MaST

The mission of the Highline College Marine Science and Technology Center is:

to promote understanding, appreciation, and preservation of the marine environment through hands-on research, education, and community activities that highlights the beauty, complexity, and importance of the South Puget Sound ecosystem.

They definitely accomplished this goal and won the hearts and minds of the Gemstones and Navigators during our visit this year! We started by thinking about how energy flows through the plants and animals of the Puget Sound (a GREAT way of putting what we'd learned about food chains and the web of life into practice):

Then we learned all about plankton (Did you know the word plankton is Greek for "drifter" or "wanderer"?)

Felt the baleen of whales that eat plankton:

We collected a water sample full of plankton:

And then observed them under the microscope:

These pictures really can't capture the excitement of seeing the tiny moving creatures - some of the students could not believe they were alive!

There's a huge whale skeleton hanging on the front hall:

And a shed full of marine creatures in the back:

There were 5 or more Rock Sole (Lepidopsetta bilineata) in the tank shown below. They really demonstrated how well camouflage (one of the adaptations we learned about) really works in nature!

We also got to explore some of the other exhibits in the hall - skulls and fur of different seals and otter:

What a wonderful place to study marine science!