Yr 10 Northam Senior High School Project Class

By Tanika Reynolds and Kirsty Soulos.

Background Information.

We first started off our project last term by doing simple research on yabbies themselves. Our teacher handed all the students a booklet and we had to come up with our own focus questions such as: which sex grows faster?, what is the best habitat for yabbies to live in?, what is the most appropriate food to feed the yabbies?, and what is the anatomy of a yabby?

These focus questions helped us come up with an aim for the project. Our class collaborated their answers and decided to see which food type makes yabbies grow faster. We chose lupins and oats. We had to do tests on water salinity and pH levels. We did not complete this test due to some students not participating and being unsafe in the science lab. During our research we discovered that a tank of all male yabbies grows faster then a multi-sex tank or a complete tank of female yabbies.

Background information cont.

Last week on the 27th of July 2007, the two communication officers (Kirsty Soulos and Tanika Reynolds) and another classmate (Zane Bell) went to Mr Curtin’s farm and collected our yabbies for the experiment. We had to travel to his farm located half-way between York and Northam. He gave us a briefing of how to sex the yabbies. Mr Curtin brought the nets in and we had to pick the yabbies up so we could sex them. Kirsty and Tanika were reluctant to pick the yabbies up at first, but by the end they had enough courage to pick them up and put them into the appropriate buckets. Once we had sorted the males from the females, we measured the yabbies and made sure the ones we took were around the average size of the carpus at 3.5cm in length. We did not measure at an average weight because as we found that some yabbies had the same carpus size, but their weight varied.

Above: L to R, Mr Curtin, Tanika Reynolds, Kirsty soulos and Zane bell on the farm.

Right and above right: Tanika, Kirsty and Zane doing the initial weighing.

Background information cont.

We took the yabbies back to school already to go in their tanks. When we got back to school, we had a few minor interruptions as the class the tanks were in was occupied by the rest of the class who were a little rowdy at that moment in time. The teacher cleared the class and this took a little while to do as the class was misbehaving for the relief teacher. While the class was being moved, Zane decided that he wanted to be “tough” and picked up a yabby from the bucket of water. The yabby bit him and he threw it. The yabby died. Fortunately we brought spares and we put him in the tank, replacing the dead yabby. We had to make the tanks similar in volume of water and the amount of “hiding” holes for the yabbies. We weighed and recorded the yabbies and put them in the tank one by one after the water was put in the tanks.

Background information cont.Last Friday on the 3rd of August

2007 the whole class participated in various tests and write-ups that needed to be done. One group did pH level testing and another did salinity. A group of approx four girls started a write-up for our school newsletter and a group of four boys started the experiment write-up. The rest of the class who were not doing the tests or write-ups were trying to find the yabbies in the tanks so we could weigh and measure them. After we did this we recorded the results and found out that they didn’t grow much.

The group of four boys doing the experiment write-up.

Salinity test.

Above: Bottom group weighing and measuring yabbies, top group doing experiment write-up.