Post 1:
Welcome to our blog!
Sorry for the lack of posts in the last few days but we have had some technical difficulties. Fortunately, that is all sorted out and hopefully we can catch up on our blogging now. So, let’s back track a bit to where we started and how we came up with our topic of research.
Living on the west coast, the marine scientists and biologists in our group brought to our attention the intertidal marine animals that they have been studying. The interesting aspect of the intertidal marine animals, especially with respect to the earthquake in Japan and the consequential radioactivity situation, is that they are able to survive in water and on land since they live on the part of the sea floor that is sometimes exposed and sometimes submerged due to the tides. We knew that an investigation on both the effects of the radioactivity and the earthquake itself would be too much information to compile in such a short period of time. We also realized that due to the recent nature of this topic, the Japan earthquake, that occurred on March 11, 2011, we would not have access to the information about the effects of this disaster on the intertidal marine animals. Therefore, we would have to predict the effects by looking at past examples and compiling information.
Hence we arrived at our topic of investigation: “To predict the effects of the tsunami/earthquake on intertidal marine organisms through the investigation of past tsunamis.
We will be doing research using past examples of earthquakes that affects the coastlines and through this compile information to make a coherent prediction of some of the effects on the Japan earthquake on the intertidal marine organisms.
More to come soon!
Post 2:
A very important part of the intertidal zone is the alga that grows there. Algae in general are a large, diverse, simple group of unicellular to multicellular organisms that are photosynthetic. During an earthquake, waves can be produced which can clear the shelf upon which the algae spawn. Not only is this hindering the reproduction of the algae, but in addition, there are organisms that rely on the algae spawn to feed off of. For example, in the 1978 Mexico Earthquake, the pupfish were greatly affected by the clearing of the shelf on which the algae spawn due to the lack of food for them. However, the waves that clear the spawning shelf can also be beneficial. When the waves come, they also clear off the silt and other fine particles that are compiling on the shelf. Depending on the time of the year, the algae, due to the extra space, and other factors at that time, may in fact regenerate relatively quickly.
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