As the last week before the much-anticipated Christmas holiday approached, the classroom was buzzing with excitement. However, there was an unexpected twist awaiting. The students were informed that the school would be without electricity during the break….

Students Blog

Week 6

It was the last week before the Christmas holiday and we were told that the electricity in the school will be switched off. Our teacher offered to take the tank home for the holidays and look after it. Sir didn’t want to add any new creatures so he brought with him a big box full of interesting things. There was a sea urchin shell and Sir explained that they are related to the starfish. He also brought a horseshoe crab shell. It was very light and looked like a dead animal, but Sir said that it was a shell left behind after the crab moved out of it. There was a gap at the front where the crab climbed out. We saw lots of seashells, like razorshell, clam, scallop, conch, whelk, oyster and mussel. Sir explained that the ones which can close their shells (as they have two) are called bivalves. We were also allowed to hold the egg cases of rays and dogfish. They had a funny name: mermaid purse. We were surprised to hear that there are sharks living in the sea even in Wales. Sir had a piece of dogfish-skin. When we stroked it one way it was smooth, but it was very prickly the other way. This is because there are tiny teeth on a shark’s skin which helps them swim faster. There were two dried out dead fish in the box too. One of them was a seahorse and the other one was a pufferfish. It was very strange to hold a seahorse in our hands. It was much smaller than we expected. Sir said that the two fish died in a public aquarium, but in the nature lots of people hunt them and dry them for tourists (or sometimes for Chinese medicines). He said that we should never take any live creature from the sea just to dry it out. Before leaving for the Christmas holiday we did a final check of the water and everything was good.