Water we gonna do

  Hey everyone, Aidan is back with blog number 7. This week was my last week at Black's Creek, which is kind of sad. I had a good time playing games and exploring the shoreline, but part of the experience is to move on and try new things at Save the Harbor. Overall, the week was pretty easy. On that last day at Black's Creek, we had the campers bring their parents along to do activities like fishing, kayaking, fish printing, and using the touch tank. On Friday, I worked at the Children's Museum with my sister. The day didn't have much to give, but we did catch two crabs and a cunner fish.

A boat accident at the dock.

 Water is the essential essence of life here on Earth, as no creature can live without it. In order to preserve our water, we need to keep it top-notch. To keep water clean, many dams and reserves are made to keep water in an isolated, clean environment. Factories filter out anything unsafe that sits in the water to ensure there is no chance of someone getting sick. Rivers are a natural water cleaner because the constantly moving water carries minerals like dirt and ocean salt to the ground underneath. Lakes also contain healthy water to a degree, because they are so big that the subtly shifting water is enough to keep the environment well circulated. Small bodies of water, like ponds or puddles, have dirtier water because it remains still and has unhealthy materials surfing around them, like animal waste or diseases. That said, keeping the harbor totally clean is hard, because there are plenty of people in Boston who don't care in the slightest about keeping water clean. This is evident when I head to the office, just before the World Trade Center, I find coffee cups, chip bags, and plastic bottles against the bridge wall. My grandmother remembers when you could walk on the Harbor because so much trash piled up, and when Spectacle Island was a burning heap of garbage. When water leaves a house, it is sent to a septic tank, where it is sent to a sewage plant for water treatment, or it is slowly flushed into the ground keeping the soil hydrated and healthy. If not for that, we'd probably be stuck in a world where people constantly die from dirty water and unsanitary conditions. The harbor, and eventually the ocean too would become a barren world of disgusting water.

 That's all I have to say for this blog, so as always, till next time,
Aidan.

Just a face.

Knot your typical week

Hello! Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

Playing a camp game!

This week was a very interesting one! All of the camps at Quincy Recreation ended this week, including our Harbor Explorers Program at Blacks Creek. Monday and Tuesday were our last “regular” camp days with the kids we’ve been working with all summer, so we tried to make it a special one. We brought out all of the various water exploration tools we’ve used throughout the summer: minnow nets, a touch tank, a crab trap, a seine net, a refractometer, and a soil corer. We also brought several fishing rods to allow our kids to try fishing. Unlike most of the Save The Harbor sites, we do not often fish at Blacks Creek. This is for several reasons. Firstly, we need to overcast at this site which can be difficult and potentially dangerous with the age of our campers as well as the many boats that are in the surrounding waters. We also don’t tend to fish because there is much more to catch in the shallows with a net than in the center of the creek with our rods. In fact, all of Monday and Tuesday we caught nothing on the rods but plenty with our nets and crab trap. We had fewer campers than usual this week, likely they were at other camps or on vacation, and because of that, we were able to make Monday and Tuesday very driven by each camper's interests. When they arrived we asked them what games they wanted to play and during the water time we allowed them to choose which activity they each did. Most of the campers were very excited to try the fishing rods and to spend time with our touch tank.

Wednesday of this week was our annual staff fishing derby. We arrived at Fan Pier early in the morning, were divided into teams according to numbers that could fit on each boat, and took off. I was with Kaya and Brianna on Basil Freddura’s boat, Basil is one of the owners of The Daily Catch and Calimari Fisheries. Basil was an awesome captain and was very patient with teaching us all he could and allowing us to use his personal gear. We cruised around, testing out a few of Basil’s favorite fishing spots, before finding a great area. We ended up finding a boil (where several big fish are chasing little fish and causing movement on the surface) with many birds flying around it. Just as Brianna cast her line we saw some big spots on our fish finder. Almost immediately after, the line shot out on her rod, and she had hooked a big one! Basil helped coach Brianna through landing a big fish and helped teach us all along the way. They eventually got the fish on the boat, and it was a 34.5-inch Striped Bass. Everyone celebrated, so excited that we caught such a big fish, and quite early in the day! The rest of the day was less eventful, we caught some Pogy (Menhaden) and several smaller stripers. I loved learning techniques for catching different fish and overall had a blast. Our whole boat was very excited and proud that we caught one big striper! We didn’t win, as two other boats had headed far out and found a ton of large striper, but we were very excited to get on the board. I also got to take one of the fillets home and had a delicious seafood dinner the next day!

Thursday we returned to Blacks Creek for their end of the summer celebration, called Nautical Day. The families of any camper at our Harbor Explorers camp or the boating and sailing camps were invited to attend. My staff and I set up several stations for families to enjoy, such as fish printing, touch tank learning, minnow net exploring, and beach trash clean-up.  The fish printing was a big hit, as it almost always is. Fish printing is a very cool activity that Save the Harbor does at many of our public events. We have a frozen (real) fish that kids cover in paint. After you have a thin layer of paint covering the fish you put a sheet of rice paper on top of the whole fish. When you slowly peel the paper back you are left with a painting that shows all of the scales, fins, and major body parts of the fish. My favorite fish to print with is a flounder, they are so interesting looking and kids are always fascinated by their unique shape and their eyes. Overall, Nautical Day was a lot of fun and a great way to end the portion of my summer spent at Blacks Creek.

Our final team that worked at Blacks Creek, including the Quincy Rec Staff we got to co-counsel with all summer!
L to R: Veronica, me, Flo, Jasmine, Colby, Maggie, Eileen, Aidan

On Friday I ventured out with the Camp Harbor View team to learn about their site, where I will be for the rest of the summer.

This was an awesome week, filled with special activities and tons of fishing. I am sad to say goodbye to the wonderful staff and campers I have had at Blacks Creek, but excited to get to work at a new site and learn more about fishing there.

Until next week,
Tessa Diehl

The Importance of Water's Flo(w) Quality

                                                                                                                        August 11, 2019 

Hello. I’m back........and I’m better than ever. So this week's topic is about water quality and how important it is to keep the water clean for both the environment and human consumption. Water is removed and recycled into the environment daily so keeping it clean is a priority. This week, my crew and I worked at Blacks Creek in Quincy and the Curley Community Center in South Boston. We interacted with the kids through lessons, fishing, and games. 

 One challenge that I see in the harbor is keeping it clean from trash and other items that people ignorantly throw into the harbor. Over time, chemicals and other hazardous substances may seep from the thrown items and enter the harbor. This makes the water unsafe for drinking and swimming for us humans and the sea animals. This downgrades the quality of the water and eventually, if we do nothing to stop it, the harbor will resort to what it was 50 years ago.  Preserving the water's condition is crucial to the life within it and for our benefit too. For example, the instrument that I'm using with the kids in the picture on the right is called a refractometer and it's used to calculate the saltiness of the water. This is important to understand if the water is safe enough for the fish to breath or for humans to swim in.

 When water leaves one's home, it goes down drains and pipes into the sewers and enters a central sewage system where it goes to a plant that treats, cleans and filters it for reusing and reapplication in the world instead of just throwing it out and disregarding it forever. Turbidity,  temperature, flow rate, dissolved oxygen, and pH are some of the tests used to determine water quality. Each test checks for the water clarity, its temperature how fast it flows, the oxygen molecules dissolved in it, and the acidity or basic levels of the water, respectively.

 Most of the plant ecosystems contribute to natural purification of water where, for example, the roots of the plants in the water naturally defuse water within its cells to keep the water clean for other uses.

In the past,  many have said that the harbor was beyond disgusting. It was a dumpsite for everyone’s trash in the area to the point where you could walk across the harbor without getting your feet wet because it was saturated with trash and other neglected items. However, the residents of Boston have committed funding and energy to get the harbor cleaned. Years later here we are now, with the body of water being one of the cleanest urban harbors in America and we must continue to fulfill the promise for the better part of the country. I’m going to live up to helping keep the earth clean and safe for everyone so that we do not have to worry about the water getting destroyed or climate change. 

Thanks for putting up with the quality of my blog!

See you next year.....maybe.

Flo!

Blacks Creek Site Description

Welcome back to another weekly update! Each week I have been blogging about our work at the Blacks Creek site in Quincy, but I haven’t properly described our beautiful site. I will strive to do so in this post!

Of view of our site - we meet near the beach on the left portion of the photo
and spend time exploring the water and marsh pictured.

     Our camp is based at the Quincy Recreation boathouse on Blacks Creek. We are tucked behind the main recreation offices and our camp meets right on the water. Blacks Creek is a relatively small creek, lined with marsh, that flows into the Quincy Bay. It is somewhat tidal, but there is a small dam with gates that is the main controller of the water level. The water there is brackish, meaning that it is a mixture of saltwater from the ocean and freshwater from rain and runoff. This week when we tested the water using our refractometer we found the salinity to be around 3.5 parts per thousand, but I would guess that the amount of salt in the water is higher at times, especially if the gates were to be completely open during high tide.

     For about half of each camp session, we explore in the water. Campers are permitted to go up to their knees, and at this depth, we can catch many minnows, shrimp, crabs, and mussels. In addition to wading through the water to catch things we often set up a crab trap off of the boating dock. Most days we catch an average of 10 to 20 crabs. We have a touch tank that the campers can put all of our finds for the day in and the counselors observe the animals with our campers while also teaching them what we know. One of my favorite parts of our site is that the learning is often done so naturally that the campers don’t even realize they are being taught information, but they do walk away with more knowledge each day. A few times throughout the summer we also have brought out a seine net. This is a large net that requires two counselors to work. We wear our swimsuits on seine net days and walk a large net out to a depth of about 3.5 feet. On seine net days we often catch upwards of a hundred minnows and twice have even caught baby flounders. This next week marks the last week of Quincy Recreation programming, so as a special treat we are going to bring fishing poles, the seine net, and our regular nets, so the campers have lots of water activities to choose from.

Pulling up the crab trap

Examining our catches in our touch tank

     Across a small parking lot, our meeting spot is a sports area with a big open field, a baseball diamond, and a gaga ball pit. This is where we play games for about half of each session. Our campers favorite games are gaga ball, evil scientist, and froggy detective. Gaga ball is somewhat like dodgeball, but it is played in a hexagonal pit. Each person wants to be the last one standing, and you get out of the game if the ball touches you below the knee, if you touch the ball twice without it touching the wall or another person, or if you hit the ball out of the pit. It is a quick game that allows each player to choose how active and engaged they want to be. Several people often choose to be the main ones hitting the ball at other players and others choose to hang back. One of our Tuesday and Thursday morning players, Ethereal, is well known in our group for being great at quietly hanging back and dodging the ball until the end, when she is often one of the last two players remaining. The game is also lots of fun to watch so it keeps our campers engaged even after they are out. In evil scientist, one or two campers play the “evil scientists” who stand in the middle of our field. Everyone else lines up on one side of the pitch and silently chooses an animal. The evil scientists list a characteristic of an animal and if your animal has that attribute, for example, “if your animal eats meat”, then you must try to run to the other side without being tagged by the evil scientist. We love playing this game because it is a fun running/tag game that allows small resting time in between running and also includes some science in the gameplay. When it is really hot out or everyone is a bit tired we play froggy detective. In this game one player is the froggy detective, one player is the secretly-selected froggy killer, and everyone else is a froggy bystander. We all sit in a circle with the froggy detective standing in the middle. The froggy killer tries to kill all of the bystanders, by subtly sticking their tongue out at them, before the froggy detective can correctly guess who is the killer. All of these games, as well as the many others we play, have really helped us to bond with our campers as we play and have fun together.

Playing Gaga ball with our campers!

I hope this post has helped to clarify what a day-in-the-life at our site looks like. Comment if you have any questions!

Seine-cerely,
Tessa

Update on Blacks Creek

Hello everyone, Aidan coming back in with blog 6, with an exciting week at Blacks Creek.
The heat this week wasn’t very pleasurable, but we caught plenty of crabs and fish at our site. The kids were happy to be playing their favorite games like gaga ball and evil scientist. We also got a new tool called a refractometer, which measures the salinity of the water in our marsh. The marsh’ salinity was 5 parts per thousand, in contrast to the ocean’s salinity of an estimated 35! Our SHE came up with the wonderful idea to let us gather up 16 feisty crabs running around to spice things up a little. We also used a tool called a soil corer to see what’s underneath the soil. Also, when of the boats tipped over on its side with a Quincy counselor aboard, which took our minds off of the intense afternoon heat.

A nice look at the black’s creek marsh

Flo teaching campers to use the refractometer

My site at Blacks Creek is a salt marsh in North Quincy. It’s mostly freshwater, but many ocean animals live in it. It’s surrounded by winding upheaves of grass and shoots, where white egrets like to hide and search for food, although they do like perching in a nearby dead tree. When searching the shoreline, kids find sticklebacks, killifish, and silverside fish. The most common creature we find is the green crab, which is normally caught using the crab trap, with a few shoreline stragglers that kids catch with their nets. Other crabs are pretty rare, like the horseshoe crab and even the hermit crab. Cormorants hang out on the locked boats and like to swim in the water, especially when it’s hot and humid. Occasionally, ducks or geese will fly by and land in the marsh.
I like to lead the kids through physically active games as the competitive JPA. I usually try in games to give them a sense of competition and get them to feel pride and success when they win a game. I think my favorite game is gaga ball, where everyone’s always on their toes and constantly alert. In games like speedball, however, I prefer to be gentler with the kids, as a rubber ball to the face isn’t pleasant for anyone, especially with these kids who aren’t even ten years old yet. As stated previously, the kids we watch over generally aren’t in the double digits in terms of age. But they are filled with excitement whenever they come by, because who doesn’t want to play games in the summertime?

 Anyways, that’s all there is to say this week, so as always, 

 Until next time,

Aidan.

  

Shaking things up!

Hello again!

This week was a little bit different, due to the changes in staffing for our normal daily routine at Blacks Creek and the Curley Community Center. We lost Che and Damani, but Flo and Sebastian were put on site with Tessa, Aidan and me. It was a good to shake things up a little bit and see fresh new faces excited to take on Blacks Creek and the Curley.

Every morning, we start off at Blacks Creek. We have two sessions: 9-10:30am and 10:30-12pm. During these sessions we have at most 15-20 kids, but in other sessions we have as little as 4 or 5. Blacks Creek is a unique site because we are able to really get to know the children we are working with. We have created relationships with the kids and at some other sites they do not see the same kids enough to do that. I worked at the Curley Community Center all throughout high school, so I am used to becoming close with the kids and seeing trust grow between myself and the kids throughout the summer. We have been able to watch the kids grow more comfortable with holding crabs and identifying the sex of the crabs. We have seen the kids become more confident in their time in the water and their knowledge of the sea creatures they have continued to catch each week since camp began. It has been a rewarding experience working at Blacks Creek, and because this is our last week at the creek, I will definitely miss the working environment there.

The Curley Community Center is a bit different working environment than Blacks Creek. I am very familiar with many of the staff members, including two of my sisters, two cousins, and many long time friends. Because I am a part of the South Boston community, and had worked at the community center throughout high school, I am also familiar with many of the campers as well. Because of this familiarity, it was a much easier transition than Blacks Creek was in the respect of having immediate authority and control over the kids. Working at the Curley can definitely be stressful because we are teaching kids how to overhead cast fishing rods on a beach where people sometimes swim, and the kids are constantly running around and may not being paying as close attention as they should be around fishing rods. It is consistently a challenge to remind the kids to make sure they are being as safe as possible and mindful of what the consequences may be if they are not. The kids are very responsive and continue to improve in their casting skills each day we are there.

I was also able to work two great events this weekend: the Beach Bash on Friday and the Seafood Festival on Sunday. They were both great events that I had a great time working. It is so much fun being able to work with the staff that I normally don't get to see on a daily basis-- and sometimes I even get to spend the day with my sister, Kathleen, if I'm lucky.

Me and a wonderful family I had the chance of meeting at the Seafood Festival on Sunday!

My sister, Kathleen (an SHE), on the right, and me on the left having a great time serving hot dogs at the Carson Beach Bash! 

The summer is flying by, and now I only have 3 weeks left of working!

Catch you on the flip!
Maggie

Blacks Creek- New Site

Sunday, August 4, 2019 

Heyyyy I’m back! So this week I was working at Blacks Creek and it was totally different from what I’m used to from past weeks. This goes from the commuting routes I have to take every morning to the environment of the salt marsh. To sum it up, we play field games with the camp kids, fish for minnows, drop crab traps, and teach the kids about the marsh. This site is more chill, I would say, because we have to wait for the camp kids to be dropped off resulting in a range of 1-10 kids throughout the whole day. There are many types of marine life including horseshoe crabs, green crabs, minnows, shrimp and other insects. The marsh floor is partly muddy and rocky so we have to walk in the water with water shoes. We are installed in Quincy with the Quincy Rec Center. This past week it was much hotter in temperature and I believe it contributes to the feeling of longer days of work. Within these hot days we play various games with the kids including Gaga Ball, speedball, Uncle Sam, Froggy Detective and Evil Scientist. At this site, everything is all fun and games. 

I personally enjoy leading the hunt for minnows because it’s interesting to see their behavioral instincts when us humans approach them; they scurry!! It’s so funny to see them and cute to hold them in the small nets. Minnows are the most common creature at Blacks Creek because they are literally everywhere and can be seen from above the water’s surface. The kids enjoy squinting their eyes in the murky water with me too. The students' ages range from 6-7 so they are always engaged with the activities we offer. Especially on Wednesday, we taught the kids about the salt marsh water quality with a refractometer and about the marshes' soil with a soil corer. They ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ at the science behind water and dirt. Who would have known?!?!

I try to help raise awareness about saving the Earth from harm by telling the kids to always pick up trash and dispose of them in the correct bins to avoid any type of pollution. “Save the Harbor, Save the Bay” is known for helping spread the word about the harbor and other neighboring bodies of water of how we can save them from resorting to old ways. I'll creek to you in next week's update, Flo.

week 5 a wrap!!

Hey it’s Damani, back again with another blog. It’s week five and summer has been great so far with the gang. But the kids are why I am here. I want to make sure the kids are having fun, and I can tell you the kids at Black Creek are definitely having fun. They always smile and the only time they're sad is when they're leaving us. The kids also love when we take them to the water to catch minnows or crabs and shrimp with the nets. The kids gave me a nickname they called me Amani because one-day last week Vanessa put two ponytails in my hair and that caught everyone’s attention while we were playing Evil Scientist. A couple of the kids at Blacks Creek grew on me and became my favorites, but at the same time all the kids are my favorite. They love to play Gaga Ball or Evil Scientist and each time we play it’s always fun, the kids are mad funny when they play, the boys are always going at it and the girls are trying to beat everybody no matter who it is and that is what makes the game so fun to play. The kids are the reason I work here, I want to make sure the kids are learning and also having fun.

catching sea creatures with a net

Playing our favorite game, Gaga ball

     The one thing that used to be hard for me was to communicate with people the same age as me or close to my age. But last summer I overcame that fear. The only reason why I’m not scared anymore was that I started talking to people last year, my first year at Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, and now I’m always talking to everybody. So working here helped to get rid of my fear because last year I did not know anybody here so I was mad shy. It took some time for me to talk to them, but this year I was immediately talking to all the new people. The new SHE/ LHE’s are good this year; they're all different, they have different personalities, but they're all funny and cool people to be around. You are able to talk to anybody here and feel fine if you've been talking to them for a while like this is a safe environment here. What I learned from this job is that you can not be scared to do anything here and also just to be you.

The black's creek squad 

Damani out, bye guys

Week 5 was inspiring

Hey y'all hope you guys are doing well,

    Week 5 was fun as always but also very inspiring. I love spending time with kids because it reminds me of me when I was younger and I also want to build a strong relationship with them to the point where I can be a role model and person they can trust. There was this one camper Nick at Blacks Creek who wanted me to be his baby sitter and I can tell he felt comfortable with me. My goal is to have kids be comfortable and able to feel like they can be themselves around me and anybody else because they will not be judged.

Maggie and Vanessa giving the campers a crab lesson 

   The hardest part of working with other people is communication. I have learned but still sometimes struggle with texting, calling and talking to my co-workers so we know we are on the same page. It's hard to do something well when you are not on the same page because you might accidentally do things wrong. For example, if you don't communicate where to be in the morning you might go to the wrong place at the wrong time and be late to the actual destination and get paid less, and you wouldn't want to mess up your money. Without communication, everything else would be so chaotic and so frustrating because everybody will be annoyed at each other for being clueless and doing the wrong thing over and over. I overcome these challenges by always asking questions and never being nervous or hesitant about texting my boss and trying to get every single detail I need to be successful and get on with my day.

Tessa teaching the campers the steps on how to correctly pick up a crab 

   The camper Nick, who asked me to be his babysitter, inspired me and made me feel good about what I was doing and how I was doing it. Nick made me feel good about myself and the impact I make on others treating them with the most respect in the world. Nick and I created such a strong bond where he knows he can step out his comfort zone and I won't judge him or say anything to make him feel like he isn't doing something right. There was another camper named Tommy who came in very shy and now the both of us have a good bond where whenever he sees me he comes to talk to me about what he did on the weekend and other things. I am glad to have impacted Tommy as well and helped him step out of his comfort zone. These moment has made me want to keep working with kids and keep trying to impact them.

The campers playing Gaga ball

Crab ya later,
Che Hanks



 

A Claw-some Summer with the Blacks Creek Crew

Hello!
     This week was another fantastic week of programming! We spend Monday through Thursday morning at Blacks Creek, two afternoons at Curley Community Center, and one afternoon at Atlantic Wharf. My team did a terrific job with the programming, staying flexible to weather and scheduling changes.

Teaching our campers about green crabs and the classification of invasive species.

     One of the best parts of the camp that we work with is the variety of campers that we have. We have a total of four sessions: 9-10:30 Monday/Wednesday, 10:30-12:00 Monday/Wednesday, 9-10:30 Tuesday/Thursday, and 10:30-12:00 Tuesday/Thursday. Each camper has their own personality, but each session has also formed an identity that is distinct from the others. Our 10:30-12:00 Tuesday/Thursday group generally LOVES exploring the water. They have found the most horseshoe crabs and will often choose to stay in the water over playing a game. Conversely, our 9-10:30 Monday/Wednesday group is all about the games and while they enjoy the water they are always sad if going exploring in the water means ending a game.

Our campers exploring the water in search of minnows, shrimp, and crabs.

     Almost every day of the summer thus far, the team I work with has consisted of one college student LHE, Maggie, and three high school student JPAs, Aidan, Che, and Damani. It has been great to have a small group that spends so much time together, as we’ve really gotten to form a group dynamic and get to know one another. My JPAs get along great and are always a riot when they start to riff on each other. They love playing games and do a great job of striking a balance between playing with our campers and making sure that they are also having fun and feel engaged in what we do. Maggie is in a hard position, as she is the only LHE, and does a wonderful job of finding the balance of being a friend to all of us while also maintaining a position with authority. She is constantly willing to step up and lead camp if I ever need to take care of something, whether it be an upset kid or something administrative, and does a great job of “keeping it real” with our JPAs. Overall I think we make a great group and I am truly excited to see each of them every day.

Our Blacks Creek Team thus far this summer:
(L to R) Aidan, Damani, Che, and Maggie

     My favorite part of the summer has been watching and helping to guide the JPAs as they become more comfortable working with kids. They each have a lot of empathy and high energy with kids, which is an incredible place to start. However, there are some parts of teaching and keeping kids safe and positive that are not always intuitive. At the beginning of the summer, if a camper would minorly hurt themselves or be upset because they lost a game, our JPAs would spring into action, trying to do all they could to dote on the kid’s needs. However, as almost any parent or teacher would tell you, it is often the best course of action to briefly make a kid feel heard in their sorrow and then quickly help them move on and distract them with something else. They will often be feeling better sooner if you can get them re-engaged in the game or talk about something else. It has been awesome to watch the JPAs grow in their ability to read a situation and tell what course of action will best help a camper to feel better. I have been doing environmental education for over two years now, but this is the first job where I truly feel that helping someone else teach kids is the most rewarding part. I feel a swell of pride each time my staff navigates a new challenge with a camper.

My favorite find of the week:
a baby horseshoe crab molt in one of our camper's hands!

Catch you after what is sure to be another Crab-u-lous week!
Tessa

Shellebrating an awesome first week!

     One week of programming complete! And what a great week it was. My team is based at Black’s Creek where we are running a camp through Quincy Recreation. Starting this upcoming week we will also be running fishing programming at Curley Community Center in South Boston. At Black’s Creek, we run a camp for elementary schoolers where we play games and explore the shallow waters of the brackish water there. At the beginning of the week, some of the kids were a bit squeamish about walking into the water and touching the different creatures, but as the week progressed they became more comfortable with it. I can’t imagine how adventure-ready they will be by the end of the summer!

Some of our campers exploring the intertidal zone

     My favorite creature of the week was the horseshoe crabs, we found two this week! On Tuesday one of our campers was walking in the water, about up to her shin, and found a very large female crab. Then on Wednesday, we found another at about the same depth. This one, however, was a male and significantly smaller than the first. Many of our campers and some of the staff had never seen one. I enjoyed teaching everyone what I knew about them. My favorite thing to teach students is how to identify if they are male or female. If you flip the horseshoe crabs over and look at their front pair of legs, it looks like boxing gloves if they are male and split like a peace sign if they are female. My two favorite fun facts about horseshoe crabs are that they are more closely related to spiders than crabs and that their blood is used to detect harmful bacteria in medicines or on equipment. This dramatically impacted their population for a while, but they are being harvested less for their blood today because an alternative way to perform the same test has been discovered. The timing of this discovery is important because horseshoe crab populations have been declining due to habitat loss and overharvesting. Horseshoe crabs don’t have pinchers and if handled with care you can hold and touch them! You can read more about them on the US Fish and Wildlife website here.

Holding the smaller male horseshoe crab that we found

The awesome team I work with, holding the first horseshoe crab we found.
Left to right: Aiden, Damani, Che, and Maggie 

     We also caught many green crabs this week. We set out a crab trap daily and caught around 90 crabs Monday through Wednesday. Green crabs are a very interesting species to learn about, but it is actually a bad sign that we found so many. They are an invasive species that take resources that would otherwise be available to native crab species. Native species are defined as organisms that naturally occurred in an area before European settlement. Non-native species would be any that were accidentally or intentionally brought to an area by human influences. Invasive species are a subgroup of non-native species that specifically disrupt native species or whole ecosystems. Green crabs were unintentionally brought over to the United States, likely from ships. They are harmful for several reasons, which can be summarized by the fact that they are effective predators. Fisherfolk are particularly impacted because green crabs often eat soft-shelled clams and compete with lobster and native crabs for food. This, in turn, lowers the population of these other organisms and makes them harder for fisherfolk to find. There is research underway to study the feasibility of a green crab fishery in hopes that this could help curb the population growth. We can help to prevent the spread of green crabs and other invasive species by making sure we don't transport water, wood, or seeds from one ecosystem to another.

After catching many green crabs in our crab trap we released them and had a "crab race" to see which would make it to the water first.

     This has been a great week; I feel that I am constantly impressed with our staff, the campers, and nature all around us. The college and high school staff on my team have been wonderful, always jumping in to help and great with our campers. I have also been awed by the number of cool creatures we have found, and can’t wait for a full week out on the water!

Until next week,
Tessa

Gaga Ball Master Che, Reporting on Week 1

Hey guys !!!

   It’s Che once again. My first week at Black’s Creek in Quincy and it was very fun and I’m glad I’m getting to know the kids more and more, I feel like me and the kids will grow a really strong relationship. A fun fact about work is that the kids at Black’s Creek love Gaga ball and I see why now, I never played it till last week and all I can say is that game is very very fun.

Playing gaga ball

   At Black’s Creek and Children’s museum we caught one of the craziest species I have ever seen. We found a horseshoe crab and a spider crab, the spider crab was crazy big and so was the horseshoe crab but the spider crab was crazy like it literally freaked me out. The horseshoe crab is usually found in bracket water which is half clean water and half salt. Both crabs usually eat fish bait suck as squid. A fun fact about the spider crab is that they can grow up to 12-13 ft and the Horseshoe crab grows up too 35 cm which is also really big. This 4th of July me and my friends and family went and did fireworks, But before that we went to the lake for most of the day, we also went to my friends' barbecue and ate real good.

Me holding the Horseshoe crab

   Also at Black's Creek, we all found many minnows, shrimps and many many green crabs, we found about 90 green crabs last week, which I found out that they are really invasive to the environment and they hurt all the animals that are in the water because they have no predators. The kids and I were very excited to catch all of these different species. My favorite game we played was mad scientist which is similar to fishy fishy cross my ocean, but this game helps the kids think more. Mad scientist is a game where all the kids have to think of an animal but 2 who are the taggers and they have to ask questions such as, Does your animal live on land? or Does your animal eat meat? and etc. and if those questions apply to your animal then you have to run to the other side of the field without getting tagged.

Me dancing and trying to hit the woah during everybody's it

   The crab trap was really good for the kids to see because it entertained them and it helps them catch crabs and build so many memories with these species. Speaking of crabs we found the horseshoe crab twice 1 big one and one big one, I personally never seen one so it was really cool to see them.

Sincerely,
Che Hanks

E.S W-6/ I met Johnny Depp

Hey everyone, What’s up y’all?! I’m back with another bloooog…

Before I talk to you guys about this week let’s take it back to Sunday morning to the Seafood Festival, that took place at the Fish Pier. As you guys might know, that was my first Seafood Festival ever in my entire life. I  know, I’m literally new in most of the sites and events but ( I like it like that ♫). I was so excited and curious, a lot of things came to mind as I was heading to the event. Like seafood contests, games, activities etc.. My first impression when I got there was “Wow” my eyes were shining like a kid’s first bike. Everything was passing through my mind so fast I couldn’t keep still I just wanted to see everything that was going on and keep watching. It’s weird, but at the same time it’s an amazing feeling being able to get surprised by things the way kids are.

I was even trying to hide my excitement! ☹❤

Short Story: So, I was at our section doing fish printings on paper and shirts (yes, you read that correct.. we make shirts now!). I was doing my job and everything was flowing and vibing you know, very excited for everything that was going on. Then I see this group of pirates walk past us and I was like “WOOW” (It gets better guys just wait)! So, I heard one of my coworkers saying “Guys look it’s the REAL Johnny Depp!" I was in shock! I could feel my cheeks hurting and covering my eyes due to my huge smile. I spent 2-4 minutes running back and forth from our tent to where they were. I decided to finally ask for a picture, thinking inside my head (OMG I cannot believe I just asked the REAL Johnny Depp for a picture). A half an hour passed and I was still bragging about how I met the real Johnny Depp and was telling my coworkers that I got a picture with him. Until guess what… It turns out that he wasn’t the “Real” Johnny Depp! Painful and heartbroken much? I can’t explain how sad I was because I had been fooled like that.

Horseshoe Crab!

Now this week I was all over in different sites. I started off at Blacks Creek where the kids caught a horseshoe crab by the tail. One thing I must admit is that those kids are fearless because horseshoe crabs are scary to me. I was excited for them from afar since I didn't much care for the horseshoe crab.

Cutie Pie! ❤

On my last day at Blacks Creek, I got a little bit emotional on the inside because Mya, wasn't there. She was one of the most amazing people I met at this site and I was sad because I thought I would not be able to say goodbye. But when we were almost leaving, there she was. She came to say bye! I was speechless. I couldn't believe how fast it ended. I recalled every moment we spent together since the very first day we met, when she walked up to me and said "Hi, what's your name?" Besides the horseflies and there not being a lot of shade I can honestly say that I'll miss Blacks Creek and the amazing kids that joined the program this summer. They gave me reasons to smile everyday no matter the circumstances. And at the end of the day I'll go home and think of those wonderful moments.

Trying to keep the ball up!

On, Friday I was at the Beach Bash at Carson Beach where I was in charge of Sports and the Huge Beach Ball. My coworker decided to relocate the Sport site near the water because it was super hot and she thought more people would be intrested in "water sports". We were playing baseball with our new friend JayJay. It was a great day at the beach. When the kids started chasing the ball, our staff had to help chase the ball because the kids were very strong and the wind was in their favor as well. We started a new game with the ball which consisted of not letting the ball touch the floor. Now, one thing I'll say don't ever ever try to keep up a huge ball in the air by yourself. Trust me you'll feel ready and stronger than ever but if you're a skinny person like me, that ball will smash you to the ground like it did to me!

This week was full of emotions but I prefer to stay with the moments that made me feel happy and most important, with those moments that I know for sure that the kids had an amazing time. If they were happy then there was no way I couldn't be.

Have a great day and stay tuned for my next blog! 

~ Esther ❤