How did you even do this?

On Friday I was told to be at the Curley Community Center on the M street entrance at 9:45. AndI looked up how to get there from Fields corner, and let's just say it's a very long walk after you get out of JFK/UMass. The walk was 27 minutes as I saw it on the map, so I had to plan ahead: I got up at around 7:30 and left at around 8:00 just so I could get there in time. When I eventually got to Curley Community Center I saw Melissa sitting down on the bench waiting by herself. So I decided to wait with her. We ended up waiting until around 9:45 in which Bridgette showed up with supplies in hand things like fishing rods, sandcastles,and a good amount of squid bait. While getting the supplies ready for the day another save the harbor save the bay staff member came along named Mary she also helps a lot with the activities we did that day. But the kids that were there, they were something else. Everyone was doing fine, I was getting bait for all the children and basically as soon as I finished getting all the children bait one came back and told me that his fishing rod line was tangled. So I untangled it for him and the deed was done but then about 5 minutes later Bridget called me over told me someone was having troubles with their fishing rod line being tangled so I decided to help out. Little did I know that this rod was so badly tangled that even after I cut the line, the fishing rod was still tangled to the point that the reel would not even move! So we ended up giving the Rod back to the people and they said they will get one of their people to fix the rod in after about five more people getting their lines tangled while fishing it was time to go!

The fishing rod mangled beyond the fixing level. 

May those fishing rods Rest In Peace
 ~Eric Joseph

My Big Bass Beast Bessie

Okay let me simply start this one saying this: WEDNESDAY HAS BEEN AN AWESOME DAY! Okay let me start from the beginning, so I came a bit before 8:00 because I was a bit confused on where to go. I ended up going to the Barking Crab by accident, I ended up getting to Fan Pier at around 7:43. When I got there I helped out by setting up the Save the Harbor/Save the Bay flag. And after a good hour of waiting for some kids to come fishing with us, we got started. Everyone got fishing partners and were put on boats. I ended up choosing Imani Dorsey as my fishing companion, and we ended up on a boat just for the two of us and our captain Basil Freddura. Basil's boat's name was the "Daze Off" but from how that day went on that boat I did, in no way, daze off. On the boat we learned that Basil is the head chef of a restaurant called The Daily Catch so he already had a lot of squid chum for getting mackerels. Basil even gave me a five hooked fishing rod, so we ended up catching at least 30 mackerels. I even unhooked some of the mackerels! After that we drove around a bit to a new location and went fishing using the live mackerels as bait to catch bass so I put on my clicker and got comfortable. A good 10 to 15 minutes in and my clicker going crazy so Basil runs over and instructs me to go and pull up to make sure the hook goes into the fishes mouth and reel in. after a good minute or so I caught a striped bass! But this one was 24 inches so I had throw it back in the water. After that we moved a bit to a new spot, and after a good 45 my rod went mad! So I did what Basil told me before and tugged the rod up to hook the bass and reeled in, in a pattern and after a long fight with that fish Basil and I pulled up Bessie!

Me with my fish named Bessie!

Bessie is a 30 inch striped bass that gave me some cuts on my left hand. Bessie was also the only striped bass to make it back to the dock. Bessie was a star on the dock too so many people were petting the fish, congratulating me and wanting to take pictures with Bessie. And even a journalist came and asked me some questions and Bessie and I got on to the news in the Boston globe! At the end I was given an option: let Bessie be filleted or let her be frozen for fish printing. And because I wanted to be able to see Bessie again I chose for her to be frozen for fish printing.

That was the biggest catch I've had ever!
~Eric Joseph

Wednesday woes

This Wednesday went from 0 to one hundred rather quickly. My day started out pretty well honestly, I got to black's creek and met all the other save the harbor save the bay staffs Ana, Nieomi, and Edward.(Zach drove me to black's creek so he was there too) And after we all got the supplies ready for the first group of children. The first group had a good time, they found a good amount of green crabs, hermit crabs, and even a rare minnow. And played some games Gaga ball and some other things like Mr. fox and Uncle Sam. And then we dismissed the first group and prepared for the second one. This is when the the rain kind of started but it was only drizzling. We still got through the day and ended up stopping a rather quickly, so we went back to crab catching, letting the kids have fun and playing games like a couple Uncle Sam, kickball, and Mr. Fox. And we ended at the  regular time of 12 o'clock. After lunch we got in at Boston children's museum and as soon as we
got in the rain gave no mercy. It started pouring bullets and we had to get under a tent and see if any people would like to look at the crabs under that tent after a good hour of waiting for people. We decided to bring our crabs inside the BCM and show them crabs and we ended up finishing our jobs inside the Museum.

Me "enjoying" the rain.

Hopefully the rain goes easy on us from now on...

~Eric Joseph

The week is rising!

Alright so Monday to Tuesday, it went from bad to good. Monday my parents warned me about the weather being bad. But I decided that no, I need to have shorts on so I can go in the water. Needless to say I was a little cold when the wind started so harshly blowing along with the pouring rain. Monday was most definitely the most gloomy day, in fact on Monday only two kids came for the whole day. Tuesday was way better, on Tuesday it was still windy but it wasn't raining bad. there were way more kids on Tuesday than Monday, and they were full off energy. But because it was still cold the kids didn't stay for the whole time and we didn't find a lot of crabs, so we really just played gaga ball. but there was one thing that was caught that is bigger than the crabs. We caught a Zebra-striped flip flop!

A rare Zebra-striped flip flop!

After lunch we went to Boston Children's Museum where we all got to work. On my part I mostly just showed children the crab. Honestly Boston Children's Museum was pretty tame,nothing out the ordinary there. 

Amazing week so far!

   This week has been going pretty well so far, and today was amazing. It started out with the first group of kids for the day, it was rather a small group, so we mostly let the children look for most of the time. Usually the children go into the water to search for crabs and then want to do something different. But today the first group only wanted to look for the sea creatures, so that group was pretty tame. But the second group had more story to it, the second group went to look for crabs for like a good 30 minutes and then we all decided to go to up to the fields to play soccer. But the thunder storm didn't want that. As soon as we heard the thunder we got all the children to go under the pavilion to make sure they didn't get shocked. After that we stayed in the pavilion and played taps(Catch but you have to jump when you catch or throw the ball).

   After lunch we went to the Boston Children's Museum, there we did the usual: catching crabs and showing people said crabs but today we caught something extraordinary. We caught a moon jellyfish! The little thing was lust floating on the water so I held the rope while Sam threw the net. (So I did technically pull up the jellyfish!) After we got the jellyfish it got most of the attention rather than the crabs but in the end both the crabs and the moon jellyfish were put back in the water.

The Moon Jellyfish is very transparent!

Can't wait to have a strong finish!

~Eric