Lesson video

Hello everybody, it's Ms. Simkin back again for your next science lesson on adaptations.

This is our sixth lesson and our final lesson of this unit.

This is our sixth lesson and our final lesson of this unit.

So if you haven't yet watched lesson one, lesson two, lesson three, lesson four, and lesson five, it would be a good idea to go and watch and complete those lessons first, you especially need last lesson in order to fully understand this lesson.

of marine organisms that's organisms that live in the sea.

And this lesson, we're staying with marine organisms, And this lesson, we're staying with Marine organisms, but we're going to look at a really specific section of the sea today.

We're going to look at organisms that live in the deep sea.

So our lesson question today is how are organisms adapted to live in the deep sea? This is the lesson agenda we're going to follow.

We're going to star words, a quick bit of recap.

We're going to look at the deep sea environment and what makes it different to other areas of the sea.

We're going to look at the adaptations that we find there.

And finally, we're going to look at some deep sea conservation.

I'm going to explain what that is.

And then we are going to make a poster.

So for this lesson, you will need, please, a piece of paper, a pencil, a coloured pencil, so that you can mark your work in a different colour, but you might also want more coloured pencils today.

And maybe even some coloured pens, if you have them so that when we make our poster at the end of the lesson, you can make it bright and colourful and you will probably need a ruler.

If you don't have those things, could you pause the video and go and get them now, please? Great, our star words for today are these.

I'm going to say that.

And then you're going to say them.

Adaptation, conservation, camouflage, Marine, transparent.

Great, good job.

Let's talk about what these words mean.

Can you remember what an adaptation is? It's a characteristic that helps an organism to, say it to your screen, to survive, good job.

Conservation is an area of scientists that aims to protect the natural environment.

Camouflage, we've learned about before, it's when organisms can blend into their surroundings by being the same colour or pattern as their surroundings.

Marine is anything to do with the sea or the ocean.

And transparent is used to describe a material or an object.

And transparent means that all light can pass through it.

And we know that something is transparent because we can see through it.

So this glass is transparent.

You can see my eyes through it.

It's going to be important later in the lesson.

Okay, let's start with a bit of recap.

Here is one of the organisms that we looked at the last lesson, a dolphin, my favourite animal, sorry.

I'm guilty of putting too many pictures of dolphins in these lessons.

Can you remember any of the adaptations that this dolphin has? So some of the adaptations we learned about are streamlined shape.

It's blue hole, it can hold its breath for a really long time.

And it's got flippers and fins instead of hands.

Well done if you remembered any of those.

Let's learn about the deep sea environment.

So this is a picture that shows you what the ocean might look like.

If you cut a slice right down the middle, so you can see it gets deeper and deeper and deeper, and it's split into zones.

So you've got the light blue zone at the top called the mesopelagic.

Then you've got the kind of mid blue zone in the middle.

That's called the bathypelagic and then you've got the dark blue zone called the abyssopelagic.

And that is where our deep sea begins.

So there's a reason that it's been coloured that way.

And actually when you get down past 4,000 metres, you have very very little light reaching the water there, at the top of the ocean.

You've got lots of light and the water is very clear and light blue but as you go deeper and deeper, the amount of light reaching the bottom of the ocean disappears until it's almost pitch black.

It also gets much colder at the bottom of the ocean.

For the same reason, sunlight and heat from the sun can reach the top band of the ocean but as you get to the bottom, it gets harder and harder for that heat to travel down.

So you have very cold conditions in the deep sea, very dark conditions in the deep sea.

And there's not very much food in the deep sea at all.

Food is very scarce.

So these are the things that our deep sea organisms are going to have to adapt to, cold, dark and food is scarce.

Cold, dark, food is scarce.

Can you say that with me to try to help your remember? Cold, dark food is scarce.

One more time, cold, dark, food is scarce, good job.

So let's see what adaptations we have to help us, not we, but to see what adaptations are deep sea organisms have to help them survive.

So the first one is called bioluminescence.

Let's practise saying that word, bioluminescence.

Good job, so bioluminescence is an adaptation that helps organisms to survive in the dark.

Many animals can make their own light, which is called bioluminescence.

It helps them to communicate, to find mates, to scare off predators or to attract prey.

It looks a bit like the light that comes from a glow stick, but you might use on Halloween or at a disco, but it's actually made naturally by chemical reactions within the animal.

So there's a picture on your screen of a jellyfish, that's using bioluminescence and then here's another picture.

This is an anglerfish.

And you can see it's got a ball at the top of its head, which is actually called a lure.

And that uses bioluminescence and it lights up and it uses that to attract prey cause the prey swim towards it.

And then it uses its big jaws to catch it.

So bioluminescence is the light emitted by living organisms. Say it with me.

Bioluminescence is the light emitted by living organisms, say it by yourself.

Good job, can you remember it? What is bioluminescence? It's the light emitted by living organisms, good job.

Okay, here is our next adaptation.

It's that food is scarce.

So food doesn't come along very often and there are four ways that deep sea organisms have adapted to survive this.

So some organisms are very very very small in the deep sea.

And if you're very, very, very small, it means you don't need very much food.

Some organisms in the deep sea grow very very very slowly.

And again, you don't need as much energy from food.

If you're growing very slowly, some organisms eat really big meals when they do come along.

So you might, as a deep sea organism only get a meal that comes along so a fish that you can eat that comes along maybe once a year.

That means that when that meal does come along, you need to eat as much of it as possible so that it can keep you full and give you energy for a really long time.

And another adaptation is that they can often store food.

So this helps in the same way that eating a big meal does.

It means that even if your food isn't coming along very regularly, you can store it and keep it for a long time.

So it can keep giving you energy for longer.

I'm going to show you an example of a fish called the black swallower that does exactly that.

So this is the black swallower.

Can you get your finger and can you point at this fish's stomach? Yes.

It's very big and it's bulging out.

Now, there's a reason for that.

And I wonder if you can see it, if you look really carefully at the screen, there's something inside the black swallower's stomach, can you see it? You can see there's an eyeball and a fin, which shows you that there's another fish inside its stomach.

That's why it's called the black swallower because it can swell it other fish whole so it can open it jaw and then it can keep those fish in its stomach which is a bit gross, but it means that it can store its meal for a really long time, which is a good adaptation for not getting food very often.

Okay, so, so far, what are the adaptations we've learned about? Can you remember, tell your screen.

Great so being small, growing slowly, storing food and bioluminescence.

Another adaptation to the dark is the body colour of different fish.

So this is often used by animals everywhere for camouflage and protection from predators and in the deep sea animals' bodies are often transparent, all black.

And this means that they're really hard to see.

And some fish such as the hatchetfish even have like silvery mirage bodies and that reflect sunlight.

And I'll explain why that works in a moment.

So there are three fish here.

Can you point at the black fish? Yes, at the bottom of the screen.

That's a viperfish.

What kind of fish is it? A viperfish and it's black so that it camouflages with the sea, it camouflages with the black water.

Can you point at the transparent or translucent animal on the screen? Yes, at the top.

That's the jellyfish.

So it's transparent for the same reason.

It helps it camouflage.

Although you can see them quite clearly in this picture because it's been taken with a flash of light on a camera, actually, if there was no light from the camera, you wouldn't be able to see these jellyfish.

They'd be transparent.

They'd be the same colour as the water around them.

And then can you point at the last fish, the silvery hatchetfish? Yeah, so this fish has got really clever camouflage because what it means if it's silver, if it's reflective, it means that if there's any light, any bioluminescence coming from a predator, for example, the anglerfish, that light would reflect off the hatchetfish a bit like a mirror.

And it would mean that the predator will only see itself.

It won't be able to see the fish.

The hatchetfish also goes a step further than that.

It doesn't just reflect the light.

It also is like a really bumpy mirror and it disperses the light.

That means it sends it off in lots of different directions.

So it really confuses predators.

They can't work out.

What's coming from where and the hatchetfish can swim away.

Okay, I've got some questions for you to answer please.

Number one, what is bioluminescence? Number two, how are organisms adapted to scarce food in the deep sea? So remember that was our black swallower and there were a few other ways.

And number three, what are the three different ways that deep sea fish can be camouflaged? Pause the video and answer those questions for me now.

Great, let's check our answers.

So bioluminescence is light emitted by living organisms. Well done if you've got that correct.

Give yourself a tick.

Number two organisms are adapted to scarce food in the deep sea by being very small, growing slowly, or being able to eat big meals that they can store.

So the four reasons are small, growing slowly, big meals and storing food.

If you've got any of those, you can give yourself a tick.

And if you missed one, then just pause the video and add it in your different colour now, please.

Great, then number three, deep sea fish can be camouflaged by having bodies that are transparent, black or reflective.

If you wrote merit instead of reflected or shiny instead of reflected, then that's great too.

You can give yourself a tick for those.

Brilliant, that brings us to the next part of our lesson, which is all about deep sea conservation.

Now remember we learned that conservation is about preserving, about saving and looking after the environment.

And we need to do that with the deep sea.

So the deep sea is at risk and the organisms that live there are at risk for these three main reasons.

The first is fishing and there's a particular type of fishing called trolling.

What's it called? Trolling which is quite destructive for the deep sea.

And you can see a picture of it happening on the screen.

It's where big nets are released from boats and they're used to catch fish as the boat goes along, the net sweeps up the fish.

But the problem is they drag along the sea bottom and they don't just catch fish.

They catch everything that's on the sea bottom and they scrape all the coral and all the habitats where those fish and those organisms are living in the deep sea and it ruins them.

And it means that organisms can't live there anymore.

Mining and drilling for oil and gas are also big threats because again, for the same reason, they ruin habitats in this deep sea.

They go right down into the deep sea and they make holes and they disturb the organisms living around.

So it's important that we protect these animals living in the deep sea, just because we can't see them.

And we can't see the damage being done doesn't mean they're not important.

So we are going to make a poster about deep sea conservation because lots of people know why it's important to save the rainforest or why it's important to stop plastic pollution, but not everybody knows a lot about the deep sea and deep sea conservation.

So we're going to make some posters to teach people a bit more about it.

So this is your task to design a poster, persuading your school to help conserve the deep sea.

And these are the steps that you're going to follow to do it.

So in your poster, you might want to include what the deep sea is like.

So we learned about that.

The deep sea is dark and cold and food is very, say it to your screen, scarce exactly.

You might want to include some examples of animals that live in the deep sea.

So you could draw any of the animals we learned about, the bioluminescent jellyfish, the black swallower, maybe the viperfish or the silvery hatchetfish.

You could label them with the adaptations.

Then you need to write about the threats to the deep sea.

So that was mining drilling for oil and gas.

And what was the first one? What are those next four? Say it to your screen, Yeah fishing or trolling.

Okay so that's the information that you want to put on your poster.

You're also going to want to draw and label some pictures and use some colouring pencils to make sure that your poster is bright and eye-catching and all posters need a big, bold title at the beginning.

So yours could be something like the deep sea, or maybe even a question like why should we look after the deep sea? You can now pause the video and design your deep sea poster.

If you want, you could always go back to bits in the lesson, in the video so that you can see the pictures or hear the facts again to help you while you're making the poster, pause the video and do that for me now, please.

Great job today, well done for working so hard, I am sure that your posters are absolutely fantastic.

If you would like to share your work with Oak National, you can, by asking a parent or a carer to share your work and tagging Oak National or the #LearnwithOak, you can also tag @Teach_STEMinism, which means that I will be able to see your work too.

Just before you go, please remember to do your end of lesson quiz, so you can see how much you have remembered and most importantly, remember to have a fantastic rest of your day.

Thank you for working so hard.

And hopefully I will see you back here soon for another science lesson.

Bye everybody.