Kayaking at CBI!

Today at CBI, the Environmental Group got a special treat- a chance to kayak, look for mussels and put out eel traps!

Eel traps were deployed using hot dogs as bait since ,oddly enough, they seem to work best! However, our net search for freshwater mussels came up empty. We're going to try different strategies to find mussels this week.

Unexpectedly, instead of mussels, we ended up picking lots of plastic trash from the Charles River. We recycled what we could at CBI, then properly discarded the rest.

-Sheuli

The Infamous AABH on a MONDAY

With the wind whipping on our faces, Cassie, David, BJ, Alizee, and I went on the trip out to Spectacle because the original day was canceled due to heavy rainstorms. In the lobster trap was a spider crab! The first group that came enjoyed themselves and became bold enough to hold it and scaring their fellow members. With groups coming in and listening to David talk about today's wonderful opportunities to do something that the groups had never done before, in a smart and safe way. Many crossed off this challenge by just stepping onto the island itself or even stepping onto the Virginia C-II.

After dispersing to renew our energy with our homemade lunches, and enjoying my cherries, Cassie and David went to the beach on the right with a couple of students to collect sea glass and pottery while BJ, Eliza, and I went to the top of the highest drumlin to fly kites. I met many kids who didn't feel like going up because they didn't want to hike up the hill, but one guy, named Eddie, pinkie promised me that he would go up the hill with his friends to fly kites; I had a great time trying to persuade them to get up and go with us!

On the summit, it was quite windy, sending many kites twisting and swerving everywhere. The kids who flew the kites were young, maybe even too young to hold onto the handles. The winds were fierce, and actually blew away a kite! I quickly ran to the tiny "bridge" because the handle got stuck on the railings. A park ranger got there ahead of me and gave me the handle. The string was all let out, and I spent nearly 20 minutes trying to ravel up the string, and untangle the kite from 2 trees. It was quite an adventure!

The next three days are going to be a blast!

Thi

“A whole menagerie!”

That’s what one counselor exclaimed at the Courageous Sailing Center today when the kids excitedly showed them what we’d pulled up in the lobster trap: several Red Rock Crabs, two big American Lobsters, a Northern Sea Star! I guess canned Tuna (I used Atlantic Skipjack, since it is one of the most plentiful species—unlike Atlantic Bluefin, which have been severely over-fished in recent years) really does the trick—thanks Bruce and Jen for the tip J. We used it for the first time on Friday, and over the weekend the “living room” (the area in a lobster trap where the animals get stuck) filled with ocean critters! Not only had some of the kids never held a starfish before, but our own (fantastic) intern Aruna had never held one either! We passed it around so that everyone got a turn, along with the lobsters—comparing feeding mechanisms; lobsters use their claws and mandibles (mouthparts) to bring bits of food to their mouth, while starfish bring not only their mouth, but their entire stomach to their food by climbing on top of their prey and then literally ejecting their stomach and digesting externally, sucking it back in only once they’ve finished the meal. It was great to be able to compare and contrast the different organisms. We wondered together if the starfish, like the lobsters, had been attracted by the tuna or if it had just ended up in the trap randomly today. We decided to test it out with more Tuna and see what comes back next time. I’ll have to pick up some more tomorrow. Stay tuned to see what else this fantastic new bait turns up…

~Emily

That's not a crab!

Last week Conor wrote about the prehistoric sea spider that our friend Sully found crawling through the mud at Black’s Creek in Quincy—take a look at these pictures, which give you a sense of just how strange horseshoe “crabs” are. Horseshoe crabs are so unusual to us today because they’re “living fossils,” a term that paleontologists use to describe animals that are very similar to their distant ancestors. The horseshoe crabs that we find today look the same as fossil horseshoe crabs from 445 million years ago! To put that into perspective, it took less than 6 million years for chimpanzees and humans to evolve into different species. During that same stretch of time, horseshoe crabs have hardly changed at all!

Why haven’t horseshoe crabs changed? Because they’re so good at what they do. Although they’re not really crabs, like the Green Crabs or Asian Shore Crabs we see more often, they do live on the ocean floor and feed primarily by scavenging. They’re protected by a thick shell, which covers their whole body, and their tail allows them to right themselves if they get flipped over. Horseshoe crabs are built like tanks, and they’re designed so well that they’ve had no reason to change.

The only threat that horseshoe crabs face comes from humans, who pollute their habitats and collect too many of them to use as bait and fertilizer. When colonists first arrived in New England, there were so many horseshoe crabs that farmers would literally use tons of them to fertilize their fields—nowadays, however, finding a horseshoe crab in Boston Harbor is a thrilling discovery. With continued dedication to cleaning up the Harbor, we can ensure that horseshoe crabs will still be around to give future generations of Bostonians a living lesson in ancient history.

-Aaron