The Year 13 Biology students were lucky enough to attend a research field course at Portobello. Here’s what they have said about the opportunity:

“The purpose of our visit was to learn how to collect and evaluate data when working with small animals. During the three-day visit, we learned about crab species, research ethics and niches. This was applied against our chosen hypotheses to undertake an investigation which created data.” John Waters-Wilkinson investigated “whether a change in the distance of a group of rocks from a crab affected freeze and re-shelter time”. Logan Bird investigated “whether a change in the dissolved oxygen content of seawater affects the time it takes a crab to flip over”. 

The students will now work towards a Level 3 NCEA standard where they can evaluate their experiments.