Marine Botanist

You will bring your expertise to the team by presenting both verbally and in writing (through your journals) the plants of the coral reef. As you know tropical species are extremely colorful and can be very unusual. Therefore, you will rely heavily on visuals.

Research Questions for the Marine Botanists:

1. What plants live in and around the coral reef? Identify, visually represent, and research eight.

2. How does each contribute to the ecosystem?

3. Assess the importance of some of these plants outside of the ecosystem.

4. Choose 3 plants and rank order them according to their importance. Justify why it is so important that they be saved from extinction.

Internet Sites

For the Internet portion of your WebQuest, you will follow these links specifically chosen for your topic.

Ocean Planet http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/ps_immunity.html

National Marine Sanctuary http://wave.nos.noaa.gov/ocrm/nmsp/nmsfloridakeys.html

Marine Plants of Hawaii http://www2.hawaii.edu/~tissot/seaweeds/seaweeds.htm

Diving Bonaire http://www.interknowledge.com/bonaire/bondiv01.htm