Dead Fish in NJ Lab

Today in science class we did a lab on how fish have been dieing in the Raritan by the millions overnight. The Raritan bay is located close to Rutgers University, which is in New Brunswick, and close to New York City which harbors the very polluted Hudson River. Yet, there are two other factors that affect this the biotic factors and biotic factors. The biotic factors are the living species in the bay. For example, lobster, osprey, the fiddler and horseshoe crabs, seabirds, fish such as stripped bass and bluefish, and bio plankton. The biotic factors are the non-living factors such as garbage, oil, cargo ships, pollution, zeo plankton, which is a plant, and the weather. Speaking of weather this has two major factors it affects. That is temperature and salinity of the water. First temperature can affect how the water temperature it can go from really cold to really hot. Then salinity is how much salt there is in the water and if it rains it adds water to the bay and decreases the salt which harms animals that need the salt water. Then, we looked at the temperature for the week that the fish died and it started off hot and rainy so there was a decrease in salt in the bay. Then the rest of the week was hot which allowed the zeo plankton to grow and pretty much dominate the ecosystem in the bay. Lastly, we divided into lab groups and did a lab on how rain affects the water on the coast of NJ. Fist, we added imitations of garbage and the pollution that affects our community then took a cup of water and sprinkled all over the model Raritan bay community and saw most of the pollution wash into the river. Then, we poured the water into a tube and repeated the steps except we changed one variable, we used sponges to act as salt marshes. This is because, salt marches are like sponges were they soak up the pollution to make the water a lot cleaner. So when comparing both tubes of water the one without the sponge was green and polluted with all kinds of waste. Then, the one with the sponge was a lot cleaner but still had some dirt in it. All in all, the fish died because of pollution which does not just affects are community but communities around the world.