When Madison County 4-H reached out to me in May expressing interest in holding a youth open house at Shackelton Point this summer, I instantly shared this interest and decided to make it happen. I quickly learned that careful planning is needed to put together an engaging, informative itinerary for an event and audience like this, but in the end, it turned out great. Take a look at some of the day’s most popular activities.
We kicked off the day learning about the smallest animals in Oneida Lake- zooplankton. After touring one of CBFS’ labs to look at real zooplankton through microscopes, we crafted our own plankton. Since zooplankton move by getting carried by the current, they must have body shapes that prevent them from sinking too fast. Therefore, I challenged the kids to build a zooplankton that sinks slowly without floating. At the end, we had a race to see who built the slowest sinking plankton.
One game that was surprisingly well-received was Round Goby musical chairs. The game’s purpose was to show how invasive Round Gobies take over native fish’s resources. To play, each kid represents a native fish, and an equal number of chairs in the circle represents food and habitat.
For the first round, the kids walk in a circle around the chairs until the music stops and they quickly sit. Everyone finds a chair which shows there are enough resources for all fish before Gobies are introduced. To introduce the Gobies, each chair gets a mystery Goby card. The round repeats, except this time for certain chairs the Gobies kill off the native fish in some way, indicating they’ve taken over. Rounds repeat until the Gobies take over all the native fish habitats. Eventually, we called an audible and introduced “native fish predation”-simulated by the kids trying to tag the one in front of them. Round Goby musical chairs taught the kids the importance of preventing invasive species introduction.
Earlier in the day, we happened to catch two juvenile sturgeons in the weekly gillnet. It was convenient timing as I got to show our visitors the rare fish.
The grand finale of the open house was the seine net demonstration. It was a great opportunity for the kids to see a variety of different fish while participating in real-life field work methods. I taught them how to identify certain fish using a dichotomous key.
As with the county fair, the open house allowed me to hear different perspectives on the lake, which is important for guiding future research. The event this week proved to be fun and informative, and my hope is that it helped inspire the next generation of aquatic biologists.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to come back next week to hear about my final week on Shackelton Point. In the meantime, enjoy some views from the water.
