ACES Family Science Day

 Today was a special day for the ACES team, instead of sampling, we hosted a Family Science Day for kids and adults alike. It involved fun activities to learn about local creatures as well as a talk going into a bit more detail on our research. It was a great success, and here are some pictures from the event.

Sam George showing some local children how to test the water salinity of our touch tank’s water using a refractometer.

We setup several microscopes with specimens of local plankton so that the children could see what their beloved whales are eating. Needless to say the words “eeeewww” and “that’s creepy!” were thrown around a lot, but the kids really enjoyed it and so did we.

Local whale biologist Craig George brought out his inner child to come join the fun. He was most impressed by the whale lice and large copepods. At one point I actually heard him say “I am coocoo for cocopods!”

Here, Sam is showing some kids all the live fish and other critters that we had in our touch tank. This was a great hit! So much so that I couldn’t even get close enough to get a picture of the animals themselves..

In the past 2 weeks the weather has been very bad, with winds above 30mph most of the time. This has push in lots of plankton, and sea birds are in a complete frenzy along the beaches to pick out whatever they can find. A local hunter was kind enough to let me take a look at the stomach contents of an Arctic Turn so that we could find out what they were eating, and we allowed to locals to take a look for themselves. This image shows three Krill or Mysiid shrimp that had recently been eaten by the bird.

Team In-Seine posting infront of all of the flounder coloring contest entries.

A closer look at entries, these kids really did a great job at coloring these in, so the library agreed to hang them in their kids area so that all their friends could come by and see them.

And here are the artists preparing their masterpieces to win the contest. The winner’s drawing will be post on the next blog, and they will also receive one of our ACES long-sleeve shirts and a mystery prize!