Ideas for advance marine biology science fair projects?

Question

I'd like to do a science fair project dealing with marine life that is meant for high school students and something I can put a lot of research in. I have access to oceans, lakes and rivers. Any ideas?

Answer 1

If you have hermit crabs you could do a study on what kinds of shells they prefer.  

Collect a bunch of hermit crabs of different sizes and a bunch of different types of empty shells.  You can get hermit crabs to leave their shells by heating the shell up a bit.  (A lighter works fine.)  Then, when the crab leaves the shell, give it a choice of other shells and see which it chooses.

Then, if your crabs prefer a certain type of shell, you could try crushing a bunch of shells and see if maybe the one they prefer is actually more resistant to breaking.  The force needed to break the shell could be measured by seeing from how far up you have to drop them to break them.

Answer 2

How about using algae to make diesel fuel and solve our energy problems?  Most of the world is water and algae can convert CO2 and sunlight into oil.  Some of them can have 77% of their cell mass as oil. Once you get the oil, you can make it into diesel fuel with easily bought chemicals.  There are some great Yahoo groups on this:  Biodiesel and oil_from_algae.