Report from participants

BEFORE CLEANING THE SWIMMING POOL, WE RESCUED DRAGONFLY NYMPHS, ALTHOUGH ONLY 30
Nakano 7 th Junior High School Nature Investigation Club

June 2, 2000
We rescued dragonfly nymphs before cleaning the swimming pool. We did this last year as well. We wanted to save them because they would otherwise be flushed to the sewage or be thrown away with trash and die. We could save only 30 of them, however.

We scooped the bottom of the swimming pool with a net.	"Here's a dragonfly nymph." I got it!	A nymph we caught. It's probably a Akiakane dragonfly. We also caught a three-spotted back swimmer who kept moving about restlessly.	A nymph emerging in a water tank in the corridor
A nymph has safely became a dragonfly.

Comments from Students
On June 2, we rescued dragonfly nymphs from the swimming pool of our school. We used a net normally used for clearing the leaves from the pool surface, and scooped the nymphs together with the dead leaves at the bottom of the pool. Sometimes we caught 2~3 nymphs with one scoop, but sometimes we got nothing but the leaves and mud. Altogether we caught about 30 dragonfly nymphs and put them in a few separate water tanks. To avoid cannibalism, we also put in some leaves, which the nymphs can use as their hiding place. We found many other creatures in the net. The largest in number was mosquito lava, but there was a mysterious one too. What is this that looks like a miniature Japanese diving beetle? We later found out that it was Matsumomushi(Notonecta triguttata). All the nymphs we caught were of Akiakane dragonfly. I then knew that, although the swimming pool normally looked very dirty to me, there lived a lot of creatures in it such as pond skaters, dragonfly nymphs and so forth. Nevertheless, when the season comes for us to use the pool for swimming, these creatures get washed away with water. Human beings are cruel, I thought. In a short while, we will move the nymphs to the "Dragonfly Pond" of our school. I hope the nymphs will grow and come back as dragonflies to the "Dragonfly Pond" we made last year. (K, 3rd grade)