My grade went on a trip to Odiorne Point on the 7th of June, in the year of 2022. We boarded the bus and headed to Odiorne. It was a very loud ride there. When we arrived at Odiorne, the majority of us went tide pooling, but later on some of the other students just played Wiffleball the rest of the time. We had so much fun, and after we were done at Odiorne, we rode on the buses to Johnson's and each got a kiddie ice cream bowl, which turned out to be a VERY large amount of ice cream. We headed back home to Hopkinton, and the bus ride back seemed calmer than the ride to. It was an incredible trip!
Why Do Tides Occur?
There are special forces that cause tides to occur, called tidal constituents. An example of a tidal constituent is the Earth rotating, but the most major one is the moon and its gravitational pull on the earth. The sun also has a gravitational effect on the earth, but the moon is stronger because it’s closer. The moon sends a tidal force over the whole planet earth, which might not have a large effect on land area, but it does in areas occupied by water. The tidal forces cause water to bulge upward towards the moon because of the gravitational forces, becoming tides.
Black Zone
The black zone is the top-most tidal zone, right below the area of dry land. It’s called the black zone because the rocks in it are covered in cyano-bacteria, a large algae-like thing that has chemicals/bacteria that give the rocks their black color.
White Zone
The white zone is the one under the black zone, and it’s called the white zone because the majority of the rocks within its area are covered in dozens and hundreds of barnacles, which give it its white color.
Brown Zone
The brown zone is the one under the black zone and white zone, and it’s a larger area that gets its name from all the brown-colored plants that lie between, on, and over the rocks, which are called knotted wrack weed and rockweed.
Red Zone
The red zone is the final zone that lies at the very bottom, under all the other zones. It gets its name from the red plant that grows in the majority of its area, which is called Irish Moss, and it looks sorta like a tree sapling.
I saw MANY different plants and creatures at Odiorne, but my favorite was the Northern sea Star, and I happened to be the only person in our grade to collect one. I also saw two kinds of crabs, the green crab and the Jonah crab, baby lobsters, sea urchins, barnacles, dogwhelks, periwinkles, limpets, tunicates, and muscles. The plants I saw were rockweed, knotted weed, horsetail weed, Irish Moss, all different kinds of algae, and more. Myself and several of my classmates went with Mr. Woolner and got to see the legendary Drowned Forest, (which is over 3,000 years old, most likely 4,000!) and we got to observe the ancient tree stumps and roots, which will soon be gone.
I think that the Brown Zone has the most variety because it is covered in big pools of water that are home to hundreds of small creatures. I know that many crabs were found, as well as baby lobsters, and hundreds of barnacles. I believe that I found the most of my creatures in the Brown Zone, and, ALL of the zones seemed to be coated in a blanket of weeds, which were most likely either rockweed or knotted wrack weed. We also saw different kinds of kelps in the Brown Zone, such as the Sea Colander, otherwise known as Shotgun Kelp, Sugar Kelp, and Horsetail Kelp.
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