Wednesday, October 10th

This school holidays the Project Little Oneroa team hosted Wicked Science Wednesday to promote the importance of our stream by using science to explore what’s beneath it. Unfortunately like too many waterways in Aotearoa the Little Oneroa Stream is polluted with E.coli bacteria. We have been working to learn more about why the stream is polluted and what we can do to change that. A part of the project is monitoring the ecology of the stream using the Waicare water testing kit.

Staff and interns worked with the children to check air and water temperature, measured dissolved oxygen content in the water, and monitored stream life such as microintervertibrates.  

Firstly kids measured the oxygen content in the stream. By using the CHEMets kit samples were taken from the stream. This kit has dissolved oxygen tubes with different shades of blue ranging from 1-12 depending on the oxygen content. The more darker the color, the more oxygen is in the water and this is matched up with the test sample taken from the stream.The reading was at a 6 which is enough oxygen to support life

The second activity of the day was collecting stream water to examine small marine life, macroinvertebrates. The children were super excited, and collected samples using nets and brought them to white bins for examination.The Children eagerly collected all sorts of life forms like Daminfly, water fleas, stoneflies, ect.

The event ended with lunch being provided by Dragonfired Pizza cooking up pizza for everyone. Thank you Dragonfired for sponsoring this event.

Thank you to all the children and parents that came out to Little Oneroa. It was a wonderful morning showing everyone how we monitor the ecology of our streams.

Here is what the children wrote down to what they saw in the river. 

As a community we all need to do our part to protect our stream. Here are 4 ways we can all be doing to help: don’t feed the duck, use septic friendly products, care for your on-site wastewater system, and pick up after your dog.