First Lobster Catch!!!

Yesterday was one of my best days on the job. I caught my first lobster. I was at South Boston's sailing center. The day was going great. Then me, Vinn, and Mary my co-workers decided to go check on the trap we had set with fresh bait the day before. The trap was so heavy me and Vinn struggled to pull it up, but we just knew something good and big had to be in there. When we got it to the top there were 6 huge lobsters in there. I was amazed and so excited along with all the kids it took me 3 long summers to accomplish this goal and I finally did it with the help of my great friends from South Boston.


Markie Mark

Last day at southie

My last day at Southie was the great. It really didn't feel like the last day. Everybody was having fun as usual, enjoying the wonderful weather, relaxing on the beach and out sailing. Me and my co-workers were down on the beach walking with a couple of kids looking for crabs.

We also found a couple of pieces of sea glass. I didn't even know that Southie had sea glass on the beach, so that gave us something teach the kids about even though the kids at Southie know everything!

But some of them were surprised on top of that because I got to work with some of my best friends for the last week of work. Being one of my favorite sites, i will truly miss McDonough and all my Southie kids.

Mark

Casting on the Sugar Bowl

Monday afternoon turned out to be a really great time. After a morning at the Children's Museum like we had (which you can read about below), a nice afternoon at Southie wrapped up a perfect day. I was so impressed at how well the kids have gotten at casting this summer. There are surely some future pro anglers in the making out there. We decided to go out to the Sugar Bowl despite the somewhat lengthy walk. The kids have the most room to show off their casting skills out there. The weather was fantastic and everyone had fun. I can't wait to get back out there and hopefully catch a bass!

On the way back from fishing we saw the food chain in action! A seagull was picking apart a crab that it caught for an early dinner. It was a little gross but still really cool to watch up close. I could not have asked for a more exciting Monday. Such a fun day will be hard to top the rest of the week.

Yours truly,

Tom Regan

“You’re not really going to eat him, are you?”

While gathering crabs for my recent culinary experiment, I ran into a paradox: South Boston’s most skilled crab catcher, Julia, was also the most ardent proponent of crab liberation. While tossing a crab trap off the side of the pier, Sean, another Boston Harbor Explorer, casually asked me whether people eat Green Crabs. I replied that I had tried eating one, and was going to cook several more for a potluck I had planned for that evening—the very crabs we were in the process of trapping.

Julia, the redhead pictured grasping her prized catch, was taken aback. Julia’s a quick learner, and in no time at all she was baiting, lowering, and raising a pyramid trap faster than we could instruct her. During the course of the afternoon, she proceeded to catch the largest Green Crab I’ve ever seen—a male whose carapace measured 3.5 inches across. Although she’s an expert crab trapper, Julia holds nothing against the crabs she pulls out of Pleasure Bay.

When Julia found out what lay in store for the crabs we had already captured, she took it upon herself to free our invertebrate prisoners. While Tom, Alex and I were busy with other Explorers, she grabbed the bucket and, stealthily dragging it to the edge of the pier, dumped every crab we caught that day back into the Harbor. Although I was a bit upset at having to make new cooking arrangements for my potluck, I admire Julia’s sympathy for the animals she captured, even if the concern was directed at a biological invader. Julia’s compassion for living things is a sentiment that we need to cultivate in our youth—we can only preserve the Harbor as a natural habitat if we respect the animals that live there.

-Aaron

Finding a New Home in the Harbor

I know I've taken over the blog a bit these past couple days with crab and water testing, but I can't resist sharing my amazing week with you all and thanking everyone who was a part of it. I'll bullet-point my highlights to try and keep it short, but, coming off the my favorite week of the summer so far, I can't make any promises...

• I got to work with the Dream Team this week- LaToya, Aruna, Tommy, and myself meshed amazingly well together, and I can't thank them enough for the passion they put in to what we were doing. Plus, I really just had so much fun with them. Thanks guys!
• I felt very at home working at the Boston Children's Museum, getting to talk to families and have those quick windows of time to really connect with the great kids that pass through. Practically every child that comes over to our touch tank or our lobster trap encounters something new and has this unforgettable look of awe and wonder on his or her face. I'm never going to get sick of that look.
• I got to work alongside Jen Last a TON this week, who, aside from providing such a great support system to our youth staff this summer, is a great role model for anyone who seeks a future in marine education. I'm incredibly lucky to be learning the ropes from her and developing my own style of teaching in the process. Thank you, Jen!
• My kids all week asked some amazing questions, ranging from "Is a barnacle growing on a whale the same kind of thing as if my dog had a worm?" to "I know we can't use a native spider crab for bait, we should use an Asian Shore crab... what if a spider crab was in Asia, could we use it for bait there?" It was so rewarding to see those scientific wheels turning.
• Combined, my sites caught 5 fish this week-- the 5th of which was a 27-29 inch striper that we reeled in RIGHT as we were starting to pack up in South Boston this afternoon. I couldn't have asked for a better final note to finish the week!

For those of you who don't know, I moved here on a whim at the beginning of June. It was pretty scary to take a leap like that. I left the most important people in my life at home in Maryland, and I miss them all the time. I blindly hoped that Boston would present an outlet for my passion for environmental education, but I moved up without a job. Then Jen, Lindsay, Patty, and Bruce took me in and gave me the opportunity to be a part of this amazing group of people. It's not always easy to be 22 years old, in a new city, far away from my family, apartment hunting, trying to figure out what the next step in my life will be; but it's weeks like this that leave no doubt in my mind that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Lots of Harbor Love,

Michelle

Taking the Pulse of Nature's Rhythm

Today was, I’m sad to report, my last afternoon (for the next few weeks, at least) at the Harry McDonough Sailing Center in South Boston. While I had originally meant to write a blog entry about how much I loved getting to know the kids at the site, I find myself writing an entry about how much I’m going to miss exploring Pleasure Bay with Sean, Olivia, Julia, and the rest of our gang of anglers and crab-catchers.

Pleasure Bay is an especially great place to observe the effects of the tides—because there are only a few channels through which tidal currents can enter and leave the harbor, the tide tends to rise and fall faster in the main harbor than in the enclosed bay. As a result, there’s almost ways a difference between the water level in Boston Harbor and Pleasure Bay; this difference produces a strong, rushing current. Along most of the coast, the tides rise and fall too slowly to produce forces this dramatic—but at South Boston, the effects of the sun and moon’s gravitational tug-of-war are not only visible, they’re almost impossible to ignore.

The tides move more than just water at South Boston. The level of the tide determines which sea creatures you can expect to catch or trap, and also where you can find them. Low tide, for example, is a prime time to venture to the rocky shore past the swimming beach. Green Crabs and Asian Shore Crabs virtually swarm out from under every rock you turn over, scuttling frantically for any shelter—even the shadow under your shoes! Our Boston Harbor Explorers quickly learned that catching crabs at low tide is, if you’ll excuse my pun, child’s play!

At high tide, however, crabs venture into deeper water. While hunting for bait at high tide, we hardly found any crabs at all, even though we left no stone unturned. High tide, on the other hand, is the perfect time to go fishing. The water beneath the fishing pier at Castle Island is too shallow during low tide, but it’s an excellent place to cast a rod while the tide is high. Exploring the harbor at Pleasure Bay was a crash course in learning to plan our activities around the natural rhythm of the tides, for us instructors as well as our young Boston Harbor Explorers.

Aaron

Week One Down

Well, I have just completed my first week with SHSB's Summer Youth Program and not only was it unique and fun, but it was scorching hot. If I had ever had any doubts or debate about my summer employment opportunities, such second guesses were done away with once stepping out into that heat and knowing I would be beside the water all day. The kids seemed to all share in my relief. I spent my mornings at the Courageous Sailing Center at the Umass Boston site and my afternoons in South Boston on Castle Island. To think many of my peers were stuck in a cubicle all week!

While we had a week of orientation and training, in truth, I still did not know what to expect from my first days. I soon discovered that "working at or far Save the Harbor" is not the correct phrasing. In the words of all the kids, it is "Are you doing Save the Harbor Save the Bay?" It is always the direct object of an action verb with an inherent positive connotation. Always with the tone of excitement accompanied by an undertone of anxiety that they may not get a chance to participate. In essence, the arrival of SHSB youth program employees means the imminent approach of fun. Individual kids will pull us aside so as to ensure their chance at pulling up the crab traps, use their own fishing rod, picking up and investigating the crabs, and fetching muscles to break open to use as bait. Little do they know that providing said opportunities are precisely our intentions. I had no anticipation that the children would arrive with such an inherent hunger for all things nature and harbor related. I quickly became in touch with and was able to relive my youthful affinity for the water and its creatures. The conversations with the children are never dull and quite frankly, thought-provoking. "Does it scare you that there is a whole 'nother world down there?" "I heard that we know less about the bottom of the ocean than we do about space." Let's just say that I quickly learned that there was a whole lot more going on at the Umass Boston site than the worship of our late president's relic.

- Dan Ken

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