Intro:
My group and I have discovered and studied the water quality of both the Oxford pond, and the Coquitlam River. During our studies, we have found that there are a lot of interesting invertebrates in the water, and that the water quality is better than we initially thought. We discovered that looks can be deceiving, and even if the water was murky in the Oxford pond, it is better than we think, and living creatures can thrive in the water. Speaking of living creatures, we found lots of them in both waters!
Here is the photo of the fish that we found in Oxford pond; there were two of them, but I only took a photo of one:
Coquitlam River:
Our first study was on the Coquitlam river. We found that there were a lot of invertebrates clinging on to the rocks, which is why we had to use scrubbers to get them off and in to our nets. We used our thermometers to test the temperature of the water to see how cold it was, and we kept them in for a total of two minutes to be safe.
Oxford pond:
The next place we went to was Oxford pond. As I mentioned earlier, the water looked quite murky right off the bat, so our group hypothesized that the water quality wouldn’t be good. However, we found out that the water quality was better than we thought, and the pond had a lot of interesting creatures living inside its waters!
Here, you can see a tadpole in the water. Up by my group member’s hand, there’s a little invertebrate that made its way in to the photo!
Comparisons:
The water in Oxford pond was muddy and not clear, while the water in the Coquitlam river was clear. However, just because it’s muddy does not mean that it has poor water quality. We found a lot of interesting critters in both of the waters, bigger ones in the pond, and smaller ones in the Coquitlam river.
Conclusion:
All in all, this was a very fun experiment to do! I enjoyed testing the water quality with my group members and exploring all of the invertebrates in the waters. My favourite part would have to be identifying the invertebrates, because it’s cool to explore and identify all of the different types of invertebrates. I learned a lot from this experiment, and I look forward to all of the other experiments we will conduct in the future.