Oceans in Motion

At school today Oceans in Motion came to visit and allow the kids to touch and learn about aquatic creatures. The Oceans in Motion people bring a whole truck that's a giant aquarium. The kids can go inside and see four different habitats - open ocean where sharks live, shipwrecks, pier pilings, and the Chesapeake Bay. Then they go to a touch tank and learn about the animals that they are about to touch, like sea stars (DON'T CALL THEM STARFISH!!! The people are a little obsessive about that!), sea urchins, sea snails, crabs, and other little animals.

Here's a real puffer fish that is fully puffed out. It was cool to see because I've never seen a puffer fish that was actually puffed out all the way!

This is a sea urchin that we could touch. It's related to the sea star because both creatures have a mouth on the bottom, a nose on the top, and a star-like shape. You can't really tell that a sea urchin has a star shape until it dies. Then the thing that it leaves behind, called a test, has a star shape.

Did you know that a sea star has an eye on the end of each arm? That means it has 5 eyes, but it can't see out of any of them. It can only tell where shadows are and the difference between dark and light. The bottom of the sea star has tons of little suction cup things and they're really sensitive. They're ticklish so you don't want to touch a sea star on the bottom...only the top where it's bumpy.

The really cool thing too is that my sister said that she might be able to do a dissection with my class at the end of the year like she did 3 years ago. She helped the kids dissect a shark then and they LOVED it. This year she might be able to do a shark AND a sea star with them! I can't wait!