Hello All Access! Today while fishing and tangling line on the fishing pier at Harry McDonough we had the pleasure of waving to the All Access crew as they returned from George's Island. Despite the fact that we did not catch any fish we had a great time seeing David, Frankie, Andrea, and Senait as they passed us by.

-Kat

All Access!

Sometimes things get so busy at Save the Harbor / Save the Bay in the summertime that we don't have time to enjoy all the great things you can do on Boston Harbor.

Yesterday I had a chance to go to Georges Island on All Access Boston Harbor with kids from the Somerville YMCA, Camp Harbor View, and some volunteers from Skanska, a construction company that is one of our long-time youth program partners. We all had a great time, and all of us did things we had never done before!

We met at the Bank of America Pavilion , where Frankie, Kat and David introduced us to Harry the Lobster (Larry's younger brother).


The kids from the YMCA had a great time with Ibi working on this weeks murals.


They also enjoyed using the field guides, and touching the tiny skeleton shrimp we found under the dock.


Before we left for the island on the boat with Captain John, David told us all what to expect and then taught us to sing a Sea Shanty, "Haul Away Joe!"



When we got to Georges, we ate lunch, explored the fort, looked for crabs on the beach, and learned how to skip stones. We also cleaned up every bit of trash we carried onto the island!

On the way home we saw Kat and her crew at Castle Island. We got back to the pavilion before the big thunderstorm, just in time to hear Theo Epstein's band perform a sound check. They were great!

I'll try to post a short video of David and everyone singing and some picture from Georges Island over the weekend.

Bruce

Painted Rocks

While scouring the beach in search for fierce crabs, bright blue seaglass,

and the many fishing lures we’ve lost, we came across the ever so popular skipping rock. We each took our hand at skipping along the ocean surface. After skipping for a while, we decided these rocks, so thin and flat, needed some pizzazz, some color! After a short while our bucket was full and we were ready to paint. By the end of the day we had an amazing amount of colored rocks. Some rocks were painted bright colors, others had designs, and some even had drawings of sea creatures. Before we knew it all the rocks were painted and we were eager to find more!

~Kat

Winthrop Beach Day

This past weekend I was lucky enough to spend some time with the kids on Winthrop Beach for the Winthrop Beach Day event. The weather was great and the live music was amazing. A bunch of kids joined me along the beach and in the water with dip nets in hand to capture as many creatures as we could. I was amongst expert crab collectors and one sand shrimp specialist. By the end of the afternoon we had 3 buckets filled with Asian Shore crabs, Green crabs, Red Rock crabs, Sand Shrimp, Clams, and Hermit crabs. We also found an unusual crab skeleton and it turns out it was a Lady crab. Thanks to my many collectors we had a lot of fun animals to play with!

~Kat

Lobster Utensils

In this short clip, Michael is showing the pincher and crusher claw of the lobster we caught this week. The larger claw, on the left side of the lobster, is the CRUSHER and the long slender claw is the pincher. Any guesses on what the crusher claw might do when eating?
~Kat

Inky Business

Here's a picture of me talking about
the different parts of the squid

This week a small squid was found laying on the docks of Harry McDonough. How it got there? We don't know for sure. It's not uncommon to find squid at night in New England waters. Excited about our findings, we took it upon ourselves to learn more about this fascinating creature. Did you know that squid have 8 short arms and 2 long tentacles to help them feed? I explained to everyone that squid eat with a beak and release ink when threatened. We were able to remove the beak, observe it, and write with the ink! Everyone had a blast writing with the black gooey liquid! What will we find next? ~Kat

Team Quahog!

Greetings from Harry McDonough
This week it was all about Northern Sea Stars and digging for Quahogs to use as bait. Yea Team Quahog! Not sure what a quahog is? It can also be called a chowder clam or a hard clam. We had a lot of fun searching in the waters off the beach for these clams and we definitely got wet in doing so. These hard clams tend to bury themselves in
the sand and sometimes just a small piece is visible.

Northern Sea Star hunting was on the agenda every day this week. We found an area just before the bridge at Pleasure Bay where lots of big sea stars live. We even found one that was eating a mussel. Before bringing them back to our touch tank we had some fun sticking them all over our bodies! Here to the right is a picture of the 3 Save the Harbor educators with our sea star findings. ~ Kat

The "In-Seine" Net

It has been another exciting week at Harry McDonough. We focused on filling our newly donated fish tank with all kinds of crazy critters. It's fun to see how all the different animals in the tank interact with one another, some get along while some don't. Most of the crabs end up competing for food.

This week was our first week using a Seine Net. A Seine Net is a long net with two wooden poles on either end. As you can see in the photograph, we pull the net through the water as we walk towards the beach. Once we reach the beach we take a look in the net to see what we can find. We discovered all kinds of interesting animals such as Sculpin, Shiners, Rock Gunnels, and Sand Shrimp! All these animals and more went into our fish tank for the day.

McDonough Sailing Center

Kat shows an Explorer how to tie a lure

Hi, my name is Kat, I lead the Harbor Explorers program at the Harry McDonough Sailing Center in South Boston and the All Access program at the Bank of America Pavillon. I take the sailing students out on a variety of excursions in and around Pleasure Bay. The Bay is a very diverse site with so much to do and home to some of the largest spider crabs around.

We begin each day by taking the motor boat out to check our lobster trap. This week we caught three lobsters and 5 red rock crabs in the trap. All the animals we find throughout the day go into our touch tank, where we can identify and watch them interact. Yesterday we saw two green crabs fighting over a mussel. At the end of each day we record what we find and return them to the bay.

The Harbor Explorers had a chance this week to test the water quality of the bay using a variety of methods. We tested the dissolved oxygen in our touch tank, which told us how much oxygen the animals used by the end of the day.

For more information on the program, you should check out our Kids Page. Or, feel free to add your own stories from Harry McDonough Sailing Center in the comments!