Plankton hunting off the dock of the bay.....

I know. I know. It's been a long time since 7th grade science or Biology or whatever.

Here, I'll make it easy on you and give you "Kimberly's watered down definition of Plankton":

• Plankton = bottom level of the food chain (mostly microscopic organisms that drift along in the water, waiting to be gobbled up by some bigger fish in the sea, so to speak.) :)
  

Anyway, while at Dauphin Island Sea Lab, my little marine scientist was able to take a very expensive ($100) dip net of sorts into the bay area and drag it across the top of the water in search of plankton. The net had this cool filter fabric that only allowed teeny tiny creatures (plankton) to seep into the bottle below it.

After catching about a million plankton critters, he brought them back into the lab, put them on a slide and gave them a look under the ol' microscope.

He even dropped a few drops of water into a petri dish to have a gander under another scope as well. You know what he found in there????

Plankton. You are real smart.

I mean a specific plankton????

He found a teeny tiny baby jellyfish. Yes, he did. And that is what we are pointing at.....not that you can see it ....but it's there.

Which brings me to another post for tomorrow....where I will be showing you more pics from DISL.....of some NOT so microscopic jellies.

Up close and personal.

And we weren't even in an official class for this encounter. Yikes!

Here, Here for Plankton....the food chain thanks you providing a virtual all you can eat buffet in the ocean.