Create Your Own Marine Food Web

Cape Cod National Seashore is home to numerous different types of ecosystems. Each ecosystem has different animals that fit into the food web. Visitors come from all over the world to enjoy Cape Cod National Seashore, bird watching, looking for seals, wading in tidal zones, all for a glimpse of some of the animals that inhabit the Cape. Click the video below to learn about the marine food web, and make your own at home!

 

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Hey Guys, its Ranger Olivia.

Here at Cape Cod National Seashore

Like anywhere else in the world

All living things are linked together to form on very complex community.

There are two things that these organisms need to survive.

Energy and Matter.

The flow of energy and matter in an ecosystem can most easily understood and explained

by what we know as a food web.

One of the most important parts of a food web starts actually about 93 million miles away with the sun.

There would not be life on earth without the sun.

And its the sun that starts the first step in the energy transfer cycle in an ecosystem.

The first step is with the producers.

Producers are organisms that get their energy from sunlight

and transfer it into food in a process called photosynthesis

We have many producers here at Cape Cod National Seashore

from the marsh plants behind me, to trees, beach grasses, and flowers.

We also have producers in the water, such as algae,

and microorganisms such as Phytoplankton.

The next step in the energy transferring in an ecosystem are the consumers.

The consumers consume, or eat, the producers.

The first level of consumers are the "primary" consumers.

An example of that are deer, rabbit, insects, and small birds.

In the oceans, examples of primary consumers are Zooplankton, or Sand Lance, which are small fish

Next, are the secondary consumers, because they are the "second" level of consumer.

And they eat the primary consumers.

They get their energy from eating the other consumers.

Thus, the energy transfer, of the ecosystem continues.

Examples of secondary consumers are Red Tailed Hawks, and Fox

And in the ocean, bigger fish, such as flounder, stripped bass, and even seals

The pattern continues, to tertiary consumers, or 3rd level consumers.

These are the ones that eat the secondary consumers.

The energy transfer continues.

In our ecosystem, great white sharks play a really interesting role.

Because nothing is able to hunt them.

So we call them apex predators.

However, the energy transfer cycle doesn't stop there.

One of the most important parts of that cycle are the decomposers.

Decomposers play an important role in the ecosystem by breaking up dead matter.

In other words, they eat dead plants and animals and they put those nutrients back into the soil

for the producers to use.

Examples of decomposers are bacteria and fungus.

Now that we understand a food web a little bit better. Lets take it to the next step.

What would happen if we were to deforest an area?

Or if we were to over fish an area?

What would happen to that balance of all these organisms.

Food webs are really complicated, but they help us understand how interconnected

every organism is here.

We wouldn't have sharks, without phytoplankton.

And we wouldn't have whales, without tiny Sand Lance.

This shows how important it is for people to let the natural process happen and to not disrupt a balance ecosystem

Thanks again for joining, my name is Olivia, I'll see you next time

The craft we will be making today is going to resemble an ecosystem

with many different organisms interacting in a food web, like you can see here.

To start we'll need some tape, scissors, pencil, some crayons or colored pencils

what ever you have. Some popsicle sticks or pipe cleaners.

You will also need, our drawing sheet, or our coloring sheet

a paper plate, and some colored paper, I have two tones of blue here.

Lets get started

First step we're going to take our coloring sheet and you're going to color it in

with a crayon or colored pencils

I've made them pretty similar to what they look like in the wild

but you can color them anyway you want, or even draw your own creatures too.

We're going to take the paper plate and we're going to trace onto

one of our pieces of construction paper.

We are going to go about half way the paper plate, so about halfway.

We're going to trace the edge of the paper plate.

You can see the line there on the blue paper.

And with our other color, we're going to do the same thing.

Turn our paper plate over, and trace only about 1/3rd of the paper plate.

So we don't want them to be the same size. This one is going to be a little shorter.

Now we're going to cut out on the blue paper where we had traced around with the paper plate

Please be careful with the scissors, and get an adult if you need help. Once we've cut around the edge of our tracing line,

we can add a water line to the top to make it more realistic.

Now we are going to tape those pieces of blue paper to the side of our paper plate.

We only want to tape the sides, so keep the bottom open, and we'll see why in a minute

And we'll put the smaller piece on top of the bigger one,

and again just tape it on the sides so its attached, but still open on the bottom.

Just like that.

We're going to take our coloring sheet, we colored in earlier

we're going to cut out all of the organisms.

Now we are going to take the popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners

and we're going to tape each one to a popsicle stick.

I've stuck with the ocean theme, but you can draw any animals you want and cut them out and use them.

Such as animals in your backyard or a forest or anything like that.

We're going to grab the shark here, and do the same thing.

And then next, we're going grab the paper plate we made earlier

and then we're going to put the popsicle stick, through the water, as you can see here

that's why we kept it open on the bottom.

We can move the shark as it would in the ocean.

Thank you so much for joining me. I'll see you next time

Duration:

6 minutes, 20 seconds

Join ranger Olivia to learn about the food web at Cape Cod National Seashore, and create your own at home.

 

Materials needed:
Tape
Scissors
Pencil, crayons or colored pencils
Popsicle sticks or pipe cleaners
Paper plate
Paper (any color but blue works best)
Animal Template (Below)

 

Animal Template

 

For more information about the different ecosystems found at Cape Cod National Seashore
For more activities at home