14 Jun Teach A Man To Fish and He’ll Eat for a Lifetime….. Unless He Fishes in the Blackstone
My fans all keep asking me “James! James! James! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO BE WORKING ON THIS SUMMER??” I would simply answer, “Just wait and see.” While this answer was mostly because I did not really know exactly what I would be doing, I liked to tell myself I was building anticipation. Well, your anticipation is about to come to an end…….
I do not have one singular main project. This summer I will be creating many different opportunities for the general community to learn about the ecological and environmental health of the Blackstone River. Right now I am preparing for a community event called “Rivers Day”. This is an event to celebrate the river and bring the community together to learn about different aspects of the river. For this event, I am creating an activity to illustrate Biomagnification. Because the Blackstone River is one of the most polluted rivers in America, it is advised not to eat whatever fish you catch during your day of fishing 🙁 To show people why they don’t want to eat the fish, I will be teaching them about biomagnification and how the toxins in the tissues of the fish they may want to eat are riddled with toxins.
This activity uses beads to simulate toxins in the environment. As beads are added to each container representing a crawfish, bioaccumulation is being simulated. Then the medium container (yellow perch) comes and eats the crawfish and the beads get dumped into the new container. Each perch will “eat” 3 crawfish for two rounds of feeding, so 6 crawfish in total. The four yellow perch will then get “eaten” by the largemouth bass. At this point, the concentration of beads is very high in the bass, illustrating biomagnification. This is just one of many activities to come over the course of the summer.
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