Going Blue, Too: A Chilly Food Chain Game

http://polardiscovery.whoi.edu/antarctica/ecosystem.html

An Antarctic Food Web Activity

Download Activity Here

The Antarctic food web is unique due to its relatively short food chains within the web, which transfer energy from some of the smallest creatures in the ocean to the largest animal that has ever lived on the planet.

This activity is designed to show the circle of energy, as well as highlight the different ways/lengths energy can flow through a food web.

·Background for this activity should start with groups coming up with different animals that live in the Antarctic. This is a great time to emphasize the difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic, as well as highlight different creatures who inhabit only one area and not the other, such as Polar bears and penguins.

· Following this, students can start to draw connections between the different creatures until they have a basic food web. This would be a good time to draw the conclusion that Algae and Phytoplankton produce their own food from the energy from the sun and nutrients upwelling from the bottom of the ocean.

· Review:

o Producers – use energy from the sun and nutrients from the ocean’s depths to create their own food

o Primary consumers – eat producers. Generally also known as herbivores (plant eaters)

o Secondary consumers – eat primary consumers. Generally known as carnivores (meat eaters)

o Tertiary consumers – eat secondary consumers, are considered top predators if they are not preyed upon by any other creature.

Set Up

Cut out the different dice and glue together. Color code for best overall storage of the game. For the algae and krill, multiple dice are useful, since almost every person in the class will start out at the algae station and go to the krill station.
Set up visible posters with the name and pictures of each of the different creatures in the food web. Each creature is a station where the students must roll the die to see what will happen to the energy the creature receives.
Optional but fun is to add color coded beads to each station. Otherwise, provide a basic worksheet like the one on the following page.
If starting with beads, give each student a yellow pipe cleaner to represent the original energy.
Have all the students start in the middle of the room, at the “sun”. The sun’s energy goes down to Antarctica, where it is used by algae.
Stagger the departure of the sun’s rays so there are only two or three people at the algae station at first. Everyone must roll to see where they go next.
At each station, they can take a bead and add it to their pipe cleaner.
If not using beads and pipe cleaner, each student can record their journey on a log like the one provided.
After each student is done with their journey, have them find the longest chain from Algae to Deep Water. Which one was the shortest? Technically, each time they have algae, there has also been an influx of energy from the sun. How much sun energy do they think each animal uses? A blue whale doesn't eat just one krill, it eats millions at one time. The more links on the food chain, the more energy from the sun is used.