When new Matinicus Island Elementary teacher Dave Duncan first considered a saltwater aquarium for his classroom, he was initially looking for suggestions and perhaps donations of old fish-tank equipment. Duncan contacted the Maine State Aquarium, a branch of the Department of Marine Resources (DMR), to discuss the necessary permit required to possess an undersized lobster. DMR Education Director Elaine Jones, natural science educator and DMR intern Amy Hamilton, and retired elementary teacher and DMR employee Jean McKay, having just finished up with a busy summer season and happy for a change in their own routine, thought a field trip to Matinicus sounded like a good idea. To Mr. Duncan’s surprise, they offered to bring the whole works to our school…aquarium, supplies, information and print resources, even live specimens. That was just the beginning.
A marine biology lab was planned for Monday, November 1. “We’re going to dissect squids!” The DMR educators had brought a bin full of small squid and lab activities suitable for even the youngest students (Matinicus Elementary this year includes students from Kindergarten through the 7th grade). As Elaine took Mr. Duncan through the research-permitting paperwork, and explained why a few marine species should not be kept in the aquarium for good reasons, Amy and Jean conducted the squid lab.
Each of the seven students was presented with a fresh (although quite dead) squid on a paper plate. It was tempting to laugh when these kids, most of whom have spent much of their lives aboard a lobster boat and who think nothing of handling the messiest of half-rotten bait, still made faces and joked, “Eww! It’s slimy!” Nobody took that too seriously. They took measurements, discussed squid body parts and learned some proper terminology. They examined the delicate skin, with its chromatophores which enable it to change color for camouflage. Students were shown how to remove their squid’s “pen,” a stiffening internal structure with a texture similar to fingernail. They examined the eyes and removed the hard lens which provides the squid with uncommonly good eyesight. They examined the squid’s eight legs (or arms) and two tentacles, seeing those to be quite different structures. They looked at mouth parts and removed the animal’s bird-like beak. Finally, the young biologists carefully opened up the animal, looked over the internal organs, and found the ink sac. Then, dipping the “pen” into the squid ink, they wrote their names on their lab reports.
After squid science, they had squid art. Each student made a colorful squid print on a fabric flag using paint and their specimen (thankfully still whole enough to look like a squid!)
The DMR educators recommended against tossing remains of deceased aquarium animals back overboard, and they didn’t want to toss the squid either, as that would set the wrong example. The subject of dead specimens arose because predation became an issue before the classroom aquarium was even fully operational. Most of the crabs were evicted almost immediately when it was discovered that they’d eaten the first juvenile lobster right in the shipping cooler (tiny lobsters need to be able to retreat to shelter). Something had also chomped the little skate. A second lobster was dispatched by the DMR to Matinicus on the airplane…a fact which drew a few chuckles from the adults; “Who ships lobsters TO Matinicus?” When one of the local fishermen appeared at the schoolroom door with a bucket containing a selection of small critters from his day’s haul, the children loudly informed him, “No crabs welcome!”
A list of “aquarium chores,” posted in the classroom, remind the students to do more than just clean the tank. This is real science; salinity, temperature, pH and other variables must be measured and other tests of water quality must be done periodically. “Do collect some mussels,” Elaine reminded the class, “because those sea stars were really after that moon snail.”
Says Duncan, “I never would have had a chance to do this in the Midwest.”
Eva Murray is a freelance writer who lives on Matinicus.