From: Your E-pal
To: My E-Mail Pal
Subject: Ocean Habitats
Date: August 25, 2003 1:23 pm

Dear E-Mail Pal,

Question:

Where does your animal live?  What other plants and animals live there?

 

Specific Tasks:

If we’re going to make the background for our mural look realistic we’re going to have to learn more about the habitat that our animal lives in.

1. Let's go back to the Virtual Aquarium to explore our animal for a little bit to find out what habitat it lives in.   We can find out more about what habitat our animal lives in. 
   
   
2. Once we learn a little about our animal’s habitat, we can use the links below to learn more about where our animal lives and what other plants and animals live there.
   
   
3. Then, we can create the background for our life-size animal.
   

Scenario:

OceanQuest says that they want us to learn more about our animals habitat (where our animal lives and what other animals live there.)  Do you know where our animal lives? Does it live in an Estuary, Rocky Shore, Salt Marsh, Sandy Beach, Tidal Pool, Ocean Surface, or the Deep Ocean?  Have you ever been to or read about our animal's ocean habitat?  What is it like?  Let's learn about our animal's ocean habitat together!

Below we can find some great resources that the Virtual Museum has provided.  Let's use these as a starting point to learn more about the ocean habitats, which one our animals lives in, and what other plants and animals live there.

 

Great Ocean Books:

Use these great books to explore the wonders of the ocean. For a complete list of Great Ocean Books see our Great Ocean Books and Annotated Bibliography.

Bennet, Paul  Under the Ocean (Natural World Series) 1999
Knight, Lindsay  Under the Sea (Nature Company Discoveries) 1995.
Massa, Renato  Ocean Environments (The Deep Blue Planet) 1997.
Sayre, April   Ocean  (Sayre, April Pulley. Exploring Earth's Biomes)  1996.
Riccuiti, Edward  Ocean (Biomes of the World) 1996.

Online Resources:

General Ocean Sites

Oceans     A great staring point.  Good general information and illustrations.
Oceans Alive    Great Site to learn about the water cycle and oceans.
Secrets@Sea    This textbook like pages give great general information on the ocean.
Undersea and Oversee    This is a great page with super links.
Oceans Virtual Field Trip    Well written. Easy to use. Great photographs.
The Ocean Biome    Good information on the ocean habitat.
Neptune's Web    A large Site with lot's of information.  I found it a bit difficult to navigate.
Marine Biology    A great resource to get in-depth information on ocean plants and animals.
Ocean Planet    Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History presents the ocean.
Oceans and Coastal Protection    The EPA has developed a great site here.
Oceans '98    Good ocean resources. It is from 1998, so it can have some dead links.
Health of the Oceans    This Real Audio speech from Science Friday gives a great outline of the oceans.

 

Ocean Coastal Regions

Estuaries

EPA: What is an Estuary?    Great descriptions and graphics.
Estuary: Where River Meets the Sea    Brings estuaries to you with fantastic descriptions.
Estuaries: Gateway to the Sea    You may not realize how important estuaries are to us. This site can help.
Explore the ESTUARY: Live on the Web  Explore four types of estuaries.

 

Rocky Shore

Rocky Shore     Excellent description of the rocky shore
The Rocky Shore     Explore life on a Rocky Shore.
Rocky Shores Page   Great information on Rocky Shores but has some tough vocabulary.
Beavertail ~ Rocky Shore     Go on a field trip to the Beavertail Rocky Shore.
Maine Rocky Shore Plants    Excellent descriptions and great pictures.

 

Salt Marsh

Salt Marsh     Explore a Salt Marsh.
Marsh Mania: What Lives Here?   Lot's of good reading and fun activities that will lead you on a journey into a salt marsh
Salt Water Vegetation    The salt marsh is more than the barren, muddy tangle of weeds.
Salt Marshes Trailhead   Take a virtual field trip to explore a salt marsh.
Salt Marsh Page    Good information on salt marshes.
The Fragile Fringe  Great site

 

Sandy Beach

Sandy Shore  Great information on the sandy shore
Beaches   Great images and clear descriptions make this page a must see.
The Sandy Shore    Great upper level descriptions.
Ocean Battle Zone   God information on the beach.

 

Tidal Pool

Tide Pool-Window into the Sea      Kid friendly description of what makes a tidal pool a tidal pool.
Life in a Massachusetts Tide Pool     Good Descriptions of plants and animals typically found in a Massachusetts tide pool.
Edge of the Sea: Virtual Tour    This New England Aquarium takes you on a virtual tour of a tidal pool. 
Life on the Rocky Shore    Life on the Rocky Shore is a ThinkQuest Jr. Page about ocean tide pools.
Tidal Pool Exploration   Series of 5 photos of a tidal pool that takes you from mid-high tide to low tide.
Marine Reserve Scavenger Hunt    Explore life in a Tide Pool.

 

The Open Ocean Regions

Surface

Stellwagon Bank    A great case study of a surface habitat.
Kelp Forests    Learn about kelp (an abundant plant) that gives food and hiding spots for many surface animals.
Seaweed    Can you believe it! A whole site on seaweed.
Virtual Whale Watch    A fun way to learn about the ocean surface.  Lot's of great graphics with some information.

Deep Sea

Offshore Bottom Characteristics     Explore the ocean's depths.
Deep-Sea Bestiary    Nova Online lends it's expertise to guide you through the ocean's depths.
Ocean Adventure    This ThinkQuest Jr. site brings the deep right into your classroom.
Hypothermic Vents       The navy provides great graphics and descriptions of these deep sea vents.
The Light at the Bottom of the Ocean    Explore the mysterious glow seen in the ocean deep.
The Bioluminescence Page   Discover why some deep water ocean animals glow.

Activity:

I really think that we are making some great progress.  Now, that we know what ocean habitat that our animal lives in and what other plants and animals live there we can start to work on the background for our life-size animal. 

 We will need to:

1. Draw a realistic picture of what we would like our background to look like.
   
   
2. Develop a strategy to make our background.
   
   
3. We will need to find out the size of our animal so that we can measure out the background to make sure that it is big enough to fit our animal and have room on all sides so that people can learn about our animal's habitat.
   
   
4. Use all the resources that we have available to us (large bulletin board paper, construction paper, paint, markers, glue, tape...) to make sure that our background looks realistic.
   

Revisit the Question:

Where does your animal live?  What other plants and animals live there?

Sincerely,

Your E-Mail Pal