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Camp Internet Expedition VIII
Passport Answers
1. How is it that birds can drink salt water for their fresh water source?
Unlike more terrestrial birds, seabirds can drink seawater. Their beaks contain nasal glands that act as a filter - like a second set of kidneys - and these glands filter out the salt before the water enters their bodies. The excess salt is excreted through the nostrils or the roof of the mouth.
2. What helps seabirds swim?
Some seabirds use their webbed feet to swim; others have long narrow wings that work like flippers underwater. Their feathers are covered by their own natural oils, which creates an insulation around them keeping them warm and dry.
3. How many types of seabirds live in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary?
There are sixty reported species of birds that live, breed, and raise their young on the Channel Islands, and eleven on the five northern channel Islands.
4. Most seabirds are monogamous - they mate with the same partner for life. Why is this an advantage for survival in the wild?
The task of incubating and rearing chicks is so strenuous that it require two parents working together to reproduce a new generation. In this way they have a better success rate of survival with one parent available to protect the eggs or hatchlings while the other can be off finding food.
5. Why is it especially hard for seabirds to recover from disasters, such as oil spills?
First, as an animal group, they have a slow reproduction rate and are quickly devastated by disasters. In oil spills, the gooey oil renders their waterproofing ineffective and hampers their ability to float.
6. What type of pollution was threatening the Brown Pelicans and caused them to be classified as endangered?
Off the coast of the Palos Verde peninsula, on the coastline of Los Angeles, there still remains dangerous sludge from a factory that produced a now-illegal pesticide called DDT. This chemical, when absorbed by the fish in the sea, is then consumed by birds such as the Brown Pelican and their eggs become too soft to hatch. When the mother birds tries to sit on her eggs and warm them, the shells are easily crushed.
7. What solutions have helped the Brown Pelican recover?
To help the birds recover from this problem, scientists have been taking the eggs out of the nest, hatching them in incubators on the mainland, and then returning the hatchlings to the nest to be raised by the parents.
This is also true of the Bald Eagle native to Catalina Island. In the place of the eggs, the scientists leave behind mock eggs that the unknowing parents continue to sit on thinking they will eventually hatch.
Other protective measures taken have been to ban oil drilling in the area of the pelican hatcheries.
8. Name eleven sea birds that breed in the Northern channel Islands:
The Ashy Storm Petrel, the Black Storm Petrel, Brandt's Cormorant, California Brown Pelican, Cassin's Auklet, Double-Crested Cormorant, Leach's Storm Petrel, Pelagic Cormorant, Pigeon Guillemot, Western Gull, and the Xantus Murrelet.
9. How is it that North Pacific and equatorial tropical fish all come to visit the Channel?
In the southern channel waters, warmer waters from Mexico circulate up and around the islands. In the Northern channel waters, the colder waters come down from Alaska and circulate around the islands. This brings arctic and tropical fish into a common zone.
10. What is the Great American Fish Count?
The Great American Fish count is an annual project where divers around the United States volunteer to receive training to identify and count fish in specific underwater areas. Their reports help scientists compare patterns in fish abundance. The fish count takes place in the Channel waters each year.
11. How many types of sharks live in the Channel?
More than 25 species of sharks are known to live in the northern channel waters.
12. What is the name of the largest shark, and how long can it get?
The largest shark found in the channel waters is the basking shark that can reach 45 feet in length - about the length of two classrooms.
13. What makes a shark a shark?
Sharks share common characteristics: they are vertebrate animals with skeletons made of cartilage, a translucent elastic tissue, rather than bone. They live in water and breathe via 5-7 gill openings, and they have special skin that is covered with dermal denticles, tiny tooth-like scales embedded in the skin.
14. What do sharks eat? What characteristics do they have that make them good hunters?
Most sharks strong fierce teeth that help them catch small to large prey in the waters - fish and sea mammals. These teeth, combined with a tough skin, and a powerful momentum make them one of the most feared fish in the sea.
15. Which sharks do not prey on large fish or other sea mammals? What do these other shark eat?
The two largest shark ironically feed on microorganisms and small crustaceans that they strain from the sea.
16. There have been over 150 new species recently identified in the channel - life forms never known to man before. Who discovers these creatures as part of their job activities?
Scientists working on research projects out on the channel waters have discovered these life forms. They include scientists who study vertebrate and invertebrates (animals and creatures with and with out backbones).
17. Name the native animals that still live on the islands.
Island fox, spotted skunk, California ground squirrel, ornate shrew, several types of mice, and bats are native to the islands. So do California sea lions, Northern sea lions, Northern fur seals, Guadalupe fur seals, and harbor seals. And there are snakes, lizards, frogs, bald eagles, falcons, and up to 58 other birds.
18. Name the introduced animals on the islands.
Rats, cats, dogs, horses, rabbits, burros, deer, elk, buffalo, cows, goats, pigs and sheep are examples of introduced animals.
19. Name ten native species of plants found on the islands.
Bunch grasses, oak trees, ironwood trees, wild poppies, wild sunflowers, sage, manzanita, pine, jimson weed, island cherry trees are examples.
20. What are the threats to these native plants?
Introduced plants, animals and insects threaten the future of the native plants. Grains like oats and barley are crowding out bunch grasses. Herbs like fennel are crowding out native plants. Animals like goats, sheep, and pigs that run wild are devouring native plants faster than they can recover. Insects like the European bees that help the fennel reproduce are causing a decline in the native honey bees who can find less and less native plants for their own nourishment, and then pollinate less and less native plants leading to their decline.
21. Who is working to preserve the native plants on the islands?
Scientists from many agencies are working to help preserve the native plants - The Catalina Island Conservancy, The University of California, The University of Southern California, The Nature Conservancy, The Channel Islands National Park, the Catalina Island Marine Institute, are examples of groups that coordinate volunteers to help remove the invasive plants with the goal of restoring native vegetation.
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