First week, multiple creatures

Lovely Vacation in the Boston Harbor

Summer was off to a late start during the year of 2018. What felt like the longest winter ever, finally came to the end as the week of July 4th welcomed the Boston Harbor with warm winds and sunshine. Save the Harbor is back into action and the team this year has got plenty of tricks up their sleeves to give the youth what they need to have a fun summer. 

My first day back went smoothly over at Piers Park. We started the day with a game of "The west wind blows" where we learned each other's names. Next we played Indian Chief, which to my surprise, the kids were fairly slick enough to go unnoticed by the guesser throughout multiple rounds. Before we headed down the dock we went over simple, but pretty important rules, then our day began. I spent a good time fishing with this one boy, Ismael. For an 8 year old, he sure did know a lot about NASA and our solar system. When I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he told me, "I want to work for NASA". He seemed to have his heart set on creating rovers and spacecrafts for them. It all started when I told him about how the tide comes in and out about every six hours. Ismael immediately began to tell me about the creation of the moon which led to more.

After a few minutes of fishing, Nieomi asked me to join her and Wesley on a kayak ride. In the water we paddled around the dock to see what all the fuss was about, another set of kids on a kayak were going crazy trying to catch a moon jelly from under the bridge. As we paddled under we spotted another and they grew happier to the sound of TWO jellyfish! Luckily, the jellies eventually made it around the dock in time for Garret to pick them up and show them to the kids. We spent the hot morning and afternoon session fishing and kayaking. What better way to spend my first day back?

Fishing

Proper Technique

Day two and three, we join Kharliyah on All Access Boston Harbor to George's island for the hottest Tuesday yet. The sun rose early and the rays shined bright on this day. We greeted about 200 camps and families at the pavilion each day who were all eager to ride the boat over to the island. Tuesday I met a wonderful pair of best friends who had never been to the island before. I asked them if they were planning to go into the dark tunnel and they insisted they would even if the black lady spooked them a bit. I informed them of our fishing lessons that would be on dock after lunch if they wanted to stop by and learn. I met them later that day at exactly 12:30pm on the dock and they told me about their adventure into the tunnel as well as the Island. They were most excited about the tunnel and being able to try fishing because these were things they never done before. I felt proud and helpful to be able to give them a good experience. These girls were not at all intimidated by the claws of the crabs or by the heat of the sun. They were good listeners and very patient when it came to fishing. Although we did not catch any fish, we enjoyed observing the crabs and talking about what kinds of fish they could pull out of the harbor. 

Fishing = Patience

Thursday was another incredibly hot day and I met a lovely family from the UK who had just moved into Boston. They were most intrigued and interested in fishing more than the island. When they saw the amount of crabs we had in our touch tank that morning they went wild. Most surprised about the different types of crabs we had in our tank, they wanted to touch them all and hold one of each. We caught a few giant Jonah Crabs that morning and a few, slightly small red rock crabs, along with some feisty green ones.

Fairly new to Boston, I informed them about a few must visit places like Prudential center and tower as well as the Children's Museum. They told me they really enjoyed our trip so I encouraged them to sign up for one of our Spectacle Island trips! The kids liked the sound of that and I let them know they could sign up online if they google-d Save the Harbor All Access Boston. The family was sure they would aim to return in August. I ended my week where I started, at Piers Park on Friday. We led an environmental lesson on the salinity of water that morning after kayaking and fishing by the dock. I helped Meaghan at station 1, where we used refractometers and learned about how salt gets into our oceans. One of the kids, Ferdinand knew lots about Estuaries. They were in amazement at the lack of salt we found was in our harbor compared to filtered water with sea salt we added. They measured the buoyancy of water with eggs and understood why it was necessary for marine life. 

18 crabs and counting

Will it bite me?

Learning something new everyday,

Kharliyah

See ya Later, Piers Park

Hello Everyone!

The Campers on the Last Day Chasing One of the Save the Harbor Staff

This summer has gone by so fast for me! It feels like just yesterday I went to Piers Park for the first time and seeing where I was going to be stationed at for most of the summer. Now it's been almost two months after going there for the first time and celebrating the last day of Piers Park Harbor Explorers with an epic snack party. Each week, the camps at Piers Park have a snack party to celebrate an epic week, but since it was the last day of camp for the year, they held a huge snack party for the Harbor Explorers. Almost everyone brought something in for the party. Some people brought in chips and some brought in cookies and drinks.  I even got a cake for the party. We ate everything like we were having a picnic. We let the kids run around, play their games and have as much fun as possible. At one point, they started to chase staff members around the park. It was so great to play with the kids, meet some of the great staff members at Piers Park and become a part of the Piers Park community and I sure hope that I can come back to Piers Park as soon as possible.

Campers Looking at a Skate that was caught in the lobster traps 

Campers Looking at the Eclipse

Outside the Piers Park Tent

Too Much Hype!

Hello Everyone!

The Campers and one of the Piers Park staff members viewing the eclipse 

Through the weekend, there were two major events that were on the news. One was the free speech rally and the other was the solar eclipse that was happening on Monday. I was super pumped to see the moon block out the sun for a good hour or two. I was at Piers that day as well and they had special glasses to look at the eclipse for the kids and some of the staff. Most of the day, till the eclipse began, the kids were asking me when the eclipse started. I would respond to them saying that they would know when it had started. The reason why I said this was because I thought when the eclipse was starting, it would get darker and darker until it got to night time dark. The eclipse started around the time when the kids were playing capture the flag. I began to notice that it was getting darker. Then grabbed a pair of the special glasses and looked at the eclipse. It was covering most of the sun and that was enough to gather the kids together and look at the eclipse. I kept of looking at it, but the longer I looked it at it, it didn't get any darker. We then reached the time where we had to head to the dock, but it was also the time were the newscasters predicted when it would end. After that point of the day, I was pretty much disappointed. I remember watching cartoon where in one episode, the characters were excited to see the eclipse and when it happened it got super dark and how exciting it was to see a eclipse. However, the hype that was leading up to the eclipse, was dying down. Seeing the eclipse was pretty exciting though, even though it was kind of a disappointed.

The special UV eclipse glasses

-Imani Dorsey

Piers Park Presenters

Margaret Farmer and our Harbor Explorers 

This week was full of visitors at Piers Park. We had visits from one of Boston's City Counselor's, members of the Massachusetts Port Authority, and even the founder of a local nonprofit organization. Our first visit was by Margaret Farmer who is running for Boston's City Counselor in District 1. In this district, if elected, she will serve Charlestown, East Boston, and the North End. Margaret explained to our Harbor Explorers that it is important for Boston to have City Councilors who are able to communicate with the Mayor of Boston about important issues in their communities. If they are experiencing troubles with things such as trash in their communities or needing something for their local public schools their parents can call the local City Councillor who will communicate the needs of the community to the Mayor.

The Massport ceremony

Our second visit was made by members of the Massachusetts Port Authority or Massport. A special ceremony was held in honor of Massport being such a large supporter of the Piers Park Sailing Center. A speech was given by Alex, the Piers Park Sailing Center Executive Director on behalf of the impact that the sailing center has on the youth of East Boston and its surrounding communities. This ceremony was a great example of proving that to achieve greatness we must work together.



On Friday, Piers Park welcomed another guest. This guest was a little bit different than the rest, her name was Magdalena and she is the founder of Harbor Keepers. Harbor Keepers is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide education about weather & climate, Boston Harbor, local marine ecosystems through waterfront tours, exploration, and free marine education. We learned about marine debris and how long different items take to biodegrade in the ocean. What we all learned was that everything takes a very very long time before it can be beneficial to the environment. After we learned about all this trash, we needed to talk about what we can do with it. Magdalena explained that trash can be turned into art projects as she showed the children things she has made. We taught the kids how to make their own debris art and everyone made a jellyfish that they were able to take home.

Working hard on their jellyfish!

After this busy week I can't wait to see what next week has in store!
Briana

The one that got away

Have you ever left a fishing pole in a fishing pole holder. Well, last Friday, I did and I basically forgot about it. I forgot about it until I heard this buzzing noise and realized, the reel is spinning out of control and the line is getting looser. I picked the rod up out of the holder and I almost jolted forward, whatever was pulling had a lot of power. I knew I needed to tighten the drag and start reeling in. I kept tightening the drag but it felt useless until it finally stopped the line and I was able to reel. The kids and staff were behind me freaking out. Ali yelled, "thats a striper", he could tell by how hard this fish was fighting. I was getting exhausted, crank after crank, I kept reeling the fish up. The fishing line started darting from left to right in a zigzag pattern, the fish did not want to come out of the water. Finally, it was close enough to see, it was a striper and it was big (at least compared to the bergalls we catch every day)! I told the kids and staff, watch out I'm going to lift it out and onto the dock. Everyone took a step back, I brought my rod up and went to go over the dock and SNAP. The line broke.

I stumbled back and looked at my empty fishing rod. We were in disbelief, we were shocked the whole thing just happened. Out of breath from the reeling battle I said, "bait every hook and drop them in the water". A little girl named Jasmine came up to me and said, "don't give up, you need to keep trying". I told her to give me a highfive because that was exactly what everyone needed to hear, including myself. No matter how let down you may be, you try and try again. I told her to always keep trying, not just on the dock but in anything she encounters. That moment was so much more important than the fish, it so valuable to teach our Harbor Explorers that we don't give up, we keep on trying!

P.S. For the record, Piers Park has never had anyone that close to catching a striped bass on their dock.

On that note: Don't give up!

Spent my lunch break fishing because I wasn't giving up

Briana

Huge Spider Crab? No Thanks!

Hello Everyone!

The female spider crab that the camper caught

It's the last day of the week at Piers Park for me since I will be attending the second MLK Scholars meeting held at Boston University this Friday and I would like to think about what happened this week as a whole. First of, I would like to ignore Monday because of how rainy it was and how it was a terrible start to the camp week. However through the week it has gotten better, with the kids more energetic and happier than they were at the beginning.

For today, it was the most eventful day out of the whole week. One exciting thing that happened today was that one of the campers caught a nine legged spider crab. At first, everyone was going crazy on the dock. The camper yelling that there was a fish on the hook and reeling it in as fast as she could and the staff, trying to stay calm, telling the camper to reel it in slowly. When we realized that it wasn't a fish, but a huge spider crab, some of us looked at it wondering how a spider crab could get to be the size it was and some of us couldn't really look at it because it resembled an actual spider. The kids gathered around the abnormally sized crab. We looked to see if it was a female and to see if it had any eggs (sadly it did not). We then put it back in the water and went on with our experiences on the dock. When the kids that went sailing came back and asked what we caught, the kids told them that we got a humongous spider crab and how it had an extra leg. I showed the campers that weren't there the pictures of the crab and they started saying "Woah" and "Freaky" and "That's so cool". If the kids reacted to the crab like that, I wonder how they'll react to actually catching a fish on the line. The day that happens, I'll be ready to get it down and show their accomplishment to everyone!

The camper who caught the spider crab, holding it

Roger That

Monday was a day for the books at Piers Park! Recently, we have been accomplishing things even the Sailing Center's oldest staff have never seen at their site. After almost landing a Striped Bass fishing from the docks we thought we could not do much else that folks have yet to see until Monday.

Carefully transporting from lobster trap to water

We began our dock time like any other day by pulling the crab traps first. Crab traps are our first activity because they are light, easy for kids to get out of the water, and usually are loaded with things for them to look at. When a few kids look like they're not interested in the crabs, tunicates, and mussels that usually come up with the crab trap we ask if they want to pull the lobster trap, I've never had anyone tell me no!

We have the Harbor Explorers take turns because it is so heavy, they usually pull until they need a break and a friend will step in to help. As it rose to the surface I heard screams, not just from the kids but from the staff too. I thought to myself, we must have so many lobsters! As I took a good look at the trap I realized we did not have any lobsters, just one large creature that looked tangled and gasping for air. We realized we pulled up a skate in our lobster trap!

He was definitely waving to us.

We quickly tried to think of what to do. We knew we had a skate, we knew it was tangled in the trap, but we had no idea how to get it out or what we were going to put it into. Thinking it would be best for the animal to be in water we lowered the trap to buy ourselves some time. We looked for gloves, I've been told to watch out for a skate's tail but I wasn't sure how dangerous it may or may not have been. Finally, we found some thick gloves. I put them on and we pulled up the trap. We had a large plastic wheelbarrow filled with water ready to put the creature in to be able to examine it.

I surprised myself with how willing I was to stick my hands in to untangle this creature that could potentially have hurt me in the process but I knew I had to get the skate out. Finally it was able to curl itself into a ball making it easy for me to pick it up. When we finally got it into the water my team felt so successful, the kids and the Piers Park staff were amazed. We could not stop gawking over the amazing animal in front of us. The kids decided to name him and listened intently as we taught them all about skates. We watched him swim around and it looked like he was waving his pectoral fin at us. He must have been a Jolly Roger because he got out of that trap!

Over and out,
Briana

Comparing the anatomy of a skate to a flounder with our Harbor Explorers 

82, 81, 90, 91

Those are the temperatures the Boston Harbor area has been climbing to this week. The days in the 80s feel like 90s and the 90s feel like 100! It is easy to say we definitely in the dog days of summer.

Check out those crabs! 

Despite the heat, nothing can stop our campers from their daily routine. They relentlessly cast their lines, pull up traps, and paddle their kayaks through the water. The games of capture the flag seem endless and the day seems to drag until we get to the park but there is nothing compares to the smile on their faces when they see water on a hot day. The sprinkler is flowing and they can't get enough of the water. Soon enough they are even pouring it on the playground making "water slides". 

As sad as it is to leave the park and sprinkler, we make our way back down to the dock. The kids are getting hot again and are mostly dry. We thought, why not give them some more water? We turned on the hose and started spraying the ones who were willing to get wet. The kids were loving it!  

This moon jellyfish is AWESOME!

Before wrapping up for the day the kids partook in some heavy betting during the crab races, I believe a green crab won and his winnings were getting back into the water first. The kayakers also caught a jellyfish and brought it back to the dock for us all to hold it. So far this week has been a smash hit. 

Stay cool folks

Briana

How far will you go to get a starfish?

If you worked with the Harbor Explorers at Piers Park, then you would know that the kids in the program go crazy when there is a sea creature in the touch tank. No matter what it is, either fish or crabs caught in the traps, they would gather around the touch tank to see what's in it. So when the rest of the Save the Harbor team and I saw a starfish on a rock during low tide, we thought it was a good idea to bring it in a touch tank and show the kids. So someone had to go into the water and try to get it. That's when one of the Save the Harbor staff, Raymond offered to get it.

At first, I thought he was joking because it was a cold, rainy day. When he went to get a kayak and a life jacket, I knew he wasn't kidding. He kayaked to where the starfish was and tried to reach for it but he couldn't reach it. He then got out of the kayak and tried to get the starfish. At that moment, it started to pour down making it harder to get the starfish. At one point, we offered him my umbrella to stop the drops on the water so it can be much easier to see. After five minutes of Raymond swimming around the dock trying to get the starfish, he finally got it, but while doing so he cut his finger on a barnacle. So we had to put the starfish in a touch tank with salt water in it and rushed him up to the tent so he could clean up his finger. When we got to the tent where all the kids were, they all started to crowd Briana, who was holding the tank, trying to catch a glimpse of the star fish. When she put it down, all the kids started to ask questions about who got it and the staff told them that Raymond got it. Everyone started to thank him and actually cheered for him getting the star fish. Now it's the day after and I'm not at Piers Park to see how all the kids are doing, but I bet that they are still talking about the star fish Raymond swam to get.

A sailing instructor holding the Star Fish

The Star Fish

Raymond holding the Star Fish in the Kayak

The Most Eventful Week So Far

This is the starfish Raymond caught

This week was an eventful one. Starting from helping each other out, overcoming fears, and even getting a starfish from the water. On Wednesday and Thursday there was this girl that had a fear of thunder and lightning. Once I learned, this I had to help her and so I did. I told her it was all in her head and imagination that was making her think thunder is so big and bad. I also told her that it was just people in the clouds having a party. I even got a thank you from the mother on the last day which was nice and put a smile on my face. Other than that the days were pretty normal we played games and even watches finding nemo when it rained on Thursday.

However on Thursday, despite the normality of it and the amount of times I got wet that day. My co-worker Raymond had seen a starfish under the water (it was low tide at the time) and he decided to go and get it. He went in a kayak and paddled towards it and eventually got it along with a few small cuts from a barnacle. He put it in the touch tank and we brought it up for the kids to see. They were really entertained by it. After that adventure we watched finding nemo, it was pretty good. Afterwards we continued with our normal routine and games we usually play. The children absolutely loved this game called "Bop Bop BipidiBopBop" and played it in the afternoon when they were getting ready to leave.

The white board the kids wrote the thank you message on

Friday was pretty eventful in a sense too. In the morning I walked into work and saw a thank you message on the whiteboard. The kids brought in snacks and during lunch we ate lots of it. It was fun and I could tell the kids had a good time with it.

My week was great and I hope your next week is too
~Kamal

Good Bye Pier's Park

What a summer! To everyone's that been keeping up with my posts, these past weeks were awesome! I'm so thankful for the opportunity to have been fishing with kids, the other staff and the captains who lent their boats! Having access to the various equipment from the office made work awesome! I miss the kids already and as I am sitting at home on my sofa writing my final blog post I can see the fun adventures I had this entire summer whenever my eyes close! This job in summary consisted of a lot of fishing, finding life (insects, crustaceans, fish, and any other moving creatures) around the area, running around with children in various games (i.e. Capture the Flag, Sharks & Minnows, Drip-drip-drench, Tag, and randomly being chased), getting soaked by sprinklers, Jeopardy, learning about sea life, kayaking, beach activities, arts & crafts (drawing and fish printing) and lastly having a blast with the kids. This is my last blog post, I hope all of you that have read my posts up until now have had an amazing summer as well! 

I want to thank Amy Gaylord for looking at my e-mail, Sandra Chen for telling me about this opportunity, Bruce Berman for accepting me into this program and Patty for leading the whole Save the Harbor and Save the Bay site in Boston! The staff at Pier's park were fun individuals who worked hard to make not only their day spectacular, but the kids' days as well! The Pier's Park team who consisted of people who were here from the beginning, to folks that came either one day or a few were really all a great help, a lot of fun, creative and responsible individuals! Shout outs to Amanda for being a mother goose to some of the kids, Rusenny for being their day one and growing as an  individual, Sam who came only the last few days, but her presence felt like she was at our site all summer, Christian a.k.a. Pablo the rookie Capture the Flag score breaker, Ary the realest m.v.p. making sure that the kids were listening, and Sean the story teller, blue berry and banana every day man, always had something educational to teach the kids and very much a core person that held all the L.H.E.'s and J.P.A.'s together to co-function as a strong unit and the list could go on! Ever-fi was educational and I also want to give thanks to John Hancock for the MLK scholars programs, they did a remarkable job running their annual program for their 4th year I believe! I hope that the new folks who join S.T.H./ S.T.B. in the future have at the minimum as much fun as I did!

Raymond Chai

Captain's Coming

"At ease!"

This is one of the following phrases after the captain says "Captains Coming." This is a game that I play at school with my orientation groups. At Stonehill College I serve as one of the many Peer Mentors, the individuals who serve and organize orientation for the numerous incoming freshmen, and this is one of my many favorite games to play.

It was almost nostalgic to play this game this past weekend at Piers Park. The game is a rendition of the infamous Simon Say's. It carries a heavy nautical theme that allows our children to feel closer to the harbor. It consists of a Captain who says phrases that range from Mermaid (the kids fall to the ground and act as mermaids in groups of three) to swab the deck.
It is so amazing to watch and though it sounds fairly easy, please do not be fooled, especially in this time of Olympic prestige the game gets quite competitive if I do say so myself.

Enjoy these photos of our staff and group(s) playing Captains Coming.
-Ahmed

My First Day at Piers Park-- And My First Catch!

Hi everyone,

This week, I got to spend the day at Piers Park in East Boston for the first time. I didn't know what to expect since I had never been to the site before, but I had a lot of fun! In the morning, we started the day off with a fun game in the grass as the kids arrived, and then we went into the tent for a lesson on the ocean's ecosystems. As a science teacher, I was excited to see the kids asking questions and sharing their knowledge about the ocean! We talked about kelp forests, seagrass meadows, and of course, coral reefs. We also discussed how humans are threatening these ecosystems, and how some of them may not be around for us to enjoy in the future. While this is certainly not the most uplifting topic to talk about, I was happy to see the kids engaged, curious, and interested in learning what they could do to help.

We went to the dock in the morning and managed to catch a few crabs that appeared to be pregnant! We released them back in the water after snapping a few pictures and spent the rest of the morning fishing and kayaking off the dock.

Pregnant crabs with eggs

After lunch, we went to the park and got to cool off in the sprinkler while playing with the kids. We even got a visit from the ice cream truck! Since it was 90+ degrees outside, it was awesome to spend some time in the sprinkler. After that, we played an intense game of capture the flag, then returned to the dock for more fishing, crabbing, kayaking, and sailing.

At this point in the summer, I have witnessed kids catch fish at Community Boating on the Esplanade, but I myself have not caught anything. At the end of the day at Piers Park, however, I finally reeled up a sea creature on my fishing rod! At first, I had no idea what it was, but upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a squid! We were so excited to have such a great catch, and the kids were really curious about the squid. It ended up squirting some ink as we tried to take it off the hook, and it even changed colors from white to red as it swam in the touch tank. I didn't even know that squid lived in the harbor until that day!

The squid!

After doing some research, I think the squid was an Atlantic long-finned squid. I think it's really interesting that the squid could change colors and shoot ink as a defense against predators. I also learned that squid are used a lot in neuroscience research because they have very large neurons. We released the squid back in the water after the kids spent some time looking at it, and at the end of the day, many of the kids told their parents that we caught a squid!

The kids checking out a squid

Overall, it was a fun day at Piers Park, and I'm looking forward to hopefully catching another cool sea creature next week!

Until next time,
Grace

Until next time!

The first thing I remember Bruce saying to all of us is to try something new everyday. After spending this summer with Save the Harbor Save the Bay that's exactly what I did.

It started off with little firsts like taking a fairy to dealing with bait, going fishing and teaching kids how to fish. It later became more things I wouldn't have thought I'd even have to possibility to do things this summer like catching jellyfish, tie-dye, kayaking, sailing and sand raking.

By the end it was things that we did to make the day more adventurous like mega kayaking as firsts. The staff and children we work with made the summer worth wild and I'm going to miss everyone like crazy.

 Save the Harbor Save the Bay gave me a summer filled with exploring new things and meeting so many new people and I just want to say thank you for giving me all these opportunities and hopefully more to come! 

First time at Piers Park!

Piers Park!

Hey, friends of Save the Harbor!

My last post was about one of the new sites I visited this week, CHV, and in this post, I'm going to tell you about my day in East Boston! Piers Park Sailing is an amazing site- I happened to be there on a day of downpours and high humidity, but we still had plenty to do.

After building sea creatures out of clay during some morning rain, we went down to the crab traps. My JPAS, Andy, Ana and Bella, were incredible- they took the kids kayaking, helped me teach the kids about skeleton shrimp, and even participated in our crab race!

Soon we were off to explore the parks, where we talked about genes and biodiversity while we searched for four-leafed clovers. We didn't have as many kids as we normally do because of the weather, so we were able to really get to know Friday's participants! We spent a third of our time laughing, at least!

Bella kayaking with Claire!

We ended the day with an amazing spin on a sailboat. I had never been on a sailboat that size before- it needed TWO people to control the sails, and we fit 10 people onto my boat! This was a refreshing way to catch a breeze and relax after a long Friday of tumultuous weather. Thanks for always bringing me new experiences, Save the Harbor!

Until next time,
Carolyn

Jessie teaching Andy how to use the broom! 

Fun with crabs on the doc!

Around the World in 60 Days

Hello again fellow adventurers,

Well unfortunately it's that time of thew year again. The days are getting shorter and shorter, kids are getting ready to go back to school, and our summer programming is coming to an end. Just like last summer, this one has been jam packed with excitement. From the first day of orientation, I knew my fellow Harbor Explorers and I were going to run an amazing program. One of the best parts of my summer was that I got to travel to almost every site!

Sailing the deep blue of Boston Harbor

My summer adventure began at Piers Park. Located in East Boston, this week long day camp proved to be one of my favorite sites of the summer. From sailing the Boston Harbor, to playing games like fishy fishy cross my ocean, we were always entertaining and being entertained by the children in the Harbor Explorers program. I learned so much from these little kids, and definitely prepared me for having kids of my own later in life. 

Kayak selfies!

The next stop on my wild summer ride was Community Boating and Courageous Sailing Center. Having worked at these two sites last summer, I returned much the wiser and ready to continue where I left off. The highlight of Community Boating was taking the kayaks out on the Charles river. I had been kayaking many times before, but watching some of my co-workers like Dexter and Ruth attempt to kayak for the first time provided plenty entertainment. This summer we didn't catch nearly as many eels as we did last summer, but our fishing numbers were way up! It's always exciting to be a part of a child's first fish. Watching them be both excited at what they have accomplished, and also scared to touch the wriggling fish on the other end of the rod.

Crab race champion!

Courageous Sailing Center continued it's excitement from last summer into this one with the abundant life we found in the multiple lobster traps we have there year round. While green crabs and tunicates were always a guarantee, the mystery came from never knowing exactly what you would find in each trap! We caught a total of 4 lobsters throughout the course of the summer, and while none of them were big enough to keep (and eat!) they were still a major source of excitement for both the children and us counselors! We also managed to snag a few different flounder, a few rock gunnels, and a few different species of crabs through the summer. Of course the highlight of every day was releasing the crabs and having a crab race to see who got bragging rights for the day. While I only one once, I didn't shy away from bragging through the day that I won!

Just an aspiring artist and his canvas 

While I only spent a few days at Carson Beach, they were some of the best days of the summer for me! As a new site this summer for Save the Harbor, Carson had a major task of showing off one of Boston's most prestigious and cleanest urban beach! The highlight by far was working with world renowned sand artist Andres Amador creating sand art along the shores of Carson. The experience was like nothing I had ever been a part of, and now I want to make my own sand art whenever I'm at the beach! While I'm nowhere close to as skilled as Andres, I hope one day I'll be able to create works of art like he can.

Last and certainly not least was All Access Boston Harbor. So many fantastic memories were made at the various islands we visited on All Access. From the sea glass filled shores and spacious fields of Spectacle island to the beautiful beach of Peddocks island, we helped over 6,000!!! children experience what the Boston Harbor Islands have to share. with kickball games, to beach walks and of course swimming, All Access is the perfect way to show the public just how far Save the Harbor has come in cleaning up Boston Harbor. I think I'll miss All Access the most, but that only means I'll be looking forward to it the most next summer!

If there isn't a selfie, did it even happen?

It's been quite the amazing summer. I just want to say thank you to everyone in the Save the Harbor Save the Bay company that made it possible for me to play a part in this amazing program. I'm looking forward to making a return next year!

Until next summer, keep on exploring!

-Luke

Back at Piers Park

Being at Piers Park was a Blast!!! We started the morning with a game of capture the flag and it was amazing seeing how much energy the kids have early in the morning. I have seen a few kids from when I was working at Piers Park last year again this year. We went down to the dock later on and caught a bunch of crabs with the crab trap. It was about 30 or so crabs we had in the touch tank. I took a few kids out on a kayak around the pier for a little. After being on the dock for a while we all went to the park and they turned the slides into water slides by taking some water from the sprinklers with their bottles and pouring the water onto the slides. A few of the kid wanted me to go up and see them go down their water slide but the whole time, it was a trap! They wanted me to go down the slide, they blocked the stairs so  the only to go down was to go down the slide. So they pushed me down the slide and they all laughed. We had a couple rely races, wheel barrow race, crab crawl race and foot races, and the kids loved it. I went sailing for the first time with a couple of kids and it was a lot of fun. It was blast being back at Piers Park!

Until next time,
Andy

Crab Crawl Race

Wheel-barrow race!

Sailing on the Harbor!