Power+of+Predators

On February 2nd, I attended a Teen Science Cafe meeting at the Daily Planet Cafe in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The subject of the meeting is the power of predators. The speaker of the presentation is Enie Hensel, a PhD student at NC State’s Department of Applied Ecology. She is also an ambassador at Sharks for kids. Her presentation discussed many aspects of the marine food web such as the apex predator, trophic levels, and trophic cascades. The role of predators in the marine ecosystem can vary, from a blue crab crawling in the salt marsh to a shark cruising over a coral reef. After her presentation on the role of predators in food chains, we did an activity modeling a food chain. 3 kids were made sharks and the rest of us were made groupers. As groupers, we tried to pickup as many small fish as possible. This is related to the environmental science because it talked about the roles of predators in an ecosystem. Predators are important such that they can keep their prey’s population healthy and balanced. They are also able to alter the behavior of the animals around them.

Picture of me holding up the little fish I ate as a grouper