Sharks

Tuesday

All day on Tuesday I worked with Ben and Emily as part of the education program. There has been a large amount of school groups visiting the aquarium in the past few weeks since school has been winding down to an end. So, I spent all day shadowing two different education programs with different school groups. The first program that I shadowed Tuesday morning is designed to teach 4^th – 6^th graders about Coral Reef construction. I was a part of this program the other day as well so if you would like to learn some really cool facts about coral and its habitat you can refer back to my previous posts.

The second program that I helped with taught a few classes of 8^th graders about the features of sharks and their importance to the ecosyst

em. They learned about different adaptations and functions that sharks possess. For example, the kids learned how different species of sharks have different shaped teeth for different reasons because their eating habits differ depending on what their desired prey is. Sand Tiger Sharks’ teeth are long and sharp, designed for piercing, while Tiger Sharks’ teeth are serrated because they are designed for tearing into their prey.

The students also learned about one really cool evolutionary advantage that allows sharks to glide through the water almost effortlessly. Sharks have really cool skin, known as dermal denticles, meaning ‘skin teeth’. Sharks scales are tooth-shaped (hence the name) which allow water to flow over the ridges extremely fast. This can increase the speed that a shark can swim drastically, making it a really fast and really dangerous predator. It was great to see how much the kids loved to learn about the sharks! Because, they really are one of the coolest fish in the ocean.