On Thursday, the University of Otago sent two specialist scientists, Jessica Moffitt and Rob Lewis, to assist Year 7 and 8 with setting up monitoring equipment at Pounawea wharf. This will be an ongoing project contributing to citizen science at The New Zealand Centre for Marine Studies. The data that will be collected will contribute to learning about how climate change affects coastal communities. 

We learnt how to measure water temperatures at two different depths, measure air temperature and analyse amounts of life growing on settlement plates. Settlement plates are made of plastic and suspended in the water. They allow biofilm to adhere on the plastic plates which then attracts more life to grow on the plates. 

Students will collect data from these settlement plates every 12 days and record findings by way of photographs and quantitative data. At the end of this term we will go to Portobello Marine Centre to share our data with other scientists and to look at Jessica's PhD findings.