| Determining
Your Essential Habitats
http://www.stripertracker.org/education/lp-efh.html#activity1
 Lesson
synopsis: What if an alien suddenly visited your classroom,
took a snapshot and returned home with the understanding that humans
lived in square rooms with desks and chairs? Would that be a valid
assumption, or should the alien follow you around for a couple of
days to see all the places you go and why you go there? Do all human
habitats look the same? Are they used for all the same reasons?
For two days, (Sunday and Monday) have your students keep a notebook
in their pockets and record all of the places (habitats) visited
and how long the visits lasted. Have the students start with the
moment they open their eyes in the morning and end with going to
bed, including the sleeping time in the notes. If they wake up during
the night and go somewhere, have them write it down.
Fish Tagging Activity
http://www.stripertracker.org/education/lp-efh.html#activity2
Lesson synopsis: Tagging animals has been an acceptable
method for monitoring wildlife for a long time. Using various methods,
scientists have been able to observe daily movements, seasonal migrations,
and growth rates of individuals in a population.
Fish tagging and telemetry is really the only way to follow the
continuous movement of fish rather than their location at a point
in time. There are a variety of reasons for wanting to track fish
from pure scientific reasons to economic reasons.
Larger fish that eat other smaller fish are called piscivorous.
Healthy populations of these smaller fish like the mummichog are
essential to the survival of the larger fish so it is also important
to learn about their populations and habitats. A simple method called
mark-release-recapture is often used to approximate the number of
resident fish living an estuary. The Petersen Method is the simplest
mark recapture method because it is based on a single episode of
marking animals.
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