Sunday, July 7, 2019

Week two, and it only gets better

Hey Save the Harbor crew,

It's Aidan again with my second blog this summer. My week at work wasn't very long because I cut my week short for my vacation with my cousins in Vermont, and it was fantastic! For the time spent at work, I went to Black's Creek, my first site in North Quincy. I had a great time forming bonds with the kids and playing many games. Man, those kids can run around! My crew and I caught lots of crabs during high tide at the marsh, and the children loved learning about them. On the second day, it was the same routine at Black's Creek, and one of the kids in the group found a horseshoe crab. We ended our day helping out at the Children's Museum, where we found that the team already there had caught a spider crab. We showed off lots of green crabs and the spider crab to any passerby's who wanted a look.

A rather intense game of evil scientist, a running game that uses facts about animals.
Two special marine species I've found this week are the horseshoe crab and the green crab. A surprising fact about the horseshoe crab is it happens to be more closely related to spiders than other crab species. They are generally 12 inches wide, and twice as long. Horseshoe crabs eat small clams, worms, crustaceans, and algae. They live across the Atlantic shoreline in North America, and exist in India, and stretching towards the lower end of Japan, and live near beaches and normally in salt marshes, like Black's Creek.

The squad and me with the horseshoe crab we found. 

Green crabs are another marine organism I caught last week. Did you know that green crabs are an invasive species that came all the way from Europe? I know that I didn't. Green crabs are usually 9 millimeters long and 210 millimeters wide. Since they've earned a title in the top 100 worst invasive species list, green crabs can find a home anywhere around the world where there is salt water, except for Antarctica. Green crabs eat nearly anything they can scavenge, like sea plants, dead aquatic life (and for a substitute for squid in the crab trap, sausages).

Well, that concludes week two's blog. I get to spend my first full week at work tomorrow, which I'm sure it'll be exciting, and I look forward to it. I can't wait to catch more wildlife and watch the salt marsh come alive. Plus, Black's Creek keeps me active all day, which I know is something I need to do more!

Until next time,
Aidan


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