Student Projects 2020

One major goal of the striped bass initiative is to provide a forum for students to ask questions, to develop hypotheses and devise experiments to test those hypotheses.

Student Projects

Due to Covid-19, volunteer interns were not allowed on the MBL campus.  As a result, Steve Zottoli and four students devised a way to conduct research remotely via Zoom.  Laurel Barnett and Hannah Stairs, rising seniors at Westwood High School, Jenna Petrie, rising senior at Watertown High School and Rachel Gregg, rising senior at Needham High School decided that they wished to study whether the population of striped bass in Eel Pond close to the MBL was affected by the arrival and departure of the collecting vessel, Gemma.  Since the Gemma is a source of food for the striped bass, they hypothesized that when the Gemma returned from a squid collecting trip, the number of striped bass would increase.  Steve Zottoli counted the population of fish before and after the departure and before and after the return of the Gemma.  Students then analyzed the data.  There was no significant difference between the number of fish indicating that the movement of the Gemma has no effect on the population size at that site.  An earlier study utilizing sonar within the Eel Pond channel had indicated that striped bass do follow the Gemma into the pond  (See Student Projects 2018) and the students thought it might be worth repeating the sonar study but from the Gemma itself.

Four students interacted with Steve Zottoli by Zoom to develop Lesson Plans for the Stripedbassmagic website.