Belle and the Castle (A Very Fishy Tale!)

     This week my group was stationed at Castle Island in South Boston. Between the constant roaring of planes taking off from nearby Logan Airport and the clanks of metal shipping containers coming from the shipping facility next door our group was able to discuss our topic of the week, fisheries! I myself, starting out this week asked the question, what in the world is a fishery? However, I have learned that a  fishery is the area in which fish are caught or processed and sold consumer markets.  When I heard this week’s theme my first thought was “Michael must be really excited to talk about fishing” as Michael, our staff expert on fishing, and I have had many conversations about fishing in New England. 

Our team hard at work preparing and baiting the hooks, we used Flounder and Sea Bass Hooks with Squid as bait! 

        As someone who is by no means an expert at fishing, I was excited this week to learn as much as possible about fishing, as it is something that I want to do more in my spare time. This week I was able to learn about the types of fish in Boston. The most common fish caught around Boston Harbor are Black Sea Bass, Skates, Flukes, Flounder, and Stripers. I did also learn that Flukes or Summer Flounder often eat other fish like the Black Sea Bass, which I thought it would be the other way around!

First catch of the day! I caught a Black Sea Bass, watch out for that razor sharp spine!

    We were pretty lucky to have our fishing trip scheduled for this past week! We got to take a few hours to take a tour on Charlie’s fishing boat “The Belle”. Charlie and I got the chance to talk about the parts of the fishing rod (who knew there were so many parts?). He also showed me a technique to catch Black Sea Bass by moving the rod up and down once the weight hits bottom, and I ended up with the first catch of the day! All in all we had a great week catching fish (and some rays) as a team! 

The team catching some rays on the way back to shore! We had to take a silly picture on the bow of The Belle!

Our group is excited for our final week of the season next week so stay tuned (or tuna-ed!) 

Stay salty, 

Caroline

I'm a Teacher Now!

Fishing off the pier with fishing club!

Welcome back Guys! Today I was stationed at fishing club with our senior harbor educator Max, Patrice and Jaiden. We caught a spider crab and I thought it was really ugly looking! Patrice opened the crab where it keeps the little eggs and its so cool because we could see all of its eggs. We showed the kids and they were amazed. David always tells everyone that goes to the island to "do something that you've never done before" and today I did many things that I hadn't done any other day at work which was teach the kids about crabs and their babies. It's so cool it's like I'm a teacher now!
     

Playing sports on the island's drumlin!

Every time I'm at fishing club I volunteer to cut up the bait that we're going to use that day. Today's bait was fresh calamari. So every time one of the groups came I was plopped on the floor cutting the squid and they would all shriek, "Ewwww that's nasty!" My response is always to urge them to touch it. For some reason they always do touch it even though they say it looks nasty and weird. After I finished cutting the bait I helped the kids bait their hooks for them. They all looked at me like I was crazy, but little did they know that I do it all for them cause as long as their happy, I'm happy too!


Clocking out,
Marly Burgos