Fishing, Sometimes Catching

This summer, one of the things I'm most proud to have learned is how to fish! Before working for Save the Harbor / Save the Bay, I had never been fishing and it was only something that vaguely interested me. I'm a scuba diver at heart and seeing fish while underwater is more my thing.

However, since the beginning of the Boston Harbor Explorers program, I have been eagerly learning the best ways to fish in certain areas, best baits to try, the frustrations of not catching anything, and most importantly, how great it is to teach a child to fish and have them actually catch something.

The first fish I caught at the Fan Pier Fishing Tournament

We didn't catch anything at either site for about three weeks. But at Community Boating, as the water grew warmer and we perfected out technique, we started catching more and more sunfish. Pretty soon we had more than we even knew what to do with. We are still trying different things to try and catch a different freshwater fish. But as I now know, fishing takes lots of patience.

Putting bait on a line at CBI

At Courageous, we fish from the pier or the dock and we've tried many types of bait. We have used mackerel, herring, quahogs, crabs, mussels, squid, and even live eels. Despite all our efforts, we have not managed to catch anything there. I think it's just a tough spot with a lot of boat traffic. We have occasionally spotted fish, but they are too smart to fall for our tricks. Our Save the Harbor staff and the explorers are definitely optimistic and we will keep trying until the end of the summer.

Fishing at Courageous

I'm so glad that I have learned these lifelong skills and will continue to try and catch the big one.


Keep casting your lines,
Sej

Life Finds a Way

The other day at Courageous Sailing Center was really fun because so many interesting and surprising things happened. We were checking our traps and we found all the fun stuff we usually find in them (like crabs, sea stars, tunicates, and small fish). However, we realized that we are not exactly sure how many traps we have put down at Courageous over the years, so we decided to check a couple of places where we assumed there was nothing on the end of the line.

Most of the lines were just tangled into a big not, some ended in buoys, but one line was really cool. It didn't have  a trap on the end, but it was covered in life. It was overgrown with tiny little mussels, some larger mussels, seaweed, tunicates, amphipods, and skeleton shrimp!

Crawling with life!

We pulled it out of the water and immediately saw that it was a habitat of it's own. It was like a small intertidal zone attached to the dock. The whole thing looked alive with the tiny creatures jumping around.

Skeleton shrimp are really cool too. I had never touched them before and it was weird to feel them sticking on to my hands with their little grasping appendages. They look like tiny marine stick insects.

Skeleton shrimp

Another cool thing we saw by the dock that we had never seen were crabs hiding in the cracks in the pilings of the pier. One of our sharp-eyed explorers saw that small crabs had gotten in there, probably at high tide, and stayed waiting until the tide rose again. We kept looking and found that there were crabs in every crack that was wide and deep enough to hold a crab or a few.

Can you see the tiny crab claws?

I think it just goes to show that there is always life in unexpected places when it comes to the ocean. Through millions of years of adaptation and evolution, animals have found ways to take advantage of every possible situation they might find themselves in. I thought we would have explored all there was to see around Courageous by the end of the summer, but there are always more mysteries to explore in the harbor.


Keep on exploring,
Sej

The Eww Factor: Part 2 (Courageous Sailing Center)

Hello again!

So I've filled you all in on the disgusting (and really cool!) things we do at Community Boating, but the fun doesn't stop there. We have a whole host of nasty things going on at Courageous Sailing Center as well. From all the stuff growing on our lobster traps to the different kinds of bait we use, there's always something you can get your hands dirty with at Courageous. Here are some of my favorites:

Mussels: 

Mussel insides- the small, dark lump is its heart

Mussels are abundant at Courageous. On the sides of the dock, on the pilings, and even on several of our traps. We can always find mussels, and in a pinch, they make great bait. However, if you've ever cracked an uncooked mussel, you will know that what's inside the shell is not always the most fun to deal with. In fact, it's usually a goopy, orange mess. But we scoop out the meat, try to get it on a rod, and cast off gently so our bait doesn't go flying into the harbor.

Mussels work better to bait traps with: we just gather a whole lot, crack their shells so the lobsters and crabs can get a good whiff and put them in the traps. The mussels often have lots of little amphipods on and around them, or even better, are covered in a nice black mud.

Cracking mussels to use as bait

Baked Bait Fish:

At least the flies like it

Another gross thing that we get to do at Courageous is put our bait fish on the hooks for fishing. Usually this is fine, if the bait has not been baked by the heat of the day and seared by the sun to be a flaky and smelly mess. The bait can get so baked that if you cooked a fish you were intending to eat to the same extent, food critics would say your fish was very overcooked. 

All chopped up and ready to go

Then there comes the near-impossible task of getting the bait to stay on the hook. Once it is consistently flaking off, we resort to mussels, even though they slip and slide off the hook just as easily... 

Tunicates: 

Tunicates, or sea squirts, are a unique type of invertebrate that is actually quite closely related to humans. They can live as individuals or colonies that encrust over a surface. Tunicates have very simple body plans: they are shaped like a sac and have two openings, one to take in water and one to expel water. They come in various shades of brown to orange and are slimy to the touch. 

Colonial tunicates growing over mussels

At Courageous, we find tunicate slime encrusting our lobster traps, the lines that tie those traps to the dock, and even sometimes on crabs! One grossed-out explorer exclaimed that it looked like something had vomited on our trap. 

The individual tunicates are like slimy sacs of water, and when you squeeze them, water shoots out of one (or both) of their siphons. It's hard to tell where exactly the siphons are so the water shoots out in random directions, often hitting someone nearby unexpectedly. 

His face says it all

So those are some of the less pleasant things going on at Courageous this summer. Community Boating and Courageous are different for many reasons, but I'll let you decide which site is more disgusting. 

Keep getting your hands dirty, 

Sej

We tried to wash the tunicated off our traps...

50 Crabs & 3 Lobsters

Hello everyone!

I have to say that working at Courageous Sailing Center has been really fun. I've seen all sorts of amazing and unexpected things and been able to share these experiences with the explorers and instructors at Courageous and the staff of Save the Harbor.

One of the coolest things that has happened there this summer was the day we caught over 50 green crabs. We have several lobster traps at Courageous and there are often crabs in them, but last week there were so many crabs in every single trap that we decided to collect them and count how many we had. Many of the campers were fascinated to see how many crabs there were and how many there might be crawling around all over the harbor.

Grab a crab!

Another amazing thing that happened at Courageous is when we caught three lobsters in a trap we did not even know was there! Save the Harbor has been working with Courageous for years so we have put traps down on lines that are often hard to see. At first we thought there were just two big lobsters in the trap, but I noticed that the bait bag seemed really full... Turns out it was full of lobster! Another smaller lobster was squeezed in there so tightly that we thought it might not be alive. 

There's a lobster in there!

I slowly opened the bait bag and it started trying to move around. We eased it out carefully because its claws and many spines kept getting snagged on the mesh, but eventually it was free! 

Almost free!

Catching three lobsters after only having caught one or two sporadically the whole season was very unexpected, but hopefully we will catch more now that we have new traps and we know how many traps we need to check. I also think that we will succeed in catching a fish with a rod one of these days, as long as we just keep trying!

A beautiful day for fishing at Courageous

See you on the dock, 

Sej

How to Pose with an Eel

Since we first caught eels in our eels traps at Community Boating we have been trying to get some really good photos with the long, slippery fish. It's no easy task getting a photo of an eel where it's not just swimming around the touch tank. Countless explorers have tried, but every time they are holding the eel and ready for their close up, it wriggles out of their grasp and back into the water.

Yesterday at Community Boating, we had a group of campers from the Environmental Program who were fishing with us. We only caught one eel so we decided to bring it to the dock where we were fishing. While taking a break from fishing for sunfish, the explorers were having a friendly competition to see who could hold the eel for the longest time. Because the eel was so slimy, none of them could grasp it for very long, but it seemed like a good opportunity to try to get them to pose with the eel.

After a couple of tries, we have worked out that the best way to keep a good hold on the eel is to hold it gently behind the head with one hand and support the rest of its body with the other hand. Be sure not to squeeze it! We managed to get several great photos of campers holding the eel this way.

Hopefully we will catch a nice big eel soon so we can test out our method on a larger specimen.

See you on the river,
Sej

Kids Concert!

On Saturday, Tom, Maxwell, and I went to the Friends of Lynn and Nahant Beach Children's Concert at Red Rock Park. It was a really fun way to spend part of my Saturday.

We had three monster-sized lobsters that we trapped in the harbor, so to get more animals for the younger kids to hold and learn about we went tide-pooling! Right at Red Rock Park we got about 20 hermit crabs, a handful or periwinkles, 2 green crabs, and seaweed aplenty.

We talked to tons of kids and their parents about the creatures we had, about the beach and the harbor, and how much fun they were having at this awesome event. There was face-painting, balloon animals, a really funny kids band called Toe Jam Puppet Band, and to top it off, it was a beautiful day.

 

The event was very well organized and everyone, including the Save the Harbor staff had a great time!


Keep on jammin,
Sej

Sunfish & Sunshine

Finally, at one of our sites, we have consistently and successfully caught fish. The sweet spot, as it turns out, is a public dock near Community Boating. Just tossing in a line with a kernel of corn in the water will usually hook you a fish in a matter of minutes! Patience is still important as it always is with fishing. Some of our explorers have yet to learn this. But when they do, they will definitely be able to hook some fish.

Happy camper with her sunfish!

The sunfish like to hang out right under the dock so we've been using our underwater camera to see them. We can often see about 4 or 5 at a time just waiting to steal our bait. It's so cool that we can show kids that with the right bait and attitude they can catch a fish. The sunfish are only about 6 inches long- not quite worth bringing home for dinner.

Viewing the fish hiding under the dock

Unfortunately, the little sunfishy mouths and our tiny, barbed hooks are sometimes not the best together, and we have to finagle the hooks out of the fish. When we get a fish that's hooked badly, we all assemble as a (very unqualified) surgical team. Luckily, we have a very high success rate!

Our first rate surgical team removing a hook

Now that we've found the best way to catch so many fish that we don't even know what to do with them all, I can't wait to see what else we can try and catch. Hopefully we will catch a carp or a catfish soon!


Keep on fishing,
Sej

The Eww Factor: Part 1 (Community Boating)

What makes something disgusting? The way it looks or feels? Or tastes or smells? At my two sites we apparently handle a lot of disgusting things. But something that’s disgusting can also be really cool, and we don’t mind getting our hands dirty. Here are some of the most interesting and gross things we have come across at Community Boating Incorporated:

Glove covered in eel slime

Eel Slime:

If you’ve ever touched an eel, you will know that they are very slippery. Part of the reason they are so slippery is because they are slimy. If you’ve ever touched an eel that’s been out of water for a little while, you probably got some eel slime on you.

The slime on an eel is not just there to gross you out. It is helpful to the animal in several ways: it can move faster through water because it is slick, pathogens and parasites are suffocated in the slime so the eel is less likely to get sick, and it can transition between freshwater and saltwater without too many issues.

Eel slime is clear and very sticky. It is hard to get off your skin. Once it dries, it becomes a thin white film that you can easily peel off, just like glue!

Skeletonsssss

We often use fish as bait to entice creatures to get stuck in our traps. Some creatures are very clever and will eat our bait and then escape our trap! Last week we baited an eel trap with a whole herring and came back after the weekend to find nothing in the trap except an almost perfect herring skeleton. You could see all the ribs, the spine, the skull- even the lenses of the eyes were still in there! 

Herring Skeleton

Most kids thought the skeleton was creepy but it was cool to see that something had eaten our bait so meticulously. The explorers learned about fish bones and anatomy from our well-preserved but eerie skeleton. 

Fish poop pellets

Poop!

At Community Boating, we catch a lot of sunfish. When we catch the fish, we like to put them in our touch tank and then release them when we are done fishing so we know how many we caught. The fish don’t seem to be big fans of the tank, however, because all they do in there is poop!

Every now and then we will see little pellets at the bottom of the tank. We try to clean it out with a net, but it usually just breaks up and floats around… and then the fish eat it. If the water gets too murky and the fish look like they are not doing well, we will send them back to the river, and rinse out the tank for our next aquatic visitors.


Those are some of the nasty things we deal with at Community Boating. Stay tuned for some disgusting but fascinating things from Courageous Sailing Center.


Keep getting your hands dirty,
Sej

The Excitement of Eels

Community Boating Inc. is our only freshwater site. As you might imagine, we catch some different things than at our sites on the ocean or an estuary. We don’t catch lobsters or the same kinds of fish, but we do catch eels!

The American eels in the Charles River are a source of great fun and endless fascination for the explorers we work with at Community Boating. Just knowing and seeing these strange creatures in the river where they sail is astounding to some of the campers. Some think their slimy, slithering bodies are gross, but they can’t help but be mesmerized by the site of them in our touch tank. After a little encouragement, or a dare from a friend, a cautious hand will reach in to feel the slippery eels, and usually jerk out with a cry of “Eww!”

The biggest eel we've caught slipping out of Luke's hands

One explorer was particularly disgusted on Tuesday when we had eight relatively small eels in out touch tank. He kept walking by and shaking his head while saying they were really gross. Naturally, we wanted to encourage him to get to know an eel or two before judging them so harshly. Eels are amazing creatures that make a long journey to breed in the ocean and then spend the rest of their lives in freshwater. 

Eight eels and four fish

Eventually we convinced our young friend to try to touch one and he was hooked. He had so many questions about eels and other animals in the river. When it was time for us to release the eels back into the river, this camper was more excited than anyone. He grabbed a net, because the eels are too slippery to release with your hands, and chose a nice big one to set free into the river.

He let go of the net!

He carefully walked it over the edge of the dock… and then flung the net to launch the eel into the water! In all the fun, he had let go of the net and the eel and the net both ended up in a sailboat. A helpful instructor from Community Boating fished out the eel with the net and the boy returned the eel to the river more gently. 

Fishing the eel out of the sailboat

Of all the creatures we catch at Community Boating, the eels are everyone’s favorite. It’s really cool to be able to show these young sailors the animals that they share the river with.

See you on the river,
Sej

Monday with MissionSAFE

This Monday at Courageous Sailing Center was one of the best times that we’ve had there this summer. About 20 new friends from MissionSAFE in Charlestown joined our team from Save the Harbor and the campers in extended day with Courageous. 

The group from MissionSAFE ready to hit the dock

It was thrilling to share the creatures in our lobster traps with so many curious and enthusiastic young people. We saw green crabs, rock crabs, Asian shore crabs, and sea stars in our traps. Before the group from MissionSAFE arrived at Courageous we tried to catch some big fish to show them more of the cool things you can find in the harbor. 

Sam, our resident artist and fishing expert, was with us and spotted two tautogs swimming close to the surface between the dock and the pier. We also spotted a really big striped bass lurking under the dock. Our team tried tirelessly to catch one of these huge fish, but we had seen them there before and they seemed too clever to take our bait. The tautogs were swimming in a male and female pair and probably had other things on their minds besides food.

Trying hard to catch the big tautogs or a striper

Even though we didn’t catch the big ones, we had a blast teaching the group from MissionSAFE about the crabs we caught and sea stars and jellies. For some of them, it was their first time trying to hold a crab with flailing claws and legs, touching the slime of a squelchy jellyfish, and feeling the tube feet of a sea star sucking on their fingers. 

Comparing the difference between male and female green crabs

It’s a privilege to be able to bring these experiences to people and help them appreciate the harbor. Courageous Sailing Center is such a fun place to be, and it is an invaluable resource for the community. We had a great Monday at Courageous with our little sailors and new explorers from MissionSAFE.

See you on the dock,
Sej

Dissection Connection

Hello again, Sej here. I’ve had a really good time with the youth programs this week. I’ve been working at Community Boating and Courageous Sailing Center. One of my favorite things to do with our campers (and even their instructors) is dissecting one of our bait animals.

This week we have used herring and quahog clams as bait. While preparing the bait, many of the explorers are quite intrigued by what we are doing and what is inside the animals. Nothing’s more fun than teaching someone who’s curious, so of course we show them all the different parts and ask the kids to identify what is what. 

Telling campers about the herring at Courageous

At Courageous, while cutting up herring to fish with, a few of our inquisitive young fisher-people wanted to see the fish brain and other organs so we performed an impromptu dissection at the end of the pier. We looked at the fish eye lens, the gills, lungs, stomach and stomach contents, liver, bones and spinal cord. Unfortunately, the fish had been frozen and it was hard to make out some things clearly, but it’s still really cool to be able to show them things like this in a hands-on way while not in a classroom.

Dissecting herring at the end of the pier

At Community Boating, we were using quahog clams to fish with, so we showed the young sailors what exactly is inside that hard shell. The campers were hesitant to touch the clam parts but they all wanted to get a good look. I love being able to bring this kind of education about creatures right in the Boston area to kids who live here and might not have experienced it. 

Lesson in clam anatomy

I can’t wait to see what else we can show people!

Chopping up the quahog at Community Boating

Don’t forget to have fun chopping bait!
-Sej

Hold on to your limbs!

Hey everyone, Sej here. This week I’ve been working at Community Boating Inc and Courageous Sailing Center with my awesome team of Luke, Preston, Nhu and Filmawit. We’ve been exploring the harbor and the river with really enthusiastic young people!

Some explorers looking at sea stars and fish 

On Tuesday at Courageous we found plenty of interesting critters in our lobster traps out there. One of which was a sea star that was about 10 inches from the point of one arm to the point of another. One of its five arms had sustained some kind of injury; It looked like something had taken a bite near the end and the area was greyish green. We put the sea star in our touch tank with two rock gunnels and two sculpin.

After showing the fish and sea star to our harbor explorers, we let the animals rest while we were fishing off the pier. A short time later when we were getting ready to release the animals, we saw that the sea star had detached its arm! The arm with the injury was separated from the rest of the sea star and slowly walking away on its little tube feet. It was fascinating to see and teach the kids about.

On Thursday, we found another sea star in one of our traps. This one looked like it had been a detached arm and was beginning to regenerate other limbs to become a whole new sea star.

Sea star regenerating some limbs 

I can’t wait to see what other kinds of biological phenomenon we will see this summer!

Sej

What was Boston Harbor like 100,000 Years Ago?

Have you ever looked out on the Boston Harbor and wondered what it was like before now? What was there before the docks, the piers, the islands and the channels that make up what we now call the Boston Harbor?

Since the Earth first formed almost 4.6 billion years ago, it has been constantly changing. Where you see mountains may have been desert at some point. Where there is an ocean, there could have been a jungle. In the case of the harbor, where you see the harbor islands and beaches, there was once a massive glacier.

If we went back 100,000 (yes, that’s one hundred thousand) years, we would all be under more than a quarter mile of ice! This enormous glacier was called the Wisconsin Ice Sheet and formed during the last ice age.

Under all that ice, there was still a lot of sand and rocks. With this huge slab of ice moving over it, the sand and rocks were pushed around, eroded and deposited to become drumlins. Drumlins are stretched out hills that are shaped like the back of a spoon, rounded and high at one end and pointy and small at the other.

This view of Peddocks Island shows the characteristic shape of a drumlin.

About 16,000 years ago, the ice began to melt so the glacier began to retreat. And as we all know, ice becomes water, and this water became the sea. So the sea level was rising, but at the same time, the huge weight of ice had been removed from the land. The weight was so great that without it, the land itself started to bounce back. This is called isostasy, and is the same as when you try and push a buoy underwater and it bounces right back.

When the land rebounded, the sea level was low again so what we now see as the harbor and harbor islands would have looked like big grassy plains with the drumlins popping out as great big green hills.

This map shows part of the harbor and harbor islands with drumlins outlined in black.

One of those hills is Spectacle Island, which is named because it is made of two drumlins that were connected by a spit and it used to look like a pair of spectacles. The island doesn’t look like that anymore because it has been changed so much over recent history. Spectacle was once home to a horse rendering plant (where different parts of dead horses can be made into useful products), then a trash incinerator, then it became a big smelly dump. It has been used by the people of Boston in many different ways, but it has been restored to a pristine recreational area.

Spectacle Island before restoration

What do you think you would find if you took a shovel and started digging straight down on Spectacle? Would you find heaps of trash buried under the grass?

When the Big Dig began in 1992, tons of dirt and clay was dug up and had to be removed. This material was used to resurface the island. The amount of sand, clay and rocks put on Spectacle would fill more than 1200 Olympic sized swimming pools! On top of this is 2 feet of clay and then 2-5 feet of topsoil. Where there was once a major trash mound, there is now one of the Harbor’s greatest treasures.

Boston Harbor will continue to change over time, but through the efforts of Save the Harbor / Save the Bay, it will only change for the better.

Rock on!

-Sej