Common Rockweed

Introduction

Your team's job...

Common Rockweed (click to enlarge)

• Lead Scientist - Organize team activities and monitor completion of assignments.
• Transcriber - Take notes at team meetings and in charge of the final written report.
• Data Collector - Keep accurate records of all data that the team collects.
• Head Researcher - Coordinate and assign research topics to team members.

1. Research and gather information about the Common Rockweed.
2. Analyze photoplot slides of the Common Rockweed.
3. Draft a scientific report.
4. Present your findings at the scientific conference.

• Scientific Report Rubric
• Collaboration Rubric

Resources you can use...

• Online Sources
  
  • Cabrillo
    • National Park Service Home
    • Cabrillo National Monument
    • Cabrillo's Virtual Visitor Center
    • Cabrillo Tidepools, Windows to the Sea...

  • Tidepools
    • The Fitzgerald Marine Reserve
      • Life on the Edge
      • Lifestyles of the Spineless and Slimy
      • Why Tides?
      • The Low Zone
      • The Mid Tide Zone
      • The High Zone
      • The Splash Zone

    • Virtual Tide Pool
      • VR Tide Pool
      • Species List
      • Field Trips

    • Tidepool--Window into the Sea
    • Life in a Massachusetts Tide Pool
    • The Tides
    • The Tidepool File
    • Stephen Birch Aquarium Museum--Tidepool
    • Marine Sciences Lecture
    • Major Animals in the Intertidal Zone
    • California's Rocky Intertidal Zones
    • The Tide Pools
    • Biodiversity of the Rocky Intertidal in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary: A 24-Year Comparison
    • Summary of ACS Monterey Bay Program for August 1996

  • Common Rockweed
    • Algae: The Forgotten Treasure of Tidepools
    • The World of Algae
    • Brown Algae
    • Plant Gene Register

  Sampling must be done at low tide. David Hubbard carries a camera and quadropod while Samantha Weber keeps the data sheets on the clipboard dry.

• Slides
  One way that the scientists at the Cabrillo tidepools study the Common Rockweed is to shoot photographic slides. They photograph the exact same spot of the tidepool every six months--in spring and fall. They carefully examine the slides of these "photoplots" in order to determine the percent cover of the Common Rockweed. Percent cover is an estimate of abundance (in percent) of a species within a specific area. It describes the amount of space that the Common Rockweed occupies within the photoplot.

  Below are three slides of photoplot number 265 taken over a period of six years. Click on each to learn how to calculate the percent cover. Be sure to record this information in the data table.

  Photoplot #265

  30 Nov 90 click to enlarge 23 Nov 92 click to enlarge 21 Oct 95 click to enlarge

  > David Hubbard uses a quadropod apparatus to shoot photographic slides of each photoplot.

Write a scientific report.

Cabrillo National Monument tidepools at high tide.

Cabrillo National Monument tidepools at low tide.

1. Introduction
   
   • What is this report about?
   • Why is your team writing this report?
   • What should readers expect to learn from it?

2. Research
   
   • What is a tidepool?
   • Where are they located?
   • What type of plants and animals live there?
   • What makes tidepools such a unique ecosystem?
   • What does the moon have to do with tidepools?
   • Why is it important to study tidepools and tidepool species?
   • Give a detailed description of your team's tidepool species.
   • To what family classification does this species belong?
   • Where do they live?
   • What zone in the tidepool do they occupy?
   • How long do they live?
   • What do they eat?
   • What eats them?
   • How do they reproduce?
   • What are some interesting facts about this species?
   • And so on...

3. Purpose/Problem
   
   • What is the problem?
   • Why are scientists conducting a study at the Cabrillo Monument tidepools?
   • How long has this study been occurring?
   • Why are scientists studying your team's tidepool species?
   • Why is it important to study your team's species?
   • Why do the scientists sample in the spring and fall?
   • Why do they gather information from more than one photoplot site?
   • And so on...

4. Procedure
   Explain how your team collected data from the photoplot slides.
   1. Step one.
   2. Step two.
   3. Step three.
   4. Step four.
   5. Step five.
   6. And so on...

5. Data & Results
   Keep accurate records.

   Photoplot #_____
   Date	Percent Cover (%)

   Graph the data.

   

6. Conclusion
   
   • Review all three slides of photoplot number 265. As time passes, what do you observe about the percent cover of your team's species?
   • What does this tell you about this species at Cabrillo?
   • What can the results of this study tell us about other tidepool species?
   • How can studying tidepools help us to learn about other ecosystems?
   • What does your team recommend doing to protect the tidepools?
   • And so on...

Share what you have learned.