We had a difficult start to our day today,
anxiously waiting and preparing for our first test of the intensive! As we
attempted studied marine mammals and invertebrates, sperm whales and squid, we
questioned if the amount of learning and memorization was worth a trip to the
beautiful Bahamas! Turns out, we all survived and it really wasn't too bad
(definitely worthwhile considering we can soon experience what our test was
on)! We even got a mint to get us through the test, and some awesome stickers
on our returned tests!
After a relaxing break, we continued on with
the marine chapters! Thankfully, everyone returned to class BY 10:05 so we did
NOT have to do push-ups this morning! The rest of the day's agenda went a little
like this: Sharks, sharks, and more sharks!
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| Just a nice school of sharks |
But really, we began our shark filled day with
a JAWsome DyKnow. While skates and rays were briefly mentioned, sharks were the
focus of the session. All of this new information we learned about sharks, like
how petting a shark towards the tail feels smooth and petting it towards the
head it feels like sandpaper, would be put to test later in the day! A few
other interesting things we learned from this DyKnow was that sharks control
their buoyancy through their liver, sharks counter-shade to camouflage
themselves, and they can have babies in three different ways: Oviparous (eggs
laid outside the shark), ovoviviparous (eggs laid inside the shark), and
viviparous (live birth). With all this new knowledge on sharks, we were even more
excited to dissect some, which would be our next activity. We finished off the
session with some common misconceptions on sharks, specifically on sharks
tendency to attack humans. Only 50-70 people worldwide are attacked by sharks
each year, yet even those are typically due to people resembling a seal or
swimming during dawn and dusk, their feed time. After this reassuring fact, we
were off to lunch!
After gearing up in proper sanitary gear,
which was really just gloves, we jumped right into examining the sharks.
Exploring the exterior of the shark, pointing out the anterior and posterior
dorsal, the five gills, its counter-shading, and all the other characteristics
we had previously learned about. We then began cutting it open. We saw their spleen,
which manages their red blood cells, their liver, which stores energy, and all
the other organs of the shark. Although it was pretty gross, certainly nowhere
near as bad as the slimy, smelly squid we dissected Monday. We even got to see
what the sharks ate before they died! However, it was clear only one was
hungry, because while one shark had a stomach full of fish bones, the others
was empty.
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| Have you ever seen the inside of a shark? |
Yet the empty-stomached shark had something
even better inside - babies! That’s right, the female shark we were dissecting
was pregnant, with what we soon discovered were five little sharks! Each shark
was attached to an egg, and it was so cool watching what was basically a shark C-section
occur right in front of our eyes!
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| Josh (left) and Ander (right) - proud parents hold their newly born dogfish |
After a brief photo shoot with the little guys,
we had a speedy clean up to assure we would have plenty of time to watch Joy -
our favorite celebrity - dissect a great white shark!
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| Joy (far right) and her team beside the Great White |
It was really cool to see how our dissection
compared to hers, yet hers was clearly on a much grander scale. It was also
Joy's first time dissecting a shark, so it was exciting to compare our initial
reactions to hers. In addition to the dissection, the movie compared the Great
White Sharks bite to a crocodiles, which was surprisingly much weaker than the
crocodiles. Joy even dove down in a cage to see the sharks up close, which was
a little scary considering the openings of the cage seemed to be big enough to
fit the shark, or at least the mouth.
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| Would you get in the cage? |
However, the movie also made sure to clear up
the misconceptions of sharks, mentioning how they truly are just misunderstood!
Overall, despite the clear tiredness due to the lack of sleep from studying for
the test, it was a pretty exciting day. We can't wait to swim up close with the
sharks in just a couple of days
That’s all for now,
Sara and Jillian
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