Success At Georges!

Hey guys!

After another tiring but fun day with All Access at Georges Island, I am proud to report that our third crab count day of the summer went great! Conor and I spent about an hour this afternoon looking for crabs on the beach, with help from many enthusiastic visitors of course.

Today we decided to try something a little different. In the past the sample area was always right on the edge of the water; today, we set up our 60 feet long and 10 feet wide crab zone at the top of the beach, closer to where the sand ended. This certainly seems to have paid off. We caught 6 good-sized crabs and found many more baby ones that we thought were too small to count. Two of the crabs were female: one was 1 centimeter wide and the other was 2 centimeters. The four other remaining crabs were all male, measuring 1/2 centimeter, 2 1/2 centimeters, and 2 centimeters wide-two of the male crabs were 2 centimeters wide.

As happy as I am that I found a bunch of crabs today, I'm just as happy that so many kids were involved in the process. As soon as I mentioned looking for crabs, a group of almost 10 kids jumped up and wanted to help me and Conor. One girl in particular sticks out in my mind-at the beginning of our crab hunt, she shrieked every time she saw one scuttling across the sand and flat-out refused to pick any up. Conor and I tried to explain to her that the crabs wouldn't hurt her if she just held them the right way (by pinching the back of their shell and their stomach with two fingers) but she didn't believe us. Still, we continued to encourage her to at least try to hold one, and just before we had to release the crabs, she picked one up!! Not only that, but she calmly walked to the water with Senor Smoothie (as she named it) and placed him back in the water.

So to sum up, today I was a good citizen scientist who collected a lot of data for the STH/STB crab count and I showed a little girl that sometimes things aren't as scary as they appear. Yay!

-Carolyn

Crabs and More Crabs!

Today on All Access we visited Warren Fort on the historical George's Island. The kids today seemed more energetic then usual and went right through the dark tunnel of the lady in black with ease. I was assigned to look after a group of 5 and 6 year olds, who were almost fearless when it came to the dark, wet passages of the fort. Before we got to the fort I organized a race between my kids. They ran with enthusiasm, and were still smiling even if they placed towards the end. Once at the entrance to the tunnel, the kids ran inside, but were restrained by their group councilors. After the bigger groups emptied from the tunnel, it was our turn. I was surprised when most of our kids went through the tunnel with no hesitation. After the tunnel, we took a stroll around the top of the fort, and back to the beach. Once at the beach kids began skipping stones in the water, but soon joined Conor Newman and I in a search for Asian Shore Crabs. ONce we had over turned dozens of rocks the kids had found hundreds, but some refused to hold the as they quivered in their hands. Once the kids got bored of the miniture crabs we went home, with a smile on every face!

-Tim Grogan

PICTURE COMING SOON

Crab Count 2010

Hello everyone!

I just got back from another eventful day with All Access at Georges Island. All this week David, Thi, Denise, BJ, Tim, and I have been taking almost 200 kids around the island every day. It's been a lot of fun-Tuesday was my birthday so David started singing happy birthday to me during lunch and soon everyone else had joined in! I've spent some days wandering through Fort Warren looking for the Lady in Black and others were spent at the beach looking for crabs, sea glass, and pottery.

One new thing we started on Wednesday was "crab count 2010": this is a project Save the Harbor is working on to perform a small experiment to see how many crabs we can find at our sites throughout the summer. This week, BJ and I were on crab patrol. We started at the edge of the water and decided that our sample area should be 4' 6" wide and 162' long; we measured the space by using our 1'6" dip nets-we're very resourceful :) Despite the large sample area, we only found 2 female crabs: one was 3/4" wide but the other was a good 4 1/2". Interestingly enough, we found a lot of baby crabs that we thought were too small to measure and count. The question we're all asking now is why there are so many baby crabs and few adult ones?




From now one, Wednesday is crab day at All Access, so stay tuned for more fascinating crab updates!!

-Carolyn

BazooKITE

Hello everyone! This is Thi :)
I just came back from the All Access Boston Harbor trip out to Spectacle Island today. Denise, Carolyn, David, Linnea, and I went out with about 180 kids from the Inner City to explore this interesting island, which is the highest island out on Boston Harbor. While David told the history of Spectacle Island, many kids were amazed to learn that the piles of trash that was dumped on the island burned for ten years straight!

As always, I met many new people, such as Steven, James, Angela, and much, much more. After Denise, Linnea (David's daughter), and Carolyn figured out the ingredients in V7F1 (aka V8 with the tomatoes, which is a fruit), we hiked up the highest drumlin to fly kites!
Near the end of this wonderful kite flying - which left two female tourists speechless (they never saw people fly kites successfully) - we quickly walked down the hill, careful to not touch the grass and trees, which carry asbestos and cancer-carrying agents, towards the water. Because this morning was quite foggy and looked like rain all day, I didn't bring my swimming suit and just waded in the water up to my mid-thigh. It was so nice and refreshing!
On the boat trip back to the Bank Of America Pavilion, I talked to James more and found out that I was his girlfriend - only because I was a girl and I was his friend. I laughed so much during that 25 minutes! :) I can't wait for my next adventure!

- Thi Tran

Little Cupid is starting young!

Today was even better than before, it was pretty hot at first but then after the boat ride I was alot calmer. I was mostly impressed with the free servings on the boat to spectacular.Since we were employed by Save the Harbor/Save the Bay I gotta say they took very good care of us. They were great and very entertaining people. Even the kids were wiling out after BJ doing his crazy dances and his insane jokes. David the most funniest man there bumped his head on the ceiling of the boat trying to pass by the goodies bar. I found it so funny because that's one guy that I always try to get revenge on, after David and Thi, whispering my name on the top of the boat while I was looking towards to water behind me thinking I was hearing a ghost. In my mind I'm like "No im not going crazy, just relax".Then I peep both of them on the top just laughing at me and I felt so dumb and slow. It was funny though but the kids loved all of us today, Me,Thi,BJ,Tim,Carolyn and David at Spectacular Island. BJ and I swam almost all the way to the ropes at the end of the water while kids cheering for us. While swimming back I was ahead of BJ and all you hear is young little girls like "Yeah that's what I'm talking about,Girl Power!"... But I gotta give it to BJ because with the kids support as well I was begged to get in the water completely. However I had alot of fun. The kids were asking about how to Blog, so I had to make sure they new exactly what to do so they could see their pictures and become part of us even though they are, but I was craving for them to be more connected to us. Then best of all I see two little cute love birds running out of the cold water holding hands and Tim is yelling at me "Take a picture of that" I missed it the first time but the second time they ran out of the water, I caught both of them together holding hands. It was the cutest thing ever. There were too many memories today, and I gotta stop writing or else Im never gonna stop.:-)

-Denise

Greetings from Piers Park and Courageous Charlestown!

Hello fellow Boston Harbor enthusiasts! We've had an awesome first couple of days in East Boston and Charlestown as our Harbor Explorers got their first taste of what is SURE to be a great summer.

Our Piers Park Sailing Center crew this week have been champion crab trappers! We got to meet some feisty green crabs, a lot of Red Rock crabs, and quite a few spider crabs as well. On Tuesday, we caught a big male Red Rock crab with giant front claws-- a clear alpha male and a clear veteran of the Harbor. By the end of the week the Explorers were experts, telling me what kind of crab each one was, and what its gender was, within seconds of it coming out of a trap. And while they were hesitant on Tuesday to get pinched, they clambered to handle even the grouchiest of crabs by Friday.

On Thursday morning, we had a lobster waiting in our lobster trap, which began the day with a lot of excitement and exploration (see picture of Explorer Sam)! We didn't have such great luck when it came to fishing... we're still waiting for our first bite, but we're extremely optimistic for next week. Thank you to our first week of Harbor Explorers-- I had a blast with you and I hope to see your smiling faces around the Harbor even more this summer!

We spend our afternoons at Courageous Sailing Center in Charlestown, where their young sailors spend their lunch time with us, interacting with the different creatures that call their pier and the harbor around it "home." Courageous runs such a great program there, and has so many exciting resources in place for us to explore the habitat, including six lobster traps and a minnow trap on their docks. There's always something to pull up and examine, and the traps themselves have become homes for so many tunicates, mussels, and smaller organisms. In the afternoons we've gotten a chance to go out on the sailboats with the Step 2 and Step 3 kids and see the Harbor up close. There hasn't been a dull moment yet, and I'm expecting an exciting summer there!

With Week One under our belts, I am more confident than ever that I have one of the best jobs in the world this summer. A special thank you to Alex, LaToya, Denise, and Carolyn who comprised my all-star team this week, and Jen Last for working so hard to support everyone out in the field. Looking forward to the summer getting better and better!

Lots of Harbor Love,

Michelle

A bad start but a beautiful ending!

It was yesterday that I woke up with the biggest sun burn on my whole body. I honestly couldn't drag myself out of bed. It was exhausting waking up with the biggest migraine I ever had in the past year.I felt like my brain was tanning as well, But you know what, I was not prepared for that kind of weather. However I kept thinking about how many kids I could not help and teach due to some family responsibilities and due to my sun burn. It kept bothering me until I went to South Boston Sailing Center. As soon as I got there my pain all over my back, legs, arms and brain all soothed out. I completely forgot I was cooking under the sun. I saw my team setting up crab traps and fixing one of the fishing rods that I broke trying to catch a fish:-(

I'm not good at fishing, but I caught seaweed!! I see lots of children surrounding my teammates and I'm wondering what I should do till the mean time, mind you these kids are so outspoken they introduced themselves before I even got to say hi to Aaron, my team leader. Immediately I took four girls into the beach and searched for crabs and muscles. I completely forgot how bad my day was going, after I saw the smiles on these kids faces. After we found like 8 crabs or more total I actually begged the girls to stop searching for crabs because it was like an addiction to them. I got to admit as long as I saw them with their million dollar smiles I couldn't break them down. So we kept searching, collecting and bugging out.

Finally when they got tired we slowly walked back to the center and they were so exhausted from the heat and excitement that I see them jumping out of the docks and running right back yelling my name to catch more crabs. I couldn't resist. I was so happy they even remembered my name. So we set up crab traps sat around and laughed through the whole program. At the end of the day the kids were yelling "Bye Denise, Hope to see you tomorrow!!" I left with a memory full of sparkles and smiles that I will never forget. I gotta say it was a beautiful pleasant ending!

- Densie Caban