Bolinao and the Stewards of Paradise A Laboratory Report By: Salinas, Ruffa Mae Moron, Jenela Ayuyao, Analyn Layson, Lorenz Angelo
INTRODUCTION: Bolinao, Pangasinan is located at the Northern part of the Philippines. It is widely known for its pristine beaches, fresh sea food, and enchanting caves. The place is characterized also by having the highest single concentration of seagrasses, and diverse seawater organisms, that gives a sign of having a healthy marine ecosystem and makes it to be one of the perfect fieldwork site. During the three-day Marine Biology fieldwork at Patar, Bolinao, Pangasinan, we are assigned to do some experiments to explore the diversity of seawater. To do so, we conducted activities such as identifying and counting sea grasses and invertebrates, titrating seawater and analyzing the variations of temperature of the land and sea. This Laboratory Report presents the results and observations gathered during the experiments.
EXPERIMENT 1:
IDENTIFYING SEAGRASSES AND INVERTEBRATES Among the tropical coastal ecosystems, seagrasses are the least studied. The first Philippine-wide surveys indicated that seagrass beds in the Philippines are spread discontinuously over 978 sq km in 96 selected sites. However, this observation is reflective of data resulting from unsystematic studies and incidental collections rather than its true distribution in the country (Fortes 1995 as cited in Fortes, 2004). Seagrasses belong to the group of flowering plant s capable of completing their life cycle in a marine environment and its ecosystem is highly productive, with immense ecological and socioeconomic relevance. They support different types of biota, capable of producing considerable amount of organic matter, serve as the major energy source in the coastal marine food web, and play pla y a significant role in nutrient regeneration and shore stabilization processes. Invertebrates Invertebrates are animals without a backbone or bony skeleton.They range in size from microscopic mites and almost invisible flies to giant squid with soccer -ballsize eyes.This is by far the largest group in the animal kingdom: 97 percent o f all
animals are invertebrates. The total number of invertebrate species could be 5, 10, or even 30 million, com- pared to just 60,000 vertebrates. PROCEDURE:
Make a 30m transect belt
Place it parallel and perpendicular to the shore
Identify invertebrates, seagrasses and seaweeds present within the area of the transect belt.
RESULTS & OBSERVATIONS
PARALLEL Distance 5 meters
10 meters
15 meters 20 meters
25 meters
30 meters
Organism 1. Thalassia testudinum 2. Starfish 3. hermit crab 4. clamps 5.Sargassum polyphyllum 1. Thalassia testudinum 2. brown algae 3. snail 1. Thalassia testudinum 2. Clamps 1. Thalassia testudinum 2. brown algae 3. Halophila 4. hermit crab 5. Sargassum polyphyllum
1. Thalassia testudinum 2. Halophila 3. Starfish 1. Thalassia testudinum 2. Halophila 3. snake 4. starfish
PERPENDICULAR Distance 5 meters
Organism 1. Thalassia testudinum 2. Star fish
10 meters
15 meters
20 meters
25 meters
30 meters
3. snail 4. clamps 5. brown algae 6. green algae 7. Sargassum polyphyllum 1. Thalassia testudinum 2. brown algae 3. Halophila 4. clamps 1. Thalassia testudinum 2. Clamps 3. hermit crabs 4. Halophila 5. Starfish 1. Thalassia testudinum 2. brown algae 3. Halophila 4. Sea urchin 1. Thalassia testudinum 2. Halophila 3. snail 4. Sargassum polyphyllum 1. Thalassia testudinum 2. Halophila 3. snake 4. sea worm 5. Galaxaura fasciculata
CONCLUSION: As per our experiment, we have observed that as the distance is far from the shore in a perpendicular manner, the organisms that can be seen under water is greater in number than in a parallel manner. This is maybe due to the frequent exposure of the organisms from the outside factors. That may affect the living conditions of organisms near the shore.
EXPERIMENT 2:
TITRATION OF SEAWATER Titration , process of chemical analysis in which the quantity of some constituent of a sample is determined by adding to the measured sample an exactly known quantity of another substance with which the desired constituent reacts in a definite, known proportion. The process is usually carried out by gradually adding a standard solution (i.e., a solution of known concentration) of
titrating reagent, or titrant, from a burette, essentially a long, graduated measuring tube with a stopcock and a delivery tube at its lower end. The addition is stopped when the equivalence point is reached. Primary productivity is the rate at which energy-rich organic compounds are converted from inorganic compounds. Primary productivity is thus usually considered synonymous with photosynthesis, but this is not quite correct, since a minor amount of primary productivity is confined to photosynthesis (Nybakken 1993). Gross primary productivity is the total rate of photosynthesis or energy assimilated by autotrophs. A lesser amount is available for use or transfer by the marine organisms since part of the total production is used by plants for their own life processes. The rate of energy storage as organic matter after respiration is called net primary productivity (Smith 2012). Net primary productivity is defined by the following equation: Net Primary Productivity (NPP) = Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) – Respiration (R) There are several factors that limit primary productivity, namely, light and nutrients. Light is a factor that limits primary production because photosynthesis can only be possible when light that reaches the algal cell surpasses a certain intensity. This implies that the phytoplankton are limited to the upper portion of the ocean where light intensity can be used for photosynthesis. Nitrogen and phosphorus are some of the nutrients needed by phytoplankton for growth and reproduction. These nutrients are vital to phytoplankton partially because they occur in minute amounts in seawater. Therefore, they are limiting factors for phytoplankton productivity since the world’s oceans are nutrient-poor environments as compared to its terrestrial counterpart. Photosynthesis in the sea is measured using bottles containing either a given species of phytoplankton, a selected group of species, or a mixed random sample from the water being studied. The method of Gran (1931,1932) uses paired light and dark bottles, the dark bottle serving as control to give a correction for simultaneous respiration uncomplicated by photosynthesis (McConaughey 1978). The purpose of this study is to estimate the primary productivity in Bolinao, Pangasinan using the dark/light bottle method. This study also aims to measure respiration and gross production by phytoplankton and determine their implications. Methodology Preparing the Dissolved oxygen setup
The dark/light bottle method was used to estimate the net primary productivity by measuring the dissolved oxygen in a pair of dark and light bottles.
Four bottles were used in this experiment. One of the bottles was covered with electrical tape while the other bottles were left uncovered. Each of the four bottles were filled with seawater. The first light bottle was filled with seagrass while the second light bottle was filled with algae. The third bottle was left with seawater only. The only dark bottle was filled with algae. It was made sure that no bubbles were present in each of the bottles before sealing. The four bottles were then submerged in the ocean for four (4) hours. Determination of dissolved oxygen
After four (4) hours, the four bottles were recovered from under the water and each of them were analyzed using the Winkler’s method. In each bottle, 2 mL of manganese sulfate was added using a pipette. Using a separate pipette, 2 mL of alkali iodide was added to each of the four bottles. The bottles were restoppered and were inverted several times to enable thorough mixing. Nine (9) mL of sulfuric acid were added to each of the four bottles. A one hundred (100) mL sample was taken from each bottle and was each transferred to Erlenmeyer flasks. Each sample was titrated using thiosulfate solution, adding about 0.5 mL of starch solution (an indicator) until the color of the solution fades to pale yellow. Thiosulfate solution was continually added until the blue color disappeared. The burette volume for each titration was noted and used to compute for the moles of thiosulfate used and hence the concentration of oxygen in the water sample.
EXPERIMENT 3:
QUANTIFYING SEAGRASSES Seagrass meadows provide critical spawning, nursery, and refuge habitats for a wide variety of fishes and crustaceans (Bell and Pollard 1989; Heise and Bortone 1999). Ample evidence exists showing that fish assemblages found in seagrass communities differ from those found in oth er estuarine habitats (Weinstein and Brooks 1983; Blaber et al. 1989; Sogard and Able 1991; Jenkins et al. 1997; Tuckey and DeHaven 2006). Fish species diversity, abundance, and production decrease in seagrass beds as canopy structure, percentage cover, shoot density, and biomass decrease (Hughes et al. 2002), principally because of the high level of refuge that seagrass beds offer fishes (Stoner 1982; Edgar and S haw 1995; Heise and Bortone 1999). We cannot count every plant under water so; we count the plants in a random sample of square meters called quadrats.
PROCEDURE:
Make a 50m by 50m quadrant. Divide the quadrant into five by five quadrat. Each quadrat measures 10 meters.
Place it under water and count the seagrasses in each quadrat.
Record.
RESULTS AND OBSERVATIONS: 1ST TRANSECT BELT (PARALLEL AND PERPENDICULAR) 1st QUADRANT Red algae- 10 Thalassia- 102 Ruppia- 5 Red algae- 7 Thalassia- 158 Ruppia- 7 Thalassia-89
Thalassia- 83 Brown algae- 2 Sargassum polyphyllum – 1 Thalassia- 65 Brown algae- 6 Red algae- 5 Thalassia-84
Brown algae-3 Thalassia- 56 Halophila- 15
Halophila-21 Brown algae-3 Green algae- 26
Sea urchin-1 Green algae- 23
Halophila- 11 Thalassia-61
Thalassia-68
Thalassia- 73
Thalassia-75
Thalassia-79
Thalassia-86 Halimeda macroloba- 25
Thalassia-82
Thalassia-91
Thalassia-72
Halodule-56
Thalassia-90
Thalassia-77
Snail- 6 Thalassia- 79 Thalassia- 94
Thalassia-81
Halodule-85 Brown algae- 9 Halodule-58 Thalassia
Halodule-32
Thalassia- 68 Starfish- 11
Thalassia- 53
Thalassia- 71
Thalassia- 53
Thalassia- 70
Thalassia- 51 Sargassum polyphyllum – 1 Thalassia- 72
Thalassia- 65
Thalassia- 64
Thalassia- 47
Thalassia- 65
Thalassia- 60
Thalassia- 68
Thalassia- 63
Thalassia- 70 Halimeda
Thalassia- 58 Thalassia- 68 sea cucumber- 1 Halimeda
Thalassia- 54
Thalassia- 59 Brown algae- 9 Thalassia- 71
Thalassia- 68
Thalassia-76 Halodule-73 Snail-3
Halodule-25
2nd QUADRANT
macroloba - 14
macroloba – 10
Thalassia- 66
Thalassia- 64
Thalassia- 68
Thalassia- 61 Sargassum polyphyllum – 1
Thalassia- 52 Brown algae- 3
2nd TRANSECT BELT (PARALLEL AND PERPENDICULAR) 1st QUADRANT Sea urchin- 1
Sea urchin- 1
Brown algae- 6 Brown algae – 2 Green algae- 5
Green algae- 3
2nd QUADRANT Thalassia- 56 Snail- 3 Thalassia-51
Thalassia- 96
Thalassia- 63
Thalassia- 54
Thalassia-55
Thalassia-85
Worm- 1 Snail- 5
Clamps-4
EXPERIMENT 4:
TEMPERATURE OF SOIL AND SEA DATA GATHERED: Time 9 AM 11 AM 1 PM 3 PM 5 PM 7 PM 9 PM
Soil 35 37 37 36 34 32 30
Sea 30 33 35 35 33 31 31
CONCLUSION:
Due to high specific heat of water, it can resist rapid change in temperature compared to soil. This is also the reason of having land and sea breeze during night and day time.
COLLECTION:
