Olivia and I decided that for our project it was necessary to have a "dramatic sail-raising" scene as part of our video. It was an excuse to have an over exaggerated repeating of commands and a little fun. I think we also subconsciously felt the pressure to do it ourselves. There was a certain sense that it is more legitimate for us to not need as much assistance with the sails. I found us asking each other for help (rather than the crew) more than the previous time we put up the sails. And we trusted what we demonstrated to each other. Maybe it was because we knew more about the sails this time. But I think it was something else too.
Continue reading "Inland Seas Blog #2: The Little Things" »
Here on the Inland Seas, we are learning about the current issues with the Great Lakes. Our ultimate challenge is to engage our peers in discussion and action for sustainability in the Great Lakes. Our group is broken into four sections. The first group is focusing on the invasive species and their effect on the lakes. The second group is focusing on the pollution and how to prevent it. The last two groups are focusing on water quality and quantity to help conserve and make the lakes cleaner. During our trip we all will be taking videos and pictures to share our experience with others. We are also doing a lot of hands on field research to better understand our issues with the lakes.
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Here’s a fun word: oophagous (OH-ah-feh-gehs). It means living or feeding on eggs. For Mother’s Day, another Shedd mom is the strawberry poison dart frog, Oophaga pumilio. Despite its evocative common name, this species comes in a rainbow of solid colors and interesting patterns, such as Shedd’s tan, yellow and orange polka dot varieties, known to biologists as color morphs. (And, of course, these bright hues are a visual warning to would-be predators that the bite-sized frogs are toxic.) But it’s little O. pumilio’s parenting behavior that is really attention-getting.
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We’ve got lots of moms at Shedd. The biggest is beluga whale Puiji (and her calf was the biggest baby at birth, weighing 164 pounds). The flattest might be the tiger ray in Amazon Rising. Tiger rays (Potamotrygon schroederi) must get their common name from their striped tails, because their disks have a dense pattern of small golden rosettes on a dark brown background.
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We’re thinking about moms in the aquatic world as we approach Mother’s Day on Sunday, but parenting is teamwork among some fishes, including two species of cichlids that live in rivers: quetzal cichlids of southern Mexico and Guatemala, and twinspot jewel cichlids, from West Africa. Each has fry that you can see right now in the Rivers gallery. The colorful quetzals have a swarm of tiny fry that the mom and larger dad round up on the back wall of the South America habitat. These doting cichlids give their offspring the scales off their backs, or at least skin secretions that the little ones feed on. They also herd the fry across the bottom in search of microinvertebrates. The parents crunch up larger food and regurgitate it to the babies. If any of the little ones stray on one of these outings, mom or dad will collect it in her or his mouth and spit it back into the group. You’ll also see another pair’s older offspring—several dozen inch-long fish—feeding on the bottom.
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Fantasea field trip sweepstakes winners visited Shedd Aquarium for a day of fun. A first-grade class from Trumbull Elementary School in Chicago and a fifth-grade class from Jerry Ross Elementary School in Crown Point, Indiana, won field trips to Shedd Aquarium with football greats James "Big Cat" Williams and Garrett Wolfe. Check out photos of their trip:
Students from Trumbull Elementary School meet James "Big Cat" Williams.
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