Closing In on the Big One!

A beautiful picture of the Community Boating sailboats!

At the Community Boating Sailing Center this week the Save the Harbor Team accompanied the environmental Science class coordinator Molly in teaching the kids about water quality and the various instruments we use to measure them. The center had so many cool tools and gadgets for the children to use, I myself was unfamiliar with a few of them! They utilized hydrometers to measure salt content, litmus paper to test pH and water hardness (the amount of dissolved minerals such as calcium and magnesium in the water), and Secchi disks to determine the level of water turbidity. Those kids sure were sharp as many of their hypotheses were in alignment with the collected data; they had even accounted for the fresh water aspect of the River in estimating the waterway's salinity! We closed the class getting down and dirty removing articles of trash from along the River's banks, and even the River itself as many kids labored to reach pieces of trash polluting the River without themselves falling in. Good thing they were young and limber, I'm not sure that these old bones could have contorted themselves in much the same way!

Some campers fishing for our first catch!

Our next stop for the week was to Spectacle Island, which I must confess has grown to be my favorite island. Fishing along the dock yielded another surplus of green shore crabs, though my team and I have yet to lose hope! Today, a striped bass was nearly reeled in, but it was able to wiggle loose before we could get it onto the pier! I was heartbroken, that would have been the first fish caught on the island and was exactly what we needed to break the dry spell. The missed catch, however, has only motivated me even more so as there is no longer any mistaking it-- there are in fact fish there along the pier and they're biting! Only a matter of time now before we haul in a big one!

Be on the lookout for our first catch!
Maxwilliams Iwuala