There were nine marine phyla that we were looking for: Mollusca, Arthropoda, Echinodermata, Nematoda, Platyhelminthes, Cnidaria, Porifera, Annelida, and Chordata. We did so by going to these tide pools in South Maui.
My research question was: Which phyla would be the most abundant within the tide pools?
my hypothesis stated: I believe the most abundant would be Mollucsa. I found out that I was correct; about 98% our my teams data contained nothing but Mollusca. We did find few, very few, crabs. Some possible sources of error could possibly be: not counting the correct amount of species, over-counting (vice versa), not being able to see a few specimens whether they be in a small crevice or they blend in with their environment.
Going out to the field was rather enjoyable, it was also somewhat relaxing to see the Ocean and feeling the soft, cool, salty ocean breeze. It was sometimes tempting to jump into the water, it looked beautiful. We also got to actually go in the tide pools and look around for some marine life, which I thought was pretty cool because if I was on my own I probably wouldn't have done that. Overall the field day(s) were pretty awesome; the only thing I didn't like was how hot it would get.
