First Horseshoe crab of the season!

How's it going peoples? Today I will be telling a bit of the story of my second week at Blacks Creek, on Monday, Bridget dropped off Colin and I at the site because traffic was bad. When we made it to Blacks Creek we waited for everyone else and when they came in we set up everything and got all of the children signed in and got in to the day! In the first group there were about 12 people so we went pretty normally, we let the children look for green crabs and minnows with their nets for a few minutes. After a few crabs were caught we took the kids up to the boarding dock to look at the crab trap, when we pulled it up it was filled with a lot of crabs  so we put them all in a bucket and then lugged the bucket over to the touch tank and poured all of the crabs in. After telling the children about crabs and a bit of green crab facts, we had one of our signature crab races where all the participants (the children) picked the crab of their choice and put it behind a line in the sand  when we say go the kids will let go of the crowds and let them run into the water whoever win got bragging rights. After that  we let all of the crabs go freely back into the sea and went up to play Gaga Ball.

The children getting ready for a crab race.

After that we had the second group of children and though there were not a lot of children the second time around we still had a crazy new experience. When we first started I honestly did not believe that we find a lot of sea animals. Like maybe a few green crabs or something but I was amazed when someone pointed out "moving rock" in the water, I looked over and knew exactly what they were talking about. The first Horseshoe crab this year was found just crawling towards the shore line! After catching sight of the amazing beast I alerted all to its presents and picked it up. Many of the children were amazed and look at it from a distance, because it was so crazy looking, it looked a lot different then the green crabs we usually catch. Heck even the counselors were freaked out by the new crab, but mostly because it was leaking black ooze (later determined to be mud).After extensive touching of the crab we set it free and continued our day!

The Horseshoe Crab in all its Glory.

On Tuesday we all got in to Black's Creek at about 8:45 and this time we got right to work. We set all the equipment down and waited for the children to come, when the children came I noticed that there were fewer kids than usual. But even then we still had fun, after having found just about no crabs some of the children and I creatively made up the game net-ball. The game is literally just  playing catch but we used the net to catch the ball 

Net-ball in action!