Wonderful Day for a Dip in The Charles River

Me attempting to free a fishing line
one of the kids had gotten snagged.

This week marked Save the Harbor Save the Bay's last day at the Community Boating Sailing Center on the Charles River. It was a sad affair, but the environmental science coordinator, Molly, had a treat in store for us. She had scheduled our morning session to go paddle boarding on the river! I had never been paddle boarding before, and quite honestly, had spent the summer growing envious of those kids enrolled in their program lucky enough to be able to paddle out all the way put to Cambridge. I erred on the side of caution and removed my cell phone from my pocket before embarking on our trip, and so I wasn't able to grab any cool pictures! This preemptive act turned out to be a blessing in disguise, however, because I ended up falling in the river trying to avoid crashing into one of the fellow paddlers! I went through the rest of the day with a soaked uniform-- my team thought that was really funny; I'm not sure I did tho!

This group hardly needed our help!

This week on All Access we revisited Spectacle Island, my favorite as you all know. With the returning of the fishing gear we had stored at Community Boating Sailing Center, we were able to bring a couple more rods with us out on the island, which made a big difference. With them, we were able to serve a lot more people, and give more children the opportunity to fish on a Boston Harbor Island. This week in particular the kids were especially good at tangling up the fishing reels; every time I turned my attention to another child, the previous one I had been working with's fishing line would be tangled in one big mess! Thankfully my team was rehearsed in troubleshooting and repairing the rods after a summer of untangling and re-rigging them. The crap trap yielded a boatload of crabs, all of different species! There green shore crabs, red rock crabs, Jonah crabs and even spider crabs! The kids were in awe at all the crustaceans crabbing around in our touch tank. One group was especially knowledgeable about crabs and mobbed around the tank, pointing and identifying the crabs' sexes!

Stay tuned for more,
Maxwilliams