The Virginia Living Museum offers two “Meaningful Watershed Experience” labs. In “Life in the Chesapeake Bay,” students discover the amazing diversity of life in the Bay by comparing and contrasting the adaptations and survival strategies of marine vertebrate and invertebrate phyla. Using live and preserved specimens, students identify and classify organisms that make up the Bay’s communities, and investigate food pyramids and abiotic factors that affect Bay life. In the “Pond Life” lab, students use plankton nets, bottom dredges, dip nets and other specialized field equipment to study the ecology of a pond by collecting aquatic organisms in their natural habitat. Using sorting trays and field equipment, students investigate (and then release) the collected specimens, learn to identify and classify them, and create a pond food web.