Pirates Sail Through Fog

Hello Ladies and Gentleman,

On Sunday the 18th of September, Save the Harbor/ Save the Bay(S.T.H./S.T.B.) was hosting a free trip to Spectacle Island! The fog that was present that day was absolutely abnormal. If I wasn't so excited to see the fog, the atmosphere could've been seen as an eerie. We had  sign up list that indicated that roughly a thousand folks would join us that day, but due to the fog and weather conditions, a lot of folks got deterred. On our journey to Spectacle Island, the fog was so thick out in the harbor that anything beyond fifty feet was not visible. The usual Boston skyline was not present, nor was there the usual vast blue sky.

Figure 1. After several hours, a lot of the fog had cleared up, however one could still see how much fog was present in the horizon.

With a majority of the S.T.H. staff geared up in pirate wear, we cruised to the island and started our sections of fishing, fish printing, kite flying and hiking! 

 Figure 2. Shown in the picture above is the Hula-hoop section, where folks gathered around to show their exquisite talents.

After fish printing with Schup, Mackerel, and Flounder for about three hours I can say I saw a lot of interesting things that day. At around 10:30 AM, I saw a mom attempt to fly a kite. She went for a chaotic run to try and fly the kite high enough to get it up in the air. After a failed attempt, I tried to get the kite going.  I retired my short lived kite flying career after my attempt and offered it to the kids that were eager to follow my foot steps by running with the kite. Visitors left and right came up to view if the fish we were using were real. People shared their stories like where they are from and what they do as a profession. I had the chance to meet this one guy from the Philippines who was a professional photographer. He ended up taking photos for folks who had children fish printing. This professional photographer worked with Times Magazine. Once Times Magazine was mentioned, folks were voluntarily offering to be in the photos taken by the Professional photographer!

Figure 3. One of the kids that enjoyed fish printing volunteered for a photo opportunity! 

Figure 4. A view from the top of the boat of some of the lovely visitors that we had that day aboard with us to and back from Spectacle Island.

Thank you guys for reading another blog post from myself, I hope you'll catch my next post whenever that will be.

Raymond Chai

Fishmania at Children's Museum!

It is said that there are plenty of fish in the sea.... and today at the Children's Museum it was definitely proved. Today was my first morning at the Children's museum and it was more exciting than I expected. When we first got there, as we waited for some kids to arrive I spotted some chalk and decided to start drawing what I draw best.. SPONGEBOB! Since I was a kid my favorite show has always been Spongebob and so I was inspired to start drawing him. In the end, we all pitched in to help draw Spongebob and the final product was pretty decent. After drawing Spongebob, all the kids that passed by would yell "look it's Spongebob!"

Kids fishing at the children's museum!

Aside from our totally awesome drawings, we also caught some feisty green crabs in the crab trap, and not only were there crabs in the first trap we brought up, there was also a cunner! It was the coolest thing ever because I had never seen that type of fish and the kids were pretty excited too. Some even asked if they could pick it up and take a picture with it! But wait it gets even better... within that same hour we caught two more cunner fish! They were about 6-7 inches long and we put them in a small tank for the kids to see and learn about. They were really excited and it encouraged them to fish. Although we didn't catch any more  fish on the fishing rods, one of the kids named Daniel who had been patiently fishing for a couple minutes finally caught a crab right before he was about to leave and it was the most exciting thing to see. It had been his first time fishing and he yelled "I caught something! I caught something!" and when he railed up to see the fiesty green crab at the end of his rod he was the happiest kid ever! Even though it was just a crab, it was nice seeing a little boy experience fishing for the first time and enjoying it. I can't wait to see what more awesome fishing experiences await us at children's museum!

Til Next time,
Rusenny

The Returning Fisherman

Hello folks,

This is the return of the Fisherman Raymond! I'm super excited to be back this summer as a Lead Harbor Explorer again.

On my first days back I had the chance to be a pirate with Pirate Nora aboard a ship cruising in the clean pristine Boston harbor, singing sea shanties and admiring the tall ships! If there's one thing I've learned since last summer, that's how to tell a story to share an amazing day I had returning to Save the Harbor/ Save the Bay.

At 7:15 AM, my alarm clock went off, rising in volume, "Beep, Beep......... BEEP BEEP". I thought to myself, "Today's the first week of returning to Save the Harbor/Save the Bay". I couldn't help but smile recalling how last year we caught gigantic spider crabs, rock crabs customized with barnacles, a squid, and many unidentified juvenile fish. As I'm changing into my uniform, I stare at my fresh and new "Save the Harbor/ Save the Bay" Polo. In maybe not even a month's time, this very clean polo will be littered with battle stains from wrangling up fish from the Boston harbor, fish print ink, and food stains. I recovered my senses, no longer lost in thought I walked out the house to get to my site early!

Today's objective was to visit Spectacle Island and to get some of the newer folks to learn the ropes of fishing! After some introductions between good ol' Charlie, his new first mate, the new roster of Junior Program assistants, Lead harbor explorers, and Senior Marine Educators we got into small fishing groups. Under my guidance, my teammates Kalid, Jayden, and Edward snagged a total of at least 6 flounders. Soon followed an amazing day of hiking on Spectacle Island's mountainous terrain.

I hope that you guys can one day experience the same joys that I have with fishing and these Boston beaches.

From the fisherman,
Raymond