Field Trip # 2 A Marine Environment

For this field trip, I visited the Smithsonian Marine Ecosystems Exhibit in Ft. Pierce, Florida. This aquarium has many displays of ecosystems and marine wildlife.  I took my husband and son with me to this exhibit and we all thoroughly enjoyed the museum.  Even though the exhibits were in controlled environments, the species were well adapted to onlookers.   

 

Several of the tanks showed different types of plant life that grows around marine life.  These plants were beginning to grow algae on the ends as most aquatic plant life does. 

This is a scarlet cleaner shrimp under the shell and there is also a clown anemonefish.  If you have seen finding Nemo, you should recognize these creatures :)

I found this to be one of the coolest creatures we encountered that day!  This is a Blue Sea Star.  As you can see this is much like a regular star fish but is much thicker and is able to freely move his limbs around.  We watched as this chubby star fish moved its way around the bottom of the tank. 

This was a baby shark that had just hatched recently!!

This aquarium was full of species from the Caribbean.  All of the exhibits were expertly removed from their prospective oceans and transferred to this museum. 

This is a rock-boring urchine.  These creatures use their five sharp teeth and stiff spines to dig our burrows in the rocks.

On the bottom right is what is called a Pink Tipped Anemone.  This is the largest anemone in the American Atlantic tropical waters.  Small fish and shrimp often live in the tentacles for protection.    Also in the photo are Sun Zoanthid's.  These are the little yellow colored circle things to the right of the pink topped anemone.  These are easily mistaken for a plant or fungus, this a colonial animal closely related to anemones and corals.  Just to the right of the Sun Zoanthid's is the Symmetrical Brain Coral.  This is called a brain coral due to the closeness of this coral's skeleton to a human brain. 

This is a closer view of the Symmetrical Brain Coral. 

This is called Grooved Brain Coral.  This coral is distinguished from other brain coral by the extra valley inside the ridges.  Large specimens may be six feet in diameter. 

This is a Queen Conch shell.  The long stem looking things on the bottom of the shell are the eyes and the shell actually grows with the animal! I always thought they got rid of the shell and moved to a larger one. 

This was very interesting too! I have never seen a 9 legged star fish!  This was in the bottom half of the observation tank.  The museum had recently acquired this specimen and is giving it time to adjust and adapt to its new environment. 

Enjoying the observation exhibit :)

This is a horseshoe crab.  Underneath you probably notice those long furry looking things.  Those are called sea cucumbers.  They clean the ocean floor and are very squishy to touch. 

More sea cucumbers and urchines.  If you pick up an urchine, you can see them lower their pointy sticks.  

I only encountered one type of tree life in this exhibit.  This was called Red Mangrove.  These trees have long, finger-like prop roots that provides support for the tree and oxygen for the root tissues.

Although all of these animals were moved from their natural habitats, they seem to have adjusted very well to their new environments.