On Oct. 9, Deborah Sisk took her third and fifth hour Earth Space Science classes to the Firemens’ Memorial. However, the reason for the field trip was actually so the students could search for and locate crinoids.

According to Wikipedia, crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea of the echinoderms (phylum Echinodermata). Crinoidea comes from the Greek word krinon, “a lily”, and eidos, “form” .They live both in shallow water and in depths as great as 6,000 meters.

Sophomore Lindsay Wittig loved the field trip. She would highly recommend it.

“It was fun to go hiking on the rocks and it was fun to find crinoids,” Wittig said. “I did manage to find one and, this was good because I was able to earn a little extra credit. I would recommend it because it is more fun to do a hands-on activity rather than taking notes.”

Sophomore Fritz Lienemann, on the other hand, was not impressed by the experience.

“It was just okay, but not too exciting,” Lienemann said. “I do not think I managed to find one [a crinoid] anyways. The only thing I really liked about it and the reason I would recommend it would be because it just ate up class time.”

Sisk decided that the field trip would be more like an experiment. She also explained how the crinoids came to be there.

“This was the first and possibly last field trip that I have offered to my Earth Space Science classes,” Sisk said. “If I feel that they acted well, then I might start doing more activities like this. The crinoids came to be there because most of the Midwest used to be an ocean. These organisms were left behind and have since fossilized. Getting to be outside was also a plus.”

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