Free Science Classes for Local Schools

Winter Classes Teach Students About Conservation and the Salish Sea

Since 2008, the AmeriCorps members at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center have coordinated free science classes (FSC), a grant-funded winter program that offers free classes and bus fares to schools within about an hour’s drive of Port Townsend. We reach out mainly to schools with a higher percentage of students on free or reduced-price lunches, which otherwise might not have the chance to visit our exhibits.

The goal of this program is to introduce and inspire conservation of the Salish Sea to students from the area. This year, AmeriCorps Natural History Educator Ellie Kravets took the lead on coordinating the FSC logistics.

Each class that attends takes part in one class in the museum and one in the aquarium. This year, Ellie, Mandi Johnson, Michael Siddel and I decided to design two new curricula for the classes. Both of them require a high level of participation from the class to get students excited about the material.

Ellie Kravets and students in the TownQuest class discussing how plastics can harm animals.
Photo by PTMSC staff. 

The museum class, “TownQuest: A Salish Sea Adventure,” features a “choose your own adventure” style activity in which the students make decisions as townspeople. Their decisions impact the amount of plastic waste in the Salish Sea, the morale of their fellow townspeople, or both. Students utilize their critical thinking skills to come to decisions about how to minimize and solve environmental challenges.

Students working on their "Adaptation Scavenger Hunt"
in the aquarium for the Invertebrates class.
Photo by PTMSC staff. 

The aquarium class, “Invent an Invertebrate,” focuses on various  marine invertebrates’ adaptations that help them survive in their habitat. Students learn about the adaptations, see them in the aquarium, and then invent their own invertebrate by buying various adaptations with “sand dollars.”

The final piece of the FSC puzzle is the group of volunteers that help us with each class. We wouldn’t be able to keep all of the kids engaged and focused without their help!

This is the 12th year that PTMSC has held these classes for schools in the area. Prior to this year, the program had reached 7,325 students with an average of 665 students per year. We currently have 650 students enrolled for this year, with the possibility of adding an additional 100 students from one more school.

One of my favorite parts of this program is comparing the pre- and post-FSC surveys—something that each of the students fills out to show what they learned during our classes. I love seeing their ideas about how they are going to make a difference by being more thoughtful about plastic reduction and making sustainable choices.

With five weeks of classes left to go, I’m excited to continue showing students how interesting our environment is and helping them to see that it is worth saving!

Written by AmeriCorps Aquarium Educator Marley Loomis.

"Why are the Crabs Dirty?"

Please consider making a gift today to support our tanks, and our decorator crabs from the Salish Sea. Donate HERE!

“Why are the crabs dirty?” I heard behind me in the Marine Exhibit one day. Thrown off by the visitor’s question, I turned around and my eyes focused on the crab they were pointing to in the wall tank. It all made sense when I saw the graceful decorator crab scuttling along among the abalone, away from the sides of the tank, almost as if it knew it had been found. I jumped into educator mode right away, and answered, “That’s a great question.”

A (dirty?) graceful decorator crab (Oregonia Gracilis) hanging out

on the inflow of the small wall tank. Photo by Juhi LaFuente

The most wonderful aspect our Marine Exhibit is the chance to gain new knowledge about Salish Sea fish and invertebrates. When I first started at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center, I knew very little about specific species of crabs. Aside from what I had learned in my college invertebrate zoology class, I hadn’t thought about them much. However, once I started feeding individual crabs, and interacting with them in tanks every day, they became one of my favorite animals in our Marine Exhibit. As a person who is recovering from a phobia of spiders and spider-adjacent creatures, it means a lot when I say that I think the way these arthropods walk around the tanks and move their little maxillipeds (mouth parts) is quite cute. I love inspiring others to see them the way I do now. So, when I explain how decorator crabs got their name, and see others’ eyes light up with fascination, it is a truly fulfilling experience. I hope I can light your eyes up, too.

Decorator crabs consist of many different species, all belonging to part of the superfamily Majoidea, known as spider crabs. We have many spider crabs in our exhibit, but not all are decorators. The decorator crab in question was the graceful decorator, Oregonia gracilis, a naturally abundant Puget Sound species. If you can spot them, graceful decorator crabs can be found in the small wall tank, against the back wall of the Marine Exhibit. In our huge piling tank, we have another type of decorator crab, called the longhorn, Chorilia longipes, which is usually hanging out against the tank walls, looking at the passers-by. These crabs’ natural ecosystem includes kelp forests and the intertidal zone, ranging from Alaska all the way down to Mexico, but they’re particularly abundant in the Pacific Northwest. In nature and in our tanks, the decorators are covered in foreign material (hence their dirty appearance) and found behind rocks and kelp, hiding from predators like fish, sea otters, and octopus.

Longhorn decorator crab (Chorilia longipes) hanging on the pilings. Photo by Wendy Feltham (Checkout our Instagram to see a video of this crab with a filter-feeding hitchhiker on its arm!)

The decorator crab namesake refers to the way they adorn their bodies with all kinds of ornaments. The decorations include almost any materials found in their environment. The crab’s hard outer shell, or exoskeleton, has tiny hooks all over called hooked setae. Hooked setae act as a sort of Velcro on which the crab can stick materials it picks up from its environment. Their adornments act as a camouflage, but also as a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship. The “materials” picked up by the crab can include some bryozoans, hydroids, algae, sponges, and small anemones. Invertebrates gain access to parts of the water column and food they wouldn’t usually have access to by hitching a ride on the back of the crab. In turn, the crab gets an easy disguise, and when resources are limited, also an easy source of food. If a crab finds an accessory like chemically-defended plants or stinging anemones, the crab is even less likely to be predated upon. Larger crabs need fewer decorations because they can defend themselves, but they’ll often still wind up with some hitchhikers on their backs.

The decorating doesn’t really stop after covering the exoskeleton canvas; a crab is always working. Crabs’ exoskeletons do not grow with them. As they outgrow their armor, they grow a new shell underneath the old, effectively forcing the old exoskeleton off. After disrobing, the crab will hide until its new exoskeleton hardens, and then the decorating process starts all over again. They often recycle old bits and pieces of material from their discarded shell (a great example of environmental stewardship!).  In captivity, decorator crabs have been known to disrobe and grow a new shell when moved to a different tank and new environment, effectively creating a blank slate for its new camouflage masterpiece.

A graceful decorator crab (Oregonia gracilis) waving at you through the acrylic. This crab is decorated in red algae. Photo by Wendy Feltham

Our decorator crabs at PTMSC interact with guests and staff all the time. In nature, humans and decorator crabs have very little direct interaction, although there are some negative human impacts on their ecosystems. Surface runoff of oil, pesticides, sewage, and other chemicals can contribute to pollution of ocean ecosystems, truly making the crabs’ environment “dirty.” (Runoff pollution contributes to larger issues like ocean acidification.) As environmental stewards, we can all make eco-friendlier choices to reduce negative impact on the Salish Sea. The crabs might thank you for that.

Next time you visit our Marine Exhibit, I hope you take the time to search the tanks for our decorator crabs. I hope you experience the revelation that the rock you were staring at underneath the kelp, barnacles, and sponges is actually a crab, as it slowly crawls away to munch on some food or find some new artistic materials. I also hope you become so enamored that you sound just as silly as I do when I have one-sided conversations with them through the acrylic. While cleaning or feeding, I compliment them on their attention to detail in design. I like to think they appreciate the compliments on their labor, because much like an environmental steward, a crab’s work is never done.

Find out how you can "Go Blue" to protect the crabs and become an environmental steward on our site! ptmsc.org/about/go-blue-initiative

Follow us on other platforms to see more cool crabs! Instagram (@ ptmarinescictr) Facebook (Port Townsend Marine Science Center) Newsletter (Octopress Online)

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BROOKE ASKEY is the Citizen Science Educator and AmeriCorps member serving at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center

Lonely Abalone Seeks Life Partner

Young Abalone
Photo by Wendy Feltham

When you walk into the Marine Exhibit, it is like entering a different world. I have always been fascinated with the sea and all it has to offer. Growing up on the coast of Maine I spent my summers exploring every tide pool I could find. I have carried this fascination throughout my life. The Marine Exhibit allows you to peek into the tide pool and underwater environment. It gives me the same excitement I found in those childhood summers. Next to the Marine Exhibit is the classroom, a space many students have sat waiting and wiggling, before entering this different realm. One day last week, I opened the door and let the students enter this magical land. Their faces lit up with such energy and huge smiles. I told my coworker that I felt like Willie Wonka opening the doors to the chocolate factory. This fascination is something that many people have when it comes to the marine world. All of the creatures and plant life are full of stories, facts, and memories for the staff, volunteers, and visitors in the Marine Exhibit. One invertebrate, in particular, holds a special place in the hearts of many at the Marine Science Center.

The Pinto, or Northern, Abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana) is one of my favorite creatures in the Marine Exhibit here at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center. The pinto abalone are marine snails found from Sitka, Alaska to Point Conception, California.  They are often referred to as, “the lonely abalone”. This name comes from the fact that their population is too small and spread out to reproduce successfully. Abalone use a reproductive strategy known as broadcast spawning that involves the male and female counterparts releasing eggs and sperm into the water. Abalone broadcast spawn between April and June. If successful reproduction occurs, the abalone will remain in a planktonic phase, floating in the ocean for 10-14 days before settling onto a rocky ocean floor.

As herbivores, pinto abalone scrape algae off rocks with their file-like tongue, known as a radula. As they grow larger they began to eat brown and red kelp;  whichever one they consume more of is reflected in the color of their shell.  Abalone have a number of predators, including sunflower stars, sea otters, some species of fish, and humans. To defend themselves, they use their muscular foot to stick to rocks and their shell as a shield. Abalone spend most of their time hidden among rocks.  As they grow, their shells become covered in a plethora of life, including algae and sponges, which makes for good camouflage. Since the 1990s, pinto abalone populations have declined more than 90% and they  have been a species of concern since 2004. The abalone population is in such great decline due to overharvesting. Although their foot is a delicacy , abalone fishing in Washington was outlawed in 1994. A great effort has been put into the restoration of pinto abalone in the Salish Sea.

In 2013, The Port Townsend Marine Science Center partnered with the Puget Sound Restoration Fund to help raise pinto abalone. We were  given 200 baby abalone,  no bigger than your thumbnail. One hundred of them were raised in a tank and the other half were raised in a structure resembling  a beehive that was submerged in water off of the dock.  Staff and volunteers took very special care of these young gastropods by feeding them three times a week and weighing and measuring them once a month.

Tagging the small abalone
Photo by Wendy Feltham

“The latter tasks weren’t always easy”, recalls volunteer and Board Member Wendy Feltham. The abalone would often stick to the surface they were being measured on and the only way to get them to move was by placing one of their predators close by. The sunflower star has a voracious appetite for pinto abalone. If you put a sunflower star in close proximity to the abalone they will let go of the surface they’re on. To help record data, some of the abalone were tagged.  The device used to tag them is the same one used to tag bees.

PTMSC volunteers Katherine Jensen and Sue Long with young abalone
Photo by Wendy Feltham

The Port Townsend Marine Science Center was able to keep twenty of these abalone for the Marine Exhibit. The other 180  were returned to the Puget Sound Restoration Fund facility. They were kept in tanks on site and eventually  returned to the Salish Sea. The Pinto Abalone is a unique creature, one that I was drawn to right away here at the Marine Science Center. They get so excited to eat with their tentacles waving in search of their green kelp goodies. Learning the story of the time spent to raise these invertebrates is one of the many ways the Port Townsend Marine Science continues to wow me. The work the Puget Sound Restoration Fund is doing to restore the pinto abalones’ populations is truly inspirational.

“It is still possible for us to keep an iconic and treasured species from blinking out—on our watch. Our goal at PSRF: to rebuild sustainable populations of the Salish Sea’s only native abalone—the mighty Haliotis kamtschatkana—so that, once again, pinto abalone can graze our subtidal waters and successfully reproduce in the wild.” -Puget Sound Restoration Fund. http://www.restorationfund.org/projects/pintoabalone

A present day abalone feeding
Photoby Brooke Askey

The pinto abalone are just one of the many amazing and fascinating creatures to be found in the Marine Exhibit. I look forward to continuing to be wowed  by the marine life which surrounds me here in the Salish Sea. I, too, feel like a kid in the chocolate factory when I enter the Marine Exhibit, both surprised and in awe of the fascinating underwater world.

Please consider making a gift today to support kids education, animals, and a healthy Salish Sea: ptmsc.org/get-involved/donate

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Sarah Croston is the Natural History and Volunteer Educator and an AmeriCorps member serving at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center.