Blog 2: Abby and Meredith

 Field Guide for Coral Reef Organisms

By Abby and Meredith

To familiarize ourselves with the ecosystem we would be immersed in, we began by studying the foundational organisms of the reef––Cnidarians, Crustaceans, Mollusks, Echinoderms, and Sponges. With guidance from the Island School, our host organization, we each chose an organism to research that we would see in the Bahamas. We made sure to spread our choices across phylum and trophic levels so that, as a class of students, we could learn about a wide array of organisms in the ecosystem. We first wrote phylum overviews to get an idea for the broad categorizations of species and then we each created a field guide entry for our organism, including information such as appearance, habitat, distribution, ecological relationships, interactions with humans, behavior, life history, and fun facts. Our goal was to find information to help us identify the organism, understand their connection to the ecosystem as a whole, and to get excited about their unique characteristics.

In researching these less obvious organisms, we were able to gain a nuanced understanding of the foundational relationships upon which the ecosystem functions. We learned about specific species, but we also learned about how they can be sorted and how they fit into a broader ecosystem. We gained practice with scientific investigation and research as well as collaboration and effective communication. As a class, we got a broad understanding of the reef, but we also are individual experts on our own organisms. The interesting smaller details make us especially excited to see our organism. When (if) we identify the Caribbean Reef Octopus as we snorkel off the coast of Eleuthera, we’ll be sure to remind each other of its non-central brain!