Odiorne Point Trip

By Gemma R.

June 7, 2022

Copyright 2022 ©

For this trip, we split the grade up and got on two different buses. We got to Odiorne Point after a one-hour and thirty-minute bus ride. Everyone got off of the bus and got ready to go into the tide pools. We spent about an hour in the pools until it was time to eat lunch. While we were in the tide pools, we found all kinds of creatures that we brought to a small tank (we released them later). After lunch, we got called back to the tide pools to see The Drowned Forest. Then we all got back on our buses and went to get ice cream. Then we went back to school.

Intertidal Zones: Tides are caused by gravitational forces created by the moon. The Earth has two big bulges of water on either side. The Earth experiences one period of high tides and one period of low tides, each last for about 12 hours. When the tide is high, the bulge will get bigger on the side of the Earth that is experiencing the high tides. When the tides are low, the bulge will get smaller on that side of the Earth.

Black Zone: The black zone, also known as the “splash zone”, is at the top of the hill, higher than any of the other zones. On the rocks in this specific zone is cyanobacteria, which gives the rocks a layer of a slimy black substance that makes them very slippery and gives them their color. This layer of rocks only gets splashed by a little bit of water every 12 hours during high tides.

White Zone: The white zone is the second layer down. The rocks in this zone are covered in barnacles. Barnacles are small creatures that will find a rock or bigger sea animal to latch onto for the rest of their lives. The white zone will get splashed a bit more often than the black zone but it will not get completely soaked all of the time.

Brown Zone: The next layer is the brown zone. This zone gets its name from the brownish-green seaweed/kelp that is covering the area. There are two types of kelp in this zone, rockweed and knotted wrack. The two have very similar features except knotted wrack has pointed tips and rockweed has rounded tips. Both of the species have small air bubbles in them which help them stay floating but they won’t float away because, on the base of the seaweed, there is a holdfast that keeps the plants secured on rocks or the ocean floor. This zone gets splashed much more often than the two above it because it is closer to the water. It is very hard to walk on because of the water and seaweed.

Red Zone: The final zone is the red zone. The red zone is home to Irish moss, which is a species of algae. This zone gets wet the most because it is at the bottom of all of the other layers, leaving it exposed to the water more than the other zones. There are all kinds of creatures living in this zone. Some examples of these creatures are starfish, sea urchins, crabs, and lobsters.

While I was at Odiorne Point I saw many different animals and creatures. I found lots of snails, barnacles, and sea urchins. I also saw a few crabs. I didn’t catch any sea stars or lobsters but I did see ones that other people caught. Another thing I saw a lot was different kinds of seaweed. For example, knotted wrack and rockweed.

Where is there the most variety, and why do you think this?

I think that the brown zone had the most variety of creatures. There were all kinds of seaweed, crabs, snails, and sea urchins. The thing that I saw the most was snails. There were so many different snails on the rocks and on the sea floor. I also saw a bunch of sea urchins in the brown zone and the red zone. I think that there was a lot of wildlife in this zone because the seaweed provides protection or shelter for the different creatures.