Z-MAN'S+DEER+ISLAND+SHORE+ECOSYSTEM

Hi, my name is Z-Man and I am in the [|Amigos School] 6th grade in [|Cambridge, Massachusetts]. My grade is doing Wiki projects on 5 different ecosystems to help us learn more about them. I chose to do my eco-wiki project on nontropical rocky seashore. Our grade took a field trip to [|Deer Island] in the [|Boston Harbor] where we studied 2 ecosystems: meadow and seashore. We spent hours observing as much as we could and we gathered tons of information but of course, we had tons of fun.

At Deer Island, in the Boston Harbor, we took a yellow school bus to get there. Most of the ecosystem was made up of abiotic things like the rocks, sand, water and air. Those were the natural abiotic things and nicely there were only a couple artificial abiotic things: a piece of metal sticking out of the ground, the school bus and boats. We walked all around the ecosystem with our hand lens, looking at crabs under rocks, and identifying different algae’s and snails.

The seashore ecosystem at Deer Island, Massachusetts, three consumers would be [|barnacles], seagulls and muscles. Barnacles are little organisms that cling onto rocks and get nutrients from the water and when the tide goes out they dry up. Seagulls are birds that fly close to the seashore and are scavengers. Muscles are clam-like animals that are said to filter the water because the water goes through them and they clean it of plankton and other bacteria. Three producers are algae, seaweed and [|lichen]. Algae start out as microscopic organisms but they can grow up to 100 feet long and then they are often called seaweed. Lichen are half producers and half decomposers, it is half algae and half fungus. Three decomposers are snails, slippers and lichen. Snails can often be found on rocks and decomposing dead stuff. They look a lot like a slug with a shell. Slippers are just like snails but they often have a weirder shaped shell. Lichen as I said before is a cross between algae and fungi. An energy pyramid for the shore ecosystem would be laid out like this: the decomposers on the outside of the pyramid would be snails, slippers and lichen. Underneath the pyramid would be the sun and on the first level of the pyramid (primary producers) would be the seaweed, lichen, phyto plankton, and algae. The second layer (primary consumers) would be muscles, clams, fish, sparrows, worms, insects, periwinkles, sea urchin, zooplankton and sponge. On the third level (secondary consumers) there would be: fish, horseshoe crabs, insects, snails, starfish, and crabs. On the tertiary consumers level (fourth level) would be the seagulls, cormorants, and fish.

On our field trip to Deer Island in the Boston harbor, we learned and did a lot of things. Three of those things are: Turning over rocks and trying to figure out if they are native or nonnative. We learned about the different kinds of snails, like slippers. We learned about what barnacles eat and what they do. (which was very interesting) My class had a great time and we learned a ton about the shore ecosystem.

__Click here for the following__  Energy Pyramid  Food Web  ecosystem web

=Click here to see the history and geography of Deer Island in spanish=