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Critter's Common Name: Osprey
Scientific Name: Pandion Haliaetus
Description: It has brown eyes it has a little white and yellow eyes.
Food Source: Mostly fish and small rodents.
Habitat: Central America, South America, South Africa.
Niche: The Osprey is a prey.
Migration: The Osprey migrates to South America.
Competition/Cooperation: The Osprey compete with other birds and large owls.
Challenges: The Osprey has to watch out for big owls and eagles
Symbiotic Relationship: The Osprey has no symbiotic relationship
Importance: The Osprey does have an role on the ecosystem. They prey on fish and without them then the fish population is going to be unbalance.
Interesting Facts:
Ospreys can be found everywhere expert for Antarctica. Fish is 99% of Ospreys diets.

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Critter's Common Name: Sea Turtle (Loggerhead)
Scientific Name: Caretta caretta
Description: Depending on the type of sea turtle their colors can range from greenish-brown all the way to black. They have adapted 4 flippers to swim in the water and they have a big, hard, oval shaped shell covering it's back to protects itself. Sea turtles have a beak-like mouth to chew their crustacean prey with. Their size can range from 21-45 inches.
Food Source: A wide variety of shellfish and marine plants.
Habitat: Loggerhead sea turtles live all around the world but, they like to live in coastal tropical and tropical climates. They are also most likely found in shallow waters.
Migration: A species of sea turtle, Loggerhead, migrate up to 8,000 miles to North American waters from the Mediterranean.
Niche: Sea turtles feed mostly on bottom-dwelling invertebrates and crustaceans. Since loggerhead sea turtles have a strong jaw, they increase the rate at which the shells disintegrate of their prey. Which helps increase the rate of nutrient recycling.
Competition/Cooperation: Some snails and fish live on the back of the turtle.
Challenges: Sea turtle eggs and hatch lings still in their nests have a risk of being attacked by predators like raccoons, crabs, and ants. sea turtles can also accidentally swallow plastic debris that washes into beaches. Another huge challenge sea turtles face is pollution. Marine Pollution has been linked to have caused a certain disease (fibropapillomas) that is killing of many sea turtles.
Symbiotic Relationships: The Marine Leech uses Loggerhead sea turtles as a host to lay their eggs, and infects the sea turtle. If it is too infected, the turtle will eventually die. Yellow Tangs will eat the algae, which is their diet, that is on the back of the turtle, increasing the turtle's aerodynamics. Some barnacles can attach themselves to the sea turtles and not affect them in any way, while getting fresh water while travelling along with the turtle.
Importance: Sea turtles are one of the few sea animals that eat sea grass. By eating sea grass they keep the grass beds healthy. These beds are important because they provide breeding and development grounds for some fish. So, if sea turtles went extinct there would be a decline in all other fish depending on sea grass beds. Sea turtles also give beaches nutrients because when turtles nest, the eggs that don't hatch decay and nourish the beaches.
Interesting Facts:
-It can take as much as a week for a baby sea turtle to dig itself out of the hole that they were laid in.
- one in 1,000 baby sea turtles will live to adulthood
- a female loggerhead sea turtle may travel thousands of miles to nest her eggs on the same beach where she hatched

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Critter's Common
Name: Zooplankton Copepods

Scientific Name: Doridicola agilis
Description:Copepods are cylindrical bodies with multiple segments, for example they have 9 trunk segments. Unlike his body it's head is bear prominent and round! Along with it’s head, this creature has 2 LONG antenna’s that is usually longer than their body. These organisms are 1-5 mm long though some might grow about too 10mm.

Food Source: Photoplankton, Detritus and smaller zooplankton
Niche: Copepods are used as  the basis of our large stocks of herring and mackerel. They're also sometimes used to be our biodiversity indicator.

Migration: they do not migrate but they live in  freshwater like the Great Lakes and etc.
Competition/Cooperation:
Challenges: Some predator are  dragonet, banded killifish, whales, seabirds, Alaska pollock, and other krill. With all their predator they can sometimes harm its health when they eat too much of the Doridicola agili. Along with not eating a lot of these organisms they aren't usually found in population. With all of this you might think that are they over populate or are they endanger well……...They are not in endangered although they get eaten in 2,200-5,500 pounds.

Symbiotic relationships: Copepods do have a Symbiotic relationship with sharks. They are in a relationship because when the copepods are ingest they then can feed on the shark which as an effect the shark will slowly die but is good for the copepods.

Importance:
Interesting Facts:

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Critter's Common Name: Ruddy Duck
Scientific Name: Oxyura jamaicensis
Description: The Ruddy Duck has a large head, wide gray bill, short thick neck and a long stiff tail. It has 1 bill, 2 eyes, a 23 inches wide wingspan and can grow to 16 inches.

Food Source: They eat bay grasses like Pond weeds and wild celery and insects like mollusks and crustaceans. They also dive to find prey
Habitat: The ruddy duck lives in shallow waters in the Chesapeake bay. It also can be found in Tidal Rivers and freshwater ponds and lakes.
Niche: They are predator to pondweeds, wild celery, insects, mollusks and crustaceans. Prey to Hawks, Minks, Owls and Red foxes.
Migration: The Ruddy Duck lives in the bay region from autumn through spring and migrates in the summer in the Prairie Pothole region of North and South Dakota and Southern Canada
Competition/Cooperation: They compete with other species of ducks and geese
Challenges: It can be infected by a disease call Salt Toxicosis, this can be a very harmful disease. It's other challenges are it's attempt to survive against the duck's predators.
Symbiotic Relationship: The Ruddy Duck has no symbiotic relationships
Importance: Act as predators invertebrates such as chironomid midge larvae and crustaceans. It also eats aquatic vegetation.
Interesting Facts: The Ruddy Ducks are one of the smallest ducks found in the Chesapeake Bay but they lay some of the largest eggs, they are called ruddy ducks because when they swim their tail moves like a rudder to help them be amazing swimmers... but they are very clumsy on land.

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Critter's Common Name: Great Blue Heron
Scientific Name: Ardea herodias
Description: Fluffy feathers and spikes on it's back its long beak is brow and yellow
Food Source:  They use their feet to grab food and their beaks to eat and catch.
Habitat: They mostly live in Central America and the Atlantic Coast.
Niche: Predator
Migration: Yes, they do. When they do, they either go alone or with small groups. Herons migrate to south Canada.
Competition/Cooperation: They compete with other herons and the Grey Heron for their fish in the bay.
Challenges: The Great Blue Heron is prey to the American Alligator.
Symbiotic Relationships: The Great Blue Heron shares a mutualism with the beaver.
Importance: The important's of the great blue heron is that it helps balance the population of fish and insects in the bay. They are also important for the animal that prey on it.
Interesting Facts: The great blue heron  lays 3-5 eggs per season and the eggs take 26-30 days till they hatch.

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Critter's Common Name:
Blue Crab
Scientific Name:
Callinectes sapidus
Description: The Blue Crabs shell varies from blue to olive green and can be up to nine inches long. They have bright blue claws and three pairs of walking legs and paddle-shaped rear swimming legs.
Food Source: The Blue Crab usually eats anything in other words they are omnivores. They also enjoy eating oysters, mussels, clams and small crustacean.
Habitat: Blue Crabs live in shallow waters and by grass beds during the spring and summer. During the winter they live in deep trenches.
Niche: Blue Crab's larva are food for menhaden, oysters and other filter feeders. Adults serve as food for fish, birds and other blue crabs. It eats bottom-dwelling organisms such as thin-shelled bivalves, small crustaceans, freshly dead fish, plant and animal detritus, and almost anything else they can find. Blue Crabs also help regulate the marsh periwinkle population by eating them.
Migration: Blue Crabs do not migrate, but they do relocate deeper into water into muddy sand during the winter. This isn't hibernation yet more or less like a dormant state.
Competition/Cooperation: The Blue Crab usually plays a major role in the production of organisms in the Chesapeake Bay. Because the Blue Crabs eat mostly everything they lower mass production. They also often have to compete for food sources with other animals because they are such predators.
Challenges: Blue Crabs face habitat loss, harvest pressure, and not getting eaten by predators such as Striped Bass, Atlantic Crooker and Red Drum.
Symbiotic Relationships: Blue Crabs have multiple symbiotic relationships between other animals such as mollusks. They have mutalism plants and females have parasitism with nemertean worms.
Importance: Blue crabs are an important food source not just for the living organisms in the Chesapeake Bay but, also make up 1/3 of the nations catch come from the bay.
Interesting Facts:

Gender is told through having a "T" on there bellies (male). Female crabs can only mate once. The average lifetime of a Blue Crab is three years.

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Critter's common name: Atlantic Menhaden
Scientific Name: Brevoortia Tyannus
Description:This fish has greenish-blue body. The fins and belly are silvery. The fish has dark spots on its body.
Food source: This fish is a filter feeder and eats plankton by filtering out the water in its body. they also eat larva.
Habitat: The Menhaden lives in the Mid-Atlantic and the Chesapeake Bay. Swims close to the surface of the water.
Niche: The Menhaden filters out pollutants in the water to clean the water and improve the water quality.
Migration: Atlantic Menhaden Migrate to coastal waters. There is more supply of plankton in the fall and summer in coastal waters.
Competition/Cooperation: Other filter feeders may compete for food(plankton). Many animals depend on the Menhaden for food. Ex: blue-fish, striped bass and seabirds.
Challenges: The Menhaden faces challenges like being fished, and is eaten by larger predators.
Importance: The Menhaden cleans/filters out pollutants and is a important source of food for  predators

Interesting Facts: Menhaden are so oily that we can't really eat them

Native Americans called Menhaden Munnawhatteaug

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Critter’s Common Name:American Shad
Scientific Name:Alosa Sapidissima
Description:Silvery color with a dark greenish back;usually 4-7 lbs;females are usually larger than males;and both genders have one fin on top, two fins on the bottom,and one on each side.
Food source:Plankton, small fish,fish eggs,and some shrimp species
Habitat:Chesapeake Bay region but they spawn in rivers.
Niche:They are an important link on the food web,but are also a important cultural item in the Chesapeake Bay Region’s history and even every day life.
Migration:Every year,they migrate to the river that they were born in to spawn. In fact, a single American Shad will migrate 12,000 miles in their lifetime !
Competition:they compete with the salmonids for food and spawning ground.
Challenges:Their biggest challenges are overfishing and pollution.Overfishing was one of their biggest problems for around 150 years,until people
realized that we were fishing out all of the American Shads. Fun fact, their scientific name literally means “good to eat”!!   Symbiotic Relationships:They have a commensalistic relationship with the mussel. The female Shads lay their eggs in the mussels mouth and the mussel holds them until they are ready to hatch.Unfortunately,the mussel gets nothing back from this relationship.
Social Importance\Effect: They are feasted on by a number of larger carnivorous animals,including but not limited to,humans, bears, birds, and larger fish
Other Interesting Information:On the endangered species list with around 8,000 left in the wild.

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Critter's Common Name: American Oyster
Scientific name :Crassostrea virginica
Description: -2 inches long
-2 inches wide
-circular
-chunky
-white and shades of brown
Food Source: American oysters feed up on plankton as there food source
Habitat: Coastal areas of America
Niche: Keeps community clean
Migration: adults oysters don't migrate but the larva swim freely
Competition/Cooperation: The fish protect the oysters baby from getting eating by larger fish
Challenges: -over fishing (more than 20 million oysters are harvested a year)
-habitat loss
-disease
-poor water quality
-predators (fish, starfish, fish, crab, flatworm, mud worms)
Symbiotic Relationship:  Commensalistic -oysters reefs provide protection for fishes and oysters keep the water clean
Importance: Food for us and other animals. Helps keep the water clean. prevents algae from taking up too much oxygen.
Interesting Facts: The American oyster's shell became  Louisiana's official state gem in 2011.

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Chihiro Horikoshi &                       Ella Smolgovsky

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Chihiro Horikoshi &                       Ella Smolgovsky

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Critter's Common Name:
Striped bass
Scientific Name:
Morone saxatilis
Description:
-Light silver stomach
-Dark grey/dark brown back
-Black dotted line on back
-2 fin on top and bottom
-1 fin on each side of body
- Striped caudal fin
Food source:
fish such as
-alewives
-flounder
-sea hearing manhaden
- sand lance
-silver hake
-tomcod
-eels
-lobsters
-soft clams
-mussels
-sea worms
-squid
Where does organism live:
The striped bass Morone saxatilis is found in coastal waters along the North American Atlantic coast, from St. Lawrence River, Canada to St. Johns River, Florida, USA, although this species is most prevalent from Maine to North Carolina. In addition to coastal waters, striped bass is also found in rivers and lakes.

Migration: Striped bass migrate to the Chesapeake Bay
Role in community:
pelagic predator
-roam in open water and eat small fish
-Top predator
Competition/Cooperation:
Challenges:
-diseases
-lack of prey
-poor water quality
-Big water temperature change in small period of time
symbiotic relation
-parasitism
Importance:
Certain types of organisms will overpopulate and then the ecosystem will lose its balance

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Critter's Common Name: Sandbar Shark

Scientific Name: Carcharhinus plumbeus
Description: Has a big dorsal fin and has tan-ish skin. It has a skinny/slim body and a long tail.
Food Source: Eats small fish like menhaden and crustaceans like crabs.
Habitat: Lives in the Western North Atlantic and the Chesapeake and Delaware bays are both nursing grounds for them as well.
Migration: They migrate to subtropical waters when it gets too cold.
Niche: It preys on smaller fish and squid.
Competition/Cooperation:
Sandbar sharks cooperate with remoras and pilot fish.
Challenges: Some main problems sandbar sharks face, is over fishing and pollution.
Symbiotic relationships: Commensalism because remoras gets transportation and shark gets clean.
Importance: Keep the population of smaller fish and squid steady.
Interesting Facts: Most common shark found in the Chesapeake Bay.

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A Sandbar shark was killed when a truck transporting several of them to Coney Island crashed in Florida, authorities said on Thursday.

The shark was killed when its tank broke as the truck it was traveling north on I-95 in blew a tire, about 20 miles south of Daytona Beach, said Carl Cusumano, a spokesman for the Volusia County Professional Firefighters.

The truck then "ran off into the woods" at about 2:20 p.m., he said. Cusumano said the three people in the truck were not injured, but the responding firefighters were very surprised to learn about the wild cargo.

The shark, which was about five feet long, was one of four that were all headed to the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, said Sergeant Kim Montes, a spokeswoman for the Florida Highway Patrol. The remaining sharks were taken to SeaWorld in Orlando where they are being held until they can be brought up to New York.

A spokesman for the Wildlife Conservation Society, who owns the New York Aquarium, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The sandbar shark can grow up to eight feet long and is found in subtropical waters. They eat bony fishes, other small sharks, octopuses, shrimp, rays and snails.

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Sandbar shark dies on its way to Coney Island from Florida

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A Sandbar shark was killed when a truck transporting several of them to Coney Island crashed in Florida, authorities said on Thursday. The shark was killed when its tank broke as the truck it was traveling north on I-95 in blew a tire, about 20 miles south of Daytona Beach, said Carl Cusumano, a spokesman for the Volusia County Professional Firefighters.

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Critters Common Name: Underwater Grasses
Scientific Name: Ruppia Martima
Description: Underwater grasses are long and thin. They are green, ranging from a bright green, to a brownish green. Underwater grasses are in big groups together. They are white at the bottom .
Food source: Just like any other plant underwater grasses get their food from photosynthesis.
Habitat: Underwater grasses live in the Chesapeake Bay, and its  streams, creeks, and rivers. Underwater grasses live in shallow waters.
Niche: Underwater grasses are critical the Chesapeake Bay. They provide food for small invertebrates, and migratory water fowl. They give shelter for young fish and blue crabs. Underwater grasses help keep out waters clear, by absorbing excess nutrients, trapping suspended sediment, and slowing shoreline erosion.
Migration: Underwater grasses do not migrate.
Competition/Cooperation: Underwater grasses compete with other plants to get the sunlight they need.
Challenges: Under water grasses get affected by pollution. too much nutrients and sediment can block sunlight. High temperatures and excess rainfall can also harm underwater grasses.
Symbiotic Relationships: Commensalism from animals making the grasses their home. Also parasitism from animals eating them.
Importance: The removal of underwater grasses can harm many animals, and the water quality of the the Chesapeake Bay. Fish would loose their homes and food.
Interesting Facts: Humans have destroyed a lot of underwater grasses. The DNR led two large scale eel grass restoration projects

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Critters common name: Grass shrimp
Scientific name: Palaemonetes palodosus
Description: It looks very similar to a crayfish except that the grass shrimp is transparent, has bigger eyes, and have more antennas
Food source:The grass shrimp eats zooplankton, algae, dead decaying plants/animals,small worms ,and other small crustaceans
Habitat: New England's shallow coastal waters from cape cod south
Niche: They burrow during the day and go up to the surface to feed at niht
Migration:Yes, grass shrimp may move into deeper waters in winter
Competition/Cooperation:
Challenges: They are prey to fish, crab, sunfish, and killfish
Relationship:commensalism

Importance:the gras shrimp provides food for other animals and it eats algae and dead or/and decaying plants which prevents the nitrite keels from getting to high
Interesting Facts:

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Critter's Common Name: White perch

Scientific Name: Morone americana
Description: silver toned scales, small head, 6 fins total, 2 beady black eyes, with the size varying from 8-10 in.
Food Source: Mainly eats fish eggs. Also, Mud and Fathead minnows.
Habitat: the Atlantic coast, often in the chesapeake bay, lake Erie, and Ontario.
Niche: they both benefit their ecosystems by serving as predators and prey.
Migration: As they grow, they migrate downstream to brackish waters.
Competition/Cooperation: Fights Yellow perch for zoo plankton. Cooperates with bass to eat Fathead minnows
Challenges: -a parasite called "Lironeca Ovalis" is sometimes found in the gills.
-predators: striped bass, bluefish, and walleye as adults, and bluegills and copepods when they are still eggs.
Symbiotic relationships: Bass tapeworms have a parasitism relationship.
Importance: As a carnivore, it's consumption of many organisms helps maintain the balance of existing animals in its ecosystem.
Interesting facts: -not an actual - perch, but a member of the bass family.
-People fish white perch for fun and to eat
Average life expectancy is 17 years
-it's diet of fish eggs extends to cannibalizing it's own eggs.