Fashion a Fish Questions Show your understanding by always explaining WHY!!!! 1.

Where in the Del Mar reef habitat will your fish live? In lockers. 2. Describe the special camouflage characteristics your fish uses to blend in to its environment. The fish is the same blue color of the lockers. 3. What method does your fish use to get its food? What does it eat? Does it have any special structural adaptations to make it better at getting or eating its food? My fish gets its food from the small kelp forest in front of the lockers (the one in between the cracks of what used to be a cement pathway). 4. What special behavioral adaptations does your fish have to better capture or collect its food? When my fish sees something that looks like food above it will automatically go up to get it It has a long, thin, snout that has a tiny little opening. It can plunk the kelp from the kelp forest and suck it in like spaghetti. 5. How does your fish protect itself against predators? It slides into the lockers (its home) because it is very, very, thin. It can do this and its predators cant, giving it an advantage. It can also lay flat against a locker if there is no time to swim into the locker. 6. Describe any special social behaviors of your fish such as schooling behavior, family groupings, symbiotic relationships, mating, etc. The female Bluelocker Crepe fish wiggles to swim and usually lives with 2-3 other fish in its locker. When it finds a mate, it takes him into her locker and they live together. Male fish live alone and go to their mates locker to live. Other fish never invade the males locker until he leaves a piece of kelp in the entrance, giving the sin that it is o.k. for the fish to move in. 7. What does your fish do to ensure that some of its offspring will safely make it alive into the next generation? Does it hide eggs? Give live birth? Keep its young in its mouth? Tend to the eggs until hatching? Produce a million eggs? Any other ideas? The female Bluelocker Crepe fish hides its eggs from roommates in its mates old locker, which is empty. She normally has about 20 eggs. The eggs are small and a transparent-blue. They stick together for the first 3 months. Then for the remaining 4 months they float around the locker. Their parents come and check on the eggs, and when they hatch, the parents move in with them, and supply them with kelp, until they are old enough to swim out of the locker.

8. Describe the shape of your fish. Is it a vertical or horizontal disc? My fish is very, very flat. Its snout is flat, long and thin. In fact, it is as thin as a crepe, hence the name, The Bluelocker Crepe fish. Its eyes are also flat and it has eyelids so that when it lays flat against a locker, its eyes arent harmed. 9. What is the size of your fish? As an adult? A juvenile? Give the length and width in metric units. Remember to consider where it lives when determining its size. As a baby, it is only 1 inch long. As a teenie, it is 2 inches long (this is the age they lay their eggs). As an adult, it is 3 inches long. They must remain under 4 inches or else they cant enter the lockers. 10. Describe the coloration and patterning of your fish. What benefit does this provide to your fish? My fish is the same color blue as the lockers and easily blends into them by lying flat against them or by just swimming past them in its wiggly way. (This fish does not have flippers, but instead wiggles to swim. 11. Describe any special mating behavior. How does your fish attract a mate in the ocean? The male Bluelocker Crepe fish compete in an annual relay race to win over a mate. They must weave in and out of the kelp forest 8 times, then race back to the head of the Bluelocker Crepe fishes locker, suck in 8 strands of kelp then touch the black stone. The females watch and choose one. It doesnt have to be the fish who won and could easily be the one who cheated, tried the hardest, or whatever they think. 12. Draw a detailed, labeled, and colored drawing of your fish on a piece paper 8.5 inches x 11 inches. BIG! 13. Make a simple food chain with your fish- Be sure to include arrows, color, and give a title. 14. Make a food web with your fish. Be sure to label producers, first level consumers, second level consumers, third level consumers, and decomposers. Also, Be sure to include arrows, color, and give a title. 15. Estimate the population size of your species. Consider the limiting factors of where it lives. The population size of the Bluelocker Crepe Fish is 900.