Marine & Freshwater Environmental Education
Trilobites are not an opportunity to taste test three different bites of food. They are an extinct marine arthropod, that looked like a squashed centipede, dating back to the Cambrian period. They’re quite significant because paleontologists use them as an index fossil for dating back other rock structures.
Image (c) smithsonianmag.com
Sturgeon are a group of primitive fish that spawn in river and live in the sea (anadromous). Some sturgeon may even abandon the life at sea and remain in the river ecosystem. They spawn in the same river in which they were born. They are covered in very heavy scales which make good protection. With all this protection they have been known to live a long time – one was tagged as 200 years old! Although, they have very sought after eggs and are in danger of being overfished for caviar. You can learn more about the stock status of the Atlantic sturgeon by visiting www.asmfc.org.
Image (c) cornell.edu
Remora refers to any member of a group of fish that can attach themselves to other fishes (usually sharks) or ships by way of a suction disk on the top of their head.They typically eat anything that falls from the sharks mouth. Do the lyrics from the Jimmy Buffet song, Fins, make sense now?
“But now she feels like a remora,
’cause the school’s still close at hand.
Just behind the reef are the big white teeth
of the sharks that can swim on the land.”
Enjoy this video from a scuba diver that was mistaken for a shark as two juvenile remoras try to attach themselves to him. I added the video so you can get a really good sense of the suction discs on the top of their heads.
Image via Wikipedia
Queen conch (Strombus gigas) is a marine snail or gastropod. If you’ve ever eaten conch fritters you understand why conch is a staple food source in the Caribbean and Florida.
The shell of a queen conch thickens and grows as it ages. They get to be about 3-5 years of age and grow up to 12 inches long.
Learn more about the queen conch here.
Portolan refers to navigational charts dating back to the Renaissance. They were focused on coastal outlines and included seaports, river openings, shoals and hazards. The distance from one point to another was always included. Latitude and longitude were not features on the maps, neither was interior land. Portolan comes from the Italian adjective “portolana” meaning “related to ports or harbors”.
Operculum is the hard scalelike cover of the gills of bony fishes. Cartilaginous fishes (such as sharks, skates and rays) all lack a gill cover.
Image (c) www.webs.lander.ed
Nematocysts are the stinging cells found in the tentacles of jellies and anemones. When provoked the stinging cell ejects a barbed thread that contains a toxin to stun (or kill) the enemy. The barbed thread is disregarded and a new one regenerates.
Here is a creative video explaining how jellies sting from jellyfishart.com. Enjoy!
Monsoons are winds that change directions with the season and are most often associated with Africa and South Asia. Winter monsoons are dry while summer monsoons bring rain. Very weak monsoons develop on the Gulf of Mexico.
Limpets are small, flattened snails with a conical shell that live on rocks in the intertidal zone. They trap water beneath their shell and use it to survive from high tide to low tide.
Image (c) wordsmith.org
Knot is a measure of nautical speed. More specifically one knot equals one nautical mile per hour. One nautical mile equals 6,080 feet.
The term knot came from how sailors calculated speed. They threw a log with a rope attached to it overboard. The rope had knots evenly spaced (every 47 feet and 3 inches). Therefore, by calculating the knots let out in a specific time frame (every 28 seconds) the speed was calculated.
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