Alternative Assignment

Instead of going on the trip I stayed back at the school and was given an optional assignment to complete. The assignment was to read a bunch of different blogs that were published by the New England Aquarium. One of the blogs that really stuck out to me was the blog on the marine rescue team. It was interesting to see how the aquarium would take in sick animals or injured animals and nurse them back to health. It was also interesting to see all of the different procedures that they would preform on these animals.


Another blog that really interested me was the penguin blog. It was interesting to see how the penguins almost immediately went back to their old ways after being out of their habitat for so long. On the blog it said that the penguins had never been out of the exhibit for so long and they seemed to flow right back into their normal everyday routine.

Tsunami Wall

In class we watched a short video about how Japan is building large sea walls along their ocean to help in case another tsunami occurs. The walls are extremely high and will act as a last ditch effort to save people from a tsunami. A lot of locals are very upset that they are putting these walls up because they feel that it is separating them from the ocean. Many of the towns that the wall is going near depend on the ocean as a way of life. They depend on it for tourism as well as bringing in business to their shops. The walls can also act as a problem for local ecosystems. I personally feel that they should invest more money in tsunami research and invest money in ways to detect the tsunamis sooner. Putting up a wall seems very drastic and I feel there are more ways to deal with this problem than just putting up a massive wall.

Bio-Geo Timeline

In class we worked on a project in class and we were assigned a certain time period. My partner Phil and I were given the Jurassic time period. This time period lasted from about 200 million years ago to 140 million years ago. This time period was the peak of the dinosaur era. There was also a large variation of plants. Since there was 20 percent oxygen in the atmosphere most of the organisms that existed back then grew to very large sizes. Also the landscape of the earth was different back then. Instead of having the seven individual continents like we do today, there was only one major continent called Pangaea. Although there was one big continent there was a little separation between what is now South America and Africa. The Jurassic Period was the height of the dinosaur era and I learned a lot about it by doing this assignment.