Boston Harbor Research Cruise (Module 9)

Students will learn about Boston Harbor’s history, present uses, and future opportunities. They will experience a research cruise on Boston Harbor examining plankton, crabs and lobsters, sediment sampling, and shorelines both of built Boston as well as the Boston Harbor Islands. They will learn about how natural processes shape shorelines, and how we can learn from nature to design coastal systems that are adaptive as sea level rises and climate changes. Their experiences will culminate in designing a vision for the future of Boston Harbor.

Pre-requisites: None

Requirements: Full participation in the 3-hour research cruise, the What is in the Harbor lesson, and the post-lesson on developing and presenting a research plan.

Learning Objectives 

Students will be able to:

• Connect with the coastal ocean (Boston Harbor) to build curiosity and explore connections between land and ocean
• Describe how people interact with the harbor in terms of the organisms and chemicals in the water, the processes that shape the shoreline, and the uses people have for the ocean.
• Conduct fieldwork observations and use scientific tools to gather and analyze data
• Explore future changes in Boston Harbor due to climate change, human uses, and societal values.
• Consider careers related to the ocean.

Course Format

• 1 hour of pre-cruise classwork
• 3 hour cruise
• 2 hours of post-cruise classwork

I) Pre-Cruise Class: What is in Boston Harbor?

Materials: A Boston Harbor map, a vial of seawater, a sample of sediment, and some beach sand including shells.

Engage: What do you know about Boston Harbor? Have you ever been to the shoreline or a Boston Harbor Island? What did you see?

Activities (10 min each, rotating)

1. What is in the water? What could be seen or unseen in the water? What could be dissolved. Where might it come from? How do chemicals get to Boston Harbor (sewage, streams, road runoff)? What organisms (plants and animals) grow in the Harbor? Where to they come from? Where do they live? A bunch of laminated cards with photos on one side and descriptions on the other could be made or shared.
2. What is at the bottom of the ocean? How big are the sand grains? How can we measure this? Look at the sediment and beach sand (under a microscope). Where would you find these? Where do the sand grains come from? What might move them?
3. Boston Harbor Map. What are on the islands? How would you know? How do organisms get there? How do people use them? Several island cards with names and uses. Also the UMass Boston dock…depths, channels.

Wrap-up (as a group)

What happens to lawn fertilizer? What does fertilizer do for lawns? What does fertilizer do for algae? What happens if too much algae grows? Dies, Eutrophication, drop in dissolved oxygen levels, fish kills. Discuss how system as a whole has some resilience, but if surpassed, could collapse.

II) Research Cruise: Pre-homework-read Lesson (from Greg Koman)

Activities (3 groups, rotating)

1. CTD-Temperature, salinity depth.
   Deploy the CTD and take measurements from the surface to the bottom, and back again. Deploy the Niskin bottles to collect bottom water. Record your visual observations of the environmental conditions (e.g. sea state, weather, wind, cloud cover, appearance of the water and any observations concerning the CTD cast itself).
2. Deploy Secchi discs (if possible, on both the sunny side and shaded side of the boat).
   Lower the Secchi disc and record the depth at which it disappears as it is slowly lowered. Then, lower it another meter and then slowly raise it up. Record the depth when you first see the disc again.
3. Collect and process water samples.
   The surface water sample will be collected using either a bucket or a Niskin bottle. The students working on the CTD and Niskin Bottle casts will provide the bottom water sample. Before filtering, students should measure the salinity of the water using a refractometer. Then, 100 ml of surface and bottom water samples will be filtered and the chlorophyll extracted from the filter paper. The samples will be read at the end of the lab period on a fluorometer.
4. Plankton Tow
   In addition to the positions that will be covered at each station, we will also deploy a plankton net at Station 1 and Station 3. The plankton collected in the net will be poured int a small glass dish for viewing under a microscope. We will also have algae available to view under the microscope. During our return back to the university, each student should take time to view the microorganisms under the microscope.

III) Boston Harbor Research Project Design

Boston Harbor is a dynamic, urban coastal ecosystem. While much is known about how the system functions, there are many pressures such as climate change, sea level rise, and coastal development that are constantly making changes. As you have all had direct experiences in Boston Harbor, please form small groups to design a research project.

1. Design a Research Question (30 min)
   [Instructor-there might be a do now of students writing words that they think of when remembering the Boston Harbor Research Cruise. Then these can be used to form small groups of 3-4 students.
   
   Join a group with similar interests. Some ideas include the future of a species or ecosystem, nature-based approaches for coastal resilience, detection of new manmade chemicals, or designing a new shoreline.
2. Develop a Research Plan (30 min)
   What would you do to answer your research question? What materials and equipment would you need? What samples would you take or measurements would you make? How many measurements would you need to address your question? What is your timeline?
3. Predictions (10 min)
   What do you think you will learn? How would you display your data? How might you communicate your results to your parents? To other 9^th graders that were not able to go on the Research Cruise? (10 min)
4. Presentations (30 min)
   Each group shares their research project to the class (3 min presentations, 2 min for questions)