of plankton can swim to some extent, but they aren't able to swim against a current, so they go where the current takes them.

Tom and Andrea set out the plankton net to tow at the surface for the little organisms. The surface is a good place to catch plankton because the phytoplankton need sunlight in order to photosynthesize, and the zooplankton, which are slightly larger, enjoy eating the phytoplankton. Our net had mesh the right size to target the zooplankton, because they are more active and more fun to look at. Once we got back inside, we started to explore our catch with the microscopes.

And, to the campers' delight, the first thing we saw was a copepod -- the very type of plankton that the little critter on SpongeBob most resembles!



(Picture was taken of projection from our micropscope image)

For more information on plankton, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankton
For information on copepods, visit http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zoomorphology/Biologyintro.html
To book a program with Save to Bay to find your own plankton, visit http://www.savebay.org/education_overview.asp