What types of tools do marine biologists use?
Marine biologists work in many different areas and do many different things. For example, a marine biologist looking at sea urchin movement would travel to a collecting site in a boat and use SCUBA gear to gather the urchins into bags or buckets. Back in the laboratory, she would use seawater tanks to keep the urchins in, and perhaps a flow chamber which sends water flowing past the urchins in a certain direction. She would also have a notebook and maybe a video camera to record where the urchins move in relation to the water flow. She might use calipers (a special kind of ruler) to measure the size of the urchins and a scale to weigh them. After all the data is collected, she would enter it into her computer and use statistics to examine her information. A marine biologist or biological oceanographer working on phytoplankton (protistan plankton) might go down to a dock and use a bucket to collect surface water. He would use a thermometer to measure the water temperature, and a salinom
