Episode Two: Life Science

>> Rick Crosslin: On this Indiana Expedition: Water – the currency of life. We’ll walk the creeks, swim the ponds and lakes, and float the reservoirs in search of plants and animals above and below the water.  We’ll see how life science is used to make the water safe on its way to your home.

(Music)

>> Rick Crosslin: Try it yourself! Come on! Let’s go check it out!

>> Announcer: Indiana Expeditions with Rick Crosslin is made possible through the generous support of the Dr. Laura Hare Charitable Trust: Enhancing Indiana’s natural environment through preservation and protection of ecologically significant natural areas and promoting environmental education, stewardship, and awareness.

SEFI – the Science and Education Foundation of Indiana. Investing in Indiana’s youth by encouraging them to become scientists and engineers, and to practice their careers in Indiana. Details at SEFI.org.

And the Center for School Improvement and Performance. Indiana Department of Education.

>> Rick Crosslin: Water—the currency of life. One of the most important resources on the planet and the one we might take for granted the most. This snow started as a snowflake thousands of feet up in the atmosphere. This water will join back to all the waters of the earth as it melts and follows the courses of streams lakes and tributaries all through Indiana. No matter what form it’s in water is extremely important to us. Seventy percent of our bodies are made of water. Three quarters of the planet is covered by water. In fact, this planet shouldn’t be called earth. It should be called aqua. This is science! Try it yourself!

(Music)

>> Rick Crosslin: Rivers, creeks, lakes, and ponds – water can take many

paths on its journey to the ocean. On a search for a better understanding of the currency of life, I traveled to South America to experience the world’s biggest waterway – the Amazon.

(Music)

>> Rick Crosslin: We’re at a high level of water. Like at home, the water in the Amazon takes many paths and creates many unique water environments. There are shallow and fast flowing tributaries just like the creeks that you might find back at home. There are parts of the flooded forest that can even look like some of our lakes. In fact, this river is so large that sometimes it would take an hour just to cross. But, you don’t have to go to the Amazon to get to know our most precious resource. Put on your old shoes because we’re going on an Indiana creek walk. But, before we go we have to make sure that we’re prepared. Do we have nets? Okay, do we have a bucket? Okay, you guys are ready? Alright, let’s go!

(Music)

>> Rick Crosslin: There are some pretty cool creatures that live in the Indiana creeks. And the first thing we can look at is the thing that lives in the water itself.

>> Jeff Cardwell: Alright, let’s see what we’ve got.

>> Rick Crosslin: Put your hand right there.

>> Rick Crosslin: Keep coming.

>> Voice: It’s a Mottled Sculpin. Isn’t that a strange looking fish. These are called a Brook Silverside. A Green Sunfish – you can tell by the striping of the face and the little mottled pattern on the side.

>> Rick Crosslin: There you go. Ah! That’s a beauty! Look at that!

>> Jeff Cardwell: That called a Creek Chub. That’s a Large Mouth Bass. You have to have a valid fishing license to keep this fish.

>> Rick Crosslin: One that I always like to look for are crayfish. Although, if you’re looking in the creek during the day – crayfish are hard to spot however, if you come back to that same creek at night maybe it would be a different story.

This is science! Try it yourself!

Tonight, we going to go down here and see what’s awake while we’re sleeping.

When you see a crayfish it looks like a mini lobster. You have to be careful of business end of the crayfish, the pinchers. But you can hold it safely if you carefully reach right behind its head and hold the top of his shell. If you find a crayfish away from water more than likely, it created an underground tunnel that leads to water with a chimney on top to keep itself moist.

I tried to dig one up one time and at eight feet i gave up. Down in the Amazon, I was on a trail one day and we came across this red little chimney thing. And I’m thinking, that looks just like the ones in Indiana. So we got down on the ground and I opened the lid and i dropped a rock and it goes bbbrrrr – boop, and here we are thousands of miles away and the same kind of crawdad chimney in the Amazon, just the dirt was different.

Some of these may seem scary and this is about as scary as it gets in Indiana, but guess what – what if you’re in the Amazon jungle? There are some neat things. Would you guys like to go and catch some things in the Amazon?

>> One of the kids: Yeah.

>> Rick  Crosslin: You would? Wouldn’t you be afraid? What might get you there?

>> Little girl: Uhm, tigers?

>> Rick Crosslin: Amazon? Probably not, but jaguars. Piranha, yeah. What about – how would you guys like to catch crocodiles or caiman in the Amazon? Would you like that?

>> Little girl: No.

>> Rick Crosslin: I sure would. In fact, check this out. We’re with Eduardo here on the Solimoes River, and we’re about ready to try to do a hand catch of a caiman. As you can hear by the sounds, it’s late at night, and he’s using a spot light to be able to blind it, so we can be able to grab it from the front of the boat.

Alright, what type is this?

>> Eduardo: We call this Jacara Chinga. That means white alligator because of this. When they are swimming – to hit something- sometimes they’re very flexible. Look at that,

>> Rick Crosslin: And very strong.

>> Eduardo: And very strong.

>> Rick Crosslin: Look at some of these beautiful adaptations. First of all, it floats on the top of the surface, so from above, it’s dark green. But, if you are a large anaconda or a large predator – from below it’s white and it blends in perfectly for camouflage. It is also very streamline as it goes through the water. And as it comes up – the first thing that comes up are its eyes or its nostrils where it can take a breath and submerge very slowly. So this is all about stealth and camouflage. And it, of course, being a reptile means that it’s covered in scales. And the scales on the back here – on the back called scutes, and they form a nice aerodynamic tapering to the back. It’s just a beautiful creature. It’s got claws. Its back legs are very strong and also webbed for swimming and fitting along the side, like this, as it moves through the water.

And it you look at its mouth – it’s got teeth. These teeth are nice and needle sharp for catching fish. Fish are quite slippery. Let’s see if we can get his mouth open here – open his bottom jaw without hurting him. There we go. Probably one of the most interesting parts is the eyes. It’s got two sets of eyelids. One from the bottom that comes up. And then one from the front so that it can open its eyes and its mouth underwater. And so, we’ll be letting this guy go right here off to the side, okay. And so, we’ll send him back on his way. You guys get your flashlights ready. And, it’s gone.

>> Caroline: Did you know that you can follow a creek in Indiana all the way to the Gulf of Mexico?

>> Rick Crosslin: Safely catching animals and looking at them is a great way to learn. Another way to learn about an animal is to create a model of where it lives. If your fish are from an Indiana creek like these; you need to make your aquarium as much as possible like the creek they came from. You can do this by checking the ph and the temperature of the creek where the fish came from and matching that in your aquarium. Also, take care to notice that the water in the natural environment is fast moving. If so, it’s important to add an air stoke to oxygenate the water. Now it’s time to add the fish. One thing to remember is that you should not put too many fish in one aquarium. In order for the environment to be healthy you need to make sure you have at least one gallon of water per inch of fish. In order to solve this problem many people look to nature for the answer, and that answer is to build a pond. Man made ponds for fish are called ornamental ponds. My friend Pat Millspaugh has an ornamental pond in his front yard.

What do you have to do that nature will do – i know nature filters and nature feeds – what do you have to do here.

>> Pat Millspaugh: We put a lot of the plants in here not only for the beauty of the flowering part, but they actually filter the water. That section right up there has the water hyacinths and the water flows through the roots and collects all the waste on the root system, which makes the plants grow and filters the water biologically. We’ve also got a mechanical filtration system as well.

>> Rick Crosslin: So, basically, all living organisms, whether its fish or plant have certain environmental chemical and biological needs, and so you have to supply some of these. For example, in nature they would find their own food, but these guys have a hard time finding their food.

>> Pat Millspaugh: Yeah, they’ll eat some algae and things, but we like to feed them a lot.

>> Rick Crosslin: Okay, I think we ought to try that. So, we’ll see how trained your fish are. Do they like to eat?

>> Pat Millspaugh: They’re pretty trained.

>> Rick Crosslin: Let’s see if we throw a little bit down here and see what happens here. Oh, look at that. Here they come. Wow. That’s almost like liquid poetry right there; all the colors – that’s beautiful

>> Pat Millspaugh: Just like a rainbow. It’s just beautiful.

>> Rick Crosslin: A pond in nature is a stable, slow moving body of water. The

temperature in pond stays pretty much the same, whereas in a creek when in

rains or whenever water moves through you’re always having temperature

changes.

Ponds like creeks are relatively shallow, and light penetrates to the bottom. My

theory is that because there’s light there will be rooted plants at the bottom.

Okay, let’s get started on this pond investigation. I have two of my pond pals with

me today, Isabelle and Caroline. You guys ready to get in here and see what we

can find.

>> Girls: Yeah!

>> Rick Crosslin: If I fall help me alright?.

>> Girls: Okay.

>> Rick Crosslin: I go first.

(Music)

>> Rick Crosslin: Come on pond pals. Let’s go.

(Music)

>> Rick Crosslin: Okay, let’s put this to the test. Are you ready girls?

>> Girls: Yeah!

>> Rick Crosslin: Go for it!

>> Rick Crosslin: Alright! Rooted plants right here in the pond. I guess it is right.

Great pond fun with indiana expeditions!

>> Girls: Yeah!

>> Rick Crosslin: Well, that proves it. Rooted plants. To learn more I talked to

Jeff, who is an aquatic plant expert.

Well Indiana has a nice variety of aquatic plants that you can put in and around your pond for a decoration or whatever. So, we’ll see water lilies – we’ll see things that grow on the bottom that are rooted in the water and in the pond. And a lot of those have pretty flowers with them too. And then the plants that grow around the edges the cattails and things like that are also a part of the pond that attracts the wildlife.

>> Rick Crosslin: The plants and animals that are in a pond are cool to investigate. In fact, it’s like you can get to know that pond because of its size, butI bet there’s even more to know in a bigger body of water. Let’s go check out a  lake.

An Indiana lake is different from a pond. They’re usually a little bit larger, but the biggest difference is there’s different zones of plants. You have the emergent zone like in a pond. Then you have the submersed zone where there’s rooted plants, but eventually in the deep part of the middle of the lake there will be no rooted plants at all. Why? Because the sunlight can’t go that deep. But around the edge it’s a very diverse place for all kinds of insects, amphibians, fish, and terrestrial visitors like raccoons.

We went to observe this zone phenomenon. First, we went under the water. The outer shallower edge was very much like a pond. It has rooted plants, small fish, and other water life, but when we went to the deeper part of the lake there wasn’t enough light to see. After some careful consideration we found that the only way that we could observe this zone phenomenon was to take to the air.

We rented a power glider and sent one of our producers up with a camera to see if we could see the zones from above. Due to strong winds most of our footage ended up like this, but in the end, we got what we were looking for perfect zone separation. A lake, since it has different zones, is a more diverse environment than a pond, which means there could be larger fish, and different types of fish; catfish, smallmouth bass, and other fish that can get quite large in an Indiana lake.

This is science! Try it yourself!

In the Amazon where there is much more water some of these fish can become three meters long, but to me, the most interesting fish are the small ones. One of the most interesting and notorious of all the fish in the Amazon is the piranha.

>> Eduardo: Here we have the red belly piranha.

>> Rick Crosslin: Ah, the red belly piranha.

>> Eduardo:And this is the most aggressive one. This fish is very aggressive.

>> Rick Crosslin: You can tell a lot about a fish by its mouth. Looking at this guys mouth we can tell exactly what he eats. Talk about not chewing your food before you swallow it. Most people think there’s only one kind of piranha in the Amazon, but there are actually many different species. Each one with teeth designed just for its prey.

You get bit by a piranha and there’s nothing to sew up is there? It’s a hole.

>> Eduardo: No, no, it’s just a hole.

>> Rick Crosslin: Now, this one has a very long mouth. What’s the name of this fish?

>> Eduardo:This one is a serrasalmus elongatus.

>> Rick Crosslin: Serrasalmus elongatus

>> Eduardo: Uh huh. Because of the long body. This one here – the yellow kind.

>> Rick Crosslin: That’s the yellow piranha?

>> Eduardo: Yes

>> Rick Crosslin: Another very unusual and cool fish that has an interesting mouth is the plecostomus. It eats algae and other plant material by scraping it and sucking it. It’s like combining sand paper with a vacuum cleaner. The plant eating mouth of a plecostomus is about as far away as you can get from the meat eating teeth of a piranha.

Has the fishing improved or about the same since you started fishing?

>> Eduardo: It has changed very much since i was a kid because these lakes here are kind of like a hatchery. Many fish come from the main river – from Solimoes River, and they come up here for spawning, but many people, many fishermen with big boats that can carry like ten tons of fish; they catch them before they get to the lakes so they cannot spawn.

>> Rick Crosslin: So, this then, having them come back here is very important.

>> Eduardo: Yeah.

>> Rick Crosslin: I know a lot of people have been working hard in Brazil to regulate and make sure that the fish conservation is here for the next generations.

>> Eduardo: Yeah, but, many people will work on that, and many people keep fishing very much, you know.

>> Rick Crosslin: So, it’s not a problem that is going to go away.

>> Eduardo: Yeah.

(Music )

>> Caroline: Did you know that a person who studies fresh water is called a limologist?

>> Rick Crosslin: Conservation of resources is a major issue in the Amazon, but it is also important here in Indiana. Healthy water means healthy wildlife.

A reservoir is a man made body of water. Scientists take special care to monitor reservoirs and the wildlife around them. We’re here today at Eagle Creek Park to study the life that is found at a reservoir. It is pretty exciting stuff! So join us as we motor on out into the middle of this reservoir. This is my lucky day, because today, I’m here with a scientist, Dr. Lenore Tedesco, at the Eagle Creek Reservoir.

>> Dr. Lenore Tedesco: The birds really are an incredible part. The reservoir in Indianapolis right here sits on the Mississippi flyway. So, this is a giant highway, if you will, for birds.

>> Rick Crosslin: So, you call it the Mississippi flyway – not highway.

>> Dr. Lenore Tedesco: Flyway – not highway. Yeah.

>> Rick Crosslin: Oh, cool. So, what is the Mississippi flyway?

>> Dr. Lenore Tedesco: It is basically a corridor, basically, that the birds fly up and down. We know that some of the birds migrate – some of the birds migrate in the winter and in the summer they change where they are living. Mostly to follow food resources and have young. And we are kind of in the middle place. Some of the birds will stay here, but a lot of them migrate through.

>> Rick Crosslin: You can go out an be an expert bird watcher from birds all the way from South America right in your own back yard.

Thanks Lenore.

>> Dr. Lenore Tedesco: Thank you, Rick.

>> Rick Crosslin: Well, obviously, there is a lot more to a reservoir than recreation. In fact, water from a reservoir is closer to your home than you might think.

Keeping an eye on Indiana water is an important job for a limnologist, and there are many tools they use to do this.

I’m here with Lani Pascual from the center for earth and environmental sciences at IUPUI. She is a scientist and today we are going to learn about some of these tools. Lani, what’s this strange looking thing from outer space you have in your hand here

>>Lani Pascual: This is actually a water quality probe, and…

>> Rick Crosslin: A water quality probe is an instrument that can tell us such things as the temperature, the ph, or the dissolved oxygen in the water.

>> Lani Pascual: This is a secchi disk.

>> Rick Crosslin: A secchi disk is a tool used to tell how clear or murky the water is.

I still see it, and I still see it. I still see the white and, oh, I just lost it.

>> Lani Pascual: This is actually a depth finder and it works on sonar. All you have to do is put this tip in the water, and push this little button like you’re turning on a flashlight, and the depth will come up right here.

How deep are we?

>> Rick Crosslin: Wow, eight point two meters.

Wonder what the water is like down there? Is there any way that we could bring some of that water up?

>> Lani Pascual: Oh, yeah. I have a special sampler for that. It is called a Van Doren sampler. We are going to drop it down in the water if you want to let it go, and I’ll send a messenger down, which is this thing, and it will close.

>> Rick Crosslin: Two?

>> Lani Pascual: Did you hear two clicks?

>> Rick Crosslin: I heard two clicks.

>>  Lani Pascual: You got both of them closed.

>> Rick Crosslin: Ah, good, good, good, now – they are both closed, and look at that water. It’s kind of – it’s got little things floating in it doesn’t it?

>> Lani Pascual: Yep, it’s got a little bit of the sediment floating in there.

Wow, that water is cold.

>> Rick Crosslin: Oh, yeah, it’s a lot colder, but …Augh! That stuff stinks. It smells just like rotten eggs.

>> Lani Pascual: Yep, there are a lot of sulfurs down there. This is a phytoplankton net.

>> Rick Crosslin: A plankton net catches the tiny little animals that live in the water column. These animals that live in the light close to the surface are called phytoplankton. Since phytoplanktons are so small they are more sensitive to pollutants than other organisms and they are a vital indicator to the health of the water.

We think we’ve got some…

>> Lani Pascual: Some zooplankton and some phytoplankton – I’m sure of it.

>> Rick Crosslin: Alright.

>> Lani Pascual: Let’s see how we did. Well, look at all of them.

>> Rick Crosslin: Wow! Yeah, it’s like a snowball you shake up. It’s filled with things – all kind of things and they’re all moving too.

>> Lani Pascual: Yep, most of those that we see jumping around in there and they kind of look a little bit like sea monkeys – they are actually these things called copepods.

>> Rick Crosslin: Copepods.

>> Lani Pascual: Copepods, and they’re really cute because they have got a long skinny tail and kind of a round top and a round head, and then they have these little wings that come out to the sides and they kind of jump around like this so, they look really kind of spastic as they are popping around in there.

>> Rick Crosslin: Only a limnologist would call a copepod cute.

>> Lani Pascual: (laughs)

>> Rick Crosslin: Natural resource experts need to monitor the water quality every day. While there is no substitute for hands on investigation there is a lot of information that can be gathered from the real time buoy. This buoy has three water quality probes at different depths as well as a weather station on the surface. All of this information is sent wirelessly to headquarters where it is posted on the web. You can go to wfyi.org for a link to this buoy. As you can see, there are many ways to keep tabs on our water. In order to understand the basic principles of the process, I visited Robb Hedges’ class at Creekside Middle School.

>> Robb Hedges: What is that telling you? A one in ten concentration.salt solution is made up of water and what else?

You can only expect your students to be as excited about learning as you are in teaching it. You know the motto of hands on learning is a way to go and science there is no doubt about that.

First, I had some kids volunteer, you know, and try to order from the least concentration of salt solution up to the greatest concentration of salt solution. Ashley, our volunteer, obviously, found that low, and you can tell by the expression on her face. And then you become a little more of a scientist. What they would do in order to determine what concentration levels the solution had that they were testing.

>> Rick Crosslin: The cool thing about this investigation is that it shows us how a substance is hard to detect until it reaches a certain level. Even if it’s something you can’t smell it, you can’t taste it, you can’t see it; it is still there. And that is probably the main emphasis – my golden nugget – if you want to call it – that i wanted them to get out of the lesson.

(Music)

>> Caroline: Did you know that Indianapolis water distributes 145 million gallons of water every day. Using one gallon jugs this would cover the entire field at Lucas Oil Stadium 67 times.

>> Rick Crosslin: Water is the currency of life, and i’m staning on the banks of the white river which is a source of our drinking water, but you wouldn’t want to take your glass and dip into this river. Let’s go see how they turn this water into drinking water. This is where it all starts at the water treatment plant. Water from the river and ground water from wells come into these basins. This basin takes the sediments out – it’s called the sediment and flocculation basins. A chemical is put in that makes all the sediments clump together. It’s called alum. It’s the same thing that makes pickles snap.

After the water is brought in and the sediments have a chance to settle down the water passes through these really cool things called weirs. Now, the weirs’ job is to dam up any debris like leaves or floating logs before it goes into the treatment plant where it is disinfected and filtered.

To treat water – you need water. All around me are giant pipes that are bringing water in both to be treated and to clean the filters. We’re not ready to drink yet. These pipes bring massive amounts of water into the filtration gallery. At this stop in the water filtration all the water is pushed through sand as a sand filter to remove any small particulates.

I don’t think it is ready for us to drink yet.

I’m here at the heart of the water treatment with mark gray the supervisor of the lab.

>> Mark Gray: The main purpose of our facility is to monitor the water quality for the city of Indianapolis and surrounding counties.

>> Rick Crosslin: What are some of the things that you test for in this lab to make sure it is safe?

>> Mark Gray: Some of this laboratory tests for pesticides; tests for herbicides; we also test for taste and odor compounds because we want our product to be very palatable – very good tasting.

Because most of our waters come from rivers, lakes, and streams it changes all of the time. We have personnel now that work in the facilities that sample it through process. We also have online equipment that monitors the process in real time so we can see what’s going on and if there is an issue we can react very quickly to get the issue resolved.

>> Rick Crosslin: The water is being tested, but it is not ready to drink yet.

At each stage, the water is tested to make sure things that are supposed to be out are taken out, and things that are supposed to be in are in. So, as you see, the raw water starts here and some of the different sand filtrations, and we want to get all the way down here to this water right here, which comes out of this plant; into the distribution; into your homes.

It’s not convenient to drive down to the water treatment plant to get a nice fresh glass of water. But, luckily, companies like Veolia Water distribute it to our homes where it is safe and convenient to drink.

Water. The currency of life. Ah.

(Music)

>> Rick Crosslin: I hope you realize how important water is to us. It is what separates this planet from all the rest.

I’m Rick Crosslin. Join me on the next Indiana Expedition.

(Music)

>> Announcer: Indiana Expeditions with Rick Crosslin is made possible through the generous support of Dr. Laura Hare Charitable Trust: Enhancing Indiana’s natural environment through preservation and protection of ecologically significant natural areas and promoting environmental education, stewardship, and awareness. 

SEFI – the Science and Education Foundation of Indiana. Investing in Indiana’s youth by encouraging them to become scientists and engineers, and to practice their careers in Indiana. Details at Sefi.org.

And the Center for School Improvement and Performance. Indiana Department of Education.