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Support Pack Blobfish Pod Play Presented by Kids Story Room A story podcast for young people Support pack for the Pod Play National Science Week 2020 Kids Story Room – http://kidsstoryroom.com CONTENTS • Key learning areas/Themes/Synopsis • Thematic Activities • Comprehension and Discussion Questions • Cast of Ocean creatures: Blobfish/Tuna/Prawn/Leafy Sea-dragon/Swordfish • About Kids Story Room • Colouring In • Find–a-word • Weblinks and other Marine Education Resources • Ocean Zone Pull Through KEY LEARNING AREAS The Environment – marine habitat and fishing practices/South Australian marine species English/use of language and dialogue – character/personality types Respect for the elderly/working together as a team/overcoming challenges and looking after each other THEMES • The future of our marine life and how we can manage it sustainably • Marine ecosystems and ocean zones • Awareness of our surroundings • Positive consequences of our actions (relay teamwork) • Overcoming challenges and fears to achieve a goal • Empathy • Finding solutions to problems Kids Story Room – http://kidsstoryroom.com CALL OF THE BLOBFISH – SYNOPSIS Deep down in the magical world beneath the waves, the wise and ancient Blobfish needs help. Blobfish reveals to his friend, Prawn, that trouble is on the way and Blobfish needs to speak to a human being, urgently. Prawn springs into action to save his wise old friend and swims up into the open waters of the big blue sea where he meets Swordfish. Swordfish joins the quest and in turn meets Tuna, who leads him to Leafy Seadragon, who sends them to Mera, the dolphin. Each one in this jumbly bunch of sea creatures must overcome their fears and work together in order to protect the Blobfish and save their ocean home. How will they get a person to the very bottom of the ocean? Can they overcome their differences and work as a team? What will they do to save the Blobfish? Kids Story Room – http://kidsstoryroom.com THEMATIC ACTIVITIES • Check out the Sustainable Seafood Guide app – an initiative of the Australian Marine Conservation Society and designed to assist us humans to understand more about the seafood we consume. It’s an excellent resource to learn about what fish we can eat and what fish we should say No to for now. • The pod play Call of the Blobfish explores our marine environment and mentions the different ocean zones. Attached to this pack is a ‘pull-through’ that looks at the different zones of life in the ocean. Make the pull through and then add the creatures from the play to the zones where they live. • In Call of the Blobfish all of the characters help each other to succeed. The play is like a relay race to the finish line. Set up some relay activities in the classroom or playground where in groups of 5 or 6, the students each have a part to play in making something positive happen. (For example: planting a new tree or a herb one person carries the seed, another the water, another digs the hole, another covers the seed with earth and another puts a little stick in the ground to remember where they planted it. Then 5 people are responsible for the life of a little plant. Hopefully all of them will remember that it needs water every day!) • The play references the positive effects of marine parks, of looking after special species of fish and of letting some areas have a rest to replenish the stocks. Ask students to come up with eXamples of these sorts of ideas on the land. For example: what happens in a field after the cows eat all the grass…. What do farmers need to do to let the grass grow back? It’s the same for the ocean, we need to be careful not to fish too fast so that we can all enjoy seeing and eating fish into the future! • The Blobfish in the play is based on a real fish that lives in the twilight zone of the waters off South Australia and Tasmania. Show the students a picture of the Blobfish and ask them to write a story from his perspective, about what it is like to live so deep in the sea and the sorts of creatures who might live down there with him. • A fun way to remember the play so that different elements can be discussed: In groups of 3, let each student choose a different character and put together a ‘frozen statue’ moment from the play. Then ask the rest of the class to guess which moment in the play their ‘freeze frame’ is from. • Who was your favourite character? Draw a picture of the character and talk about why he or she was your favourite. • Call of the Blobfish is a creative piece of writing. Perhaps the students could do their own piece of creative writing from the perspective of one of the characters in the play. It could be presented as a monologue, an illustrated comic strip or a short story. • There are different sea creatures in the play and their characters are all different. Ask each student to secretly choose a creature and ask them to transform into their chosen creature without using their voices. The other students have to guess which creature they are pretending to be. • The play discusses the idea of how important elders are in our communities. Ask each student to share a story that might have been told to them by their grandparent or an older person they know. Kids Story Room – http://kidsstoryroom.com COMPREHENSION AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS/QUIZ v In what zone of the ocean does the Blobfish live? v Why was the Blobfish so important to all the other sea creatures? v Why was the Blobfish in danger? v All of the creatures in the play helped to save the Blobfish. What did they each do? Prawn? Swordfish? Tuna? Leafy-Sea? Dolphin? Sam? Fisherman? v What is a marine park and why are they important? What other areas of ocean near Australia need protection? There’s one very iconic protected area off the coast of Queensland! v Eating fish is an important part of our diet. What can we do to ensure there are lots of edible fish in the sea for many years to come? v How was the Blobfish going to be caught? Do you think anyone would want to eat him? v Why is it so important to respect and listen to our elders? v Swordfish has a sword to help him catch his food and look after himself. He started out wanting to use it to fight. What did he learn about fighting by the end of the play? v How was Sam able to breathe underwater? In real life, what help do humans need to go diving in the sea? v Apart from Sam and the Fisherman, who was the only other creature in the play that needs air to breathe? Kids Story Room – http://kidsstoryroom.com BLOBFISH Blobfish – Psychrolutes Marcidus The blobfish is a deep sea fish of the family Psychrolutidae. Their habitat is the deep waters off the coasts of mainland Australia and Tasmania. The blobfish live so deep they are rarely seen by humans. Blobfish live at depths between 600–1,200 m where the pressure is several dozen times higher than at sea level. This pressure would likely make gas bladders inefficient for maintaining buoyancy. Instead, the flesh of the blobfish is primarily a gelatinous mass with a density slightly less than water. This allows the fish to float above the sea floor without eXpending energy on swimming. Its relative lack of muscle is not a disadvantage as it primarily swallows edible matter that floats in front of it. Blobfish eat invertebrates like crabs and sea worms. Blobfish could potentially be caught by bottom trawling with nets as bycatch. Such trawling in the waters off Australia could threaten the blobfish in what may be its only habitat. Kids Story Room – http://kidsstoryroom.com TUNA Southern Bluefin Tuna - Thunnus maccoyii The Southern Bluefin Tuna is one of the sea's most impressive creatures. A beautiful and powerful fish, it is well suited to a long life endlessly swimming the open seas. An adult Bluefin grows to around 200kg and over 200cm long. Its close relative, the Northern Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus thynnus, can grow to a massive 700 kg. Tuna are true athletes of the ocean, one of the fastest ocean swimmers in the world, and often travel in speed bursts of up to 70km/hr during their migrations over thousands of kilometres of ocean. At these high speeds, the side fins retract into special grooves and the eyes form a smooth surface with the rest of the head in one of the most hydrodynamically advanced bodies in the sea. They must keep moving so that water passes over their gills, carrying oxygen to the muscle system. The slowest a tuna can swim safely to maintain the oXygen flow is to move its own length every second, faster than the fastest human swimmer at top speed. Bluefin gets their incredible physical stamina from a healthy diet of fish, squid and krill. In offshore waters, they also eat small crustaceans and much larger fish. A skilled ocean hunter, the tuna uses its highly developed senses, binocular or stereoscopic vision, extremely sensitive hearing and special chemical detectors, to hunt prey in areas where warm and cold waters meet where there is more food. Few young tuna from each female survive the perils of fishing and other hungry tuna, sharks, fish, birds, even killer whales, and return to the breeding grounds of the Indian Ocean to complete the life cycle.
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