The students at the Long Island School are the proud parents of baby lobsters! This spring the school has been participating in the Lobster Larvae in the Classroom project, designed by The Lobster Conservancy (TLC). The lobster “nursery” is located in the basement of the school, where the larvae are frequently visited by the students, staff, parents and community members. Several of the lobsters will spend the remainder of the school year in an aquarium, and the rest will be released back into the ocean.

The Lobster Larvae in the Classroom project was designed by The Lobster Conservancy to help introduce scientific concepts to students in a way that is interactive, hands-on and fun. The project was presented to educators at the Lobster Literacy Conference, hosted by the Island Institute in December. The staff at the Long Island School thought the lobster project would be a wonderful teaching opportunity, as lobsters and lobster fishing are vital to the community on Long Island and a subject that the students can relate to.

To begin the project, an enclosed circulating tank system had to be constructed. Using funding from MBNA and lots of help from TLC, the equipment was gathered and assembled in the basement. The system consists of a large kreisel (round tank), which holds the larvae. The kreisel drains into a barrel, or head tank, which contains a “biofilter”: a mass of shredded PVC pipe with a coating of bacteria, which consume the ammonia and other waste produced by the lobsters. The filtered water is then pumped back into the kreisel.

The larvae require lots of care to keep them healthy. Every day they are fed live brine shrimp, which have to be prepared ahead of time. The students assist with the feeding, and have learned how to monitor the water quality. Each day they take turns testing the pH, ammonia level, salinity and temperature. They also have kept track of which development stage the larvae are in.

Lobster larvae pass through four stages between hatching and becoming settled juveniles living on the ocean floor. The school received the larvae from the New England Aquarium as Stage 1, which look a bit like tiny shrimp. Between each stage they molt, or shed their shells. The students discovered that if they looked closely in the tank, they could find floating molts left behind by the growing lobsters. The molts, and the lobsters, are great to study under a microscope.

As the students monitored the lobsters’ growth, they discovered a problem. The larvae were disappearing! They learned that at Stage 2, the larvae begin to eat one another. More larvae were ordered from the aquarium that were already in Stage 3, and the new arrivals thrived in the tank. They quickly molted into Stage 4, which finally look like miniature lobsters. In the wild, Stage 4 lobsters will settle to the ocean floor and seek shelter under rocks to begin their life as fully developed lobsters. At the Long Island School, several of these settled lobsters will be kept in an aquarium to study until the end of the school year, and the rest will be released.

The project has provided the students and teachers at the Long Island School with a great learning experience. The students have learned about the life cycle of the lobster, the ocean food web, and how to classify or organize animals into groups. The lobsters have also provided a subject for art projects and math and graphing lessons. Overall the project has been a great success, enjoyed by students and staff alike. It has provided all with a better understanding of the mysterious creatures that are so important to the Long Island community.