Plankton explorations continue....

Post date: Feb 6, 2020 12:49:28 AM

October 8, 2019

This is my second semester participating in Kilo ʻĀina’s plankton group and every Friday, my group members and I go to Iroquois Point which is in ʻEwa at the mouth of Puʻuloa. Plankton is a very crucial component of our everyday life but not many people know anything about them. We learned that there isn’t really a baseline list as to what type of plankton is in Puʻuloa so that is the plan for this semester. We are planning to list what type of plankton is there, try to quantify to determine how much plankton is in a certain amount of water, and determine different trends that may occur between our data.

Last semester, we collected samples from Neal Blaisdell Park which is in East Loch and now, we are closer to the opening of Puʻuloa and we have already noticed differences in both amounts and types of plankton. Since we meet on Friday’s, we also get to do other activities such as visiting the North Shore and doing a plankton tow there as well as going to Sand Island to visit the Hōkūleʻa and interact with a group from Switzerland to teachthem about the importance of plankton.

We have just recently started to learn to quantify the plankton in a set amount of water and will continue to do this to look for any trends that may occur, not only with this location but with the other two locations as well in Puʻuloa. So far, we have found different things which we have not seen before and I am excited to see what we find next!

- Kelsey Y.