Fishy Food Chain

                     MARINE FOOD
                      CHAIN





Maybe its just my personal preference but the arrows in this picture should be going the other way to make more sense...








   Phytoplankton is the first level of our food chain, followed by the zooplankton, which feeds on the phytoplankton. The zooplankton are then eaten by krill, fish and other crustaceans, which all go on to be eaten by big fish, penguins, seals, walruses and whales. The food chain continues when these are eaten by mammals like polar bears.
      If you think about the food chain logically it is easy to understand. Without plankton, all of the oceans animals would die. Without phytoplankton, zooplankton would not have food and die. Without zooplankton, krill, smaller fish and other crustaceans would have nothing to eat and they would die, etc, etc.  Until finally you get all the way out to large mammals like whales, dolphins, and manatees. All animals in the ocean depend on plankton for survival.

My polar buddies out in the Arctic!

A baby harp seal has white fur.The babies are helpless and the white fur helps camouflage it against the ice and snow. Harp seals will eat a lot of different sea food. Crab, krill, crustations, capelin, plaice, eels, shrimp, salmon, herring, octopus, flounder, cod, plankton, smelt, anochovies, jellyfish and squid are favorites. Pups drink milk from their mothers. One interesting fact is that if a harp seal pup eats, it's teeth grow. When it doesn't eat it's teeth don't grow. In normal dives harp seals come up to breathe every five minutes. They can and will dive to a depth of 600ft. and stay down thirty minutes.

First Movie Friday Blog (:

In my Ocean poop class we watched a movie about life underwater. There were some really neat fish that I've never seen before. Considering we had a three day weekend bare with me on the lack of memory I have regarding the film. They showed a certain kind of fish that looked sideways. I couldn't remember what they called it in the video so I google searched it and it described it as a Mola Mola Fish, I dont think thats right. Anywho I thought that particular fish was interesting because it would have birds and other kinds of fish pick parasites off its awkward body.