Plankton Observation

Phytoplankton are free floaters unattached plants, usually microscopic. These plankton do exactly what what plants on land do, they create oxygen. Phytoplankton also make the water their in a green color, they are the base of the food chain in the ocean. I saw diatoms, little square single-celled, yellow green plankton. The sand we saw underneath the microscope, star sand is another type of plankton that dried up and its skeleton makes the soft sand on the beach. Also the star sand is micro because it's so tiny that it's easier to see under a microscope. Diatoms also create a long rectangular shape to keep the floating instead of sinking. Dinoflagelates use small hairs to move around, we saw one of these under the microscope, we saw a worm. Bacteria use flagella to move them around also.