Signs of Spring!

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the flowers are blooming! While everyone has been enjoying the signs of spring we know and love, the 1st grade scientists conducting field studies at SoundWaters have been observing another, lesser-known sign of the change in seasons – the reappearance of plankton. Our students use special nets to capture and microscopes to examine the plankton life in Long Island Sound, and they’ve been excited to see plenty of plankton populating the shallow waters around Cove Island Park. One of the most common types of plankton we have seen this month is a larval stage of barnacle called a cyprid. After a few weeks, these barnacles will settle on hard surfaces, undergo metamorphosis, and become the much more familiar sessile adult barnacles.