Better Beaches Events 8/10-8/11

This past weekend, I was able to attend two Better Beaches Events, Open House at Carson Beach and Family Pride Day in the North End.

We talked about water quality at the Open House with the Department of Conservation and Recreation. We tested the pH balance of three water sources: the ocean water at the beach, bottled water, and the drinking fountain. We found that the ocean water was the most balanced at 7.0, the bottled water at 8.0, and the drinking fountain at 8.5. For animal and plant-life to survive, the pH balance level needs to be within a range of 6.5-8.0. If the water is too base or too acidic, then the water may be harmful to animal and plant life. It was really fun to test the water with the JPAs, and I learned a lot about the water in Boston.

Water Quality Testing with Save the Harbor Staff

At the North End Family Pride Day, we brought a touch tank with an authentic Larry the Lobster. We had to be creative to find a water source, because there was no dock on the water. But with one of our JPAs help, Jennifer, I was able to walk over the rocks down to the water and put enough in the cooler to keep Larry afloat. Our Save the Harbor table was set-up next to the travelling petting zoo, and it was great to see the young children playing with the farm animals. Thanks to the North End Against Drugs we were able to enjoy a bratwurst with peppers and onions during the festivities. We were even able to hear an all-male acapella group. It was a fun event to enjoy with our Save the Harbor Staff.


Save the Harbor Staff at the North End Family Pride Day

Until the next event,

Iris Ayala


Technology-Ridden Office

       Little do people know, the moment they step into the Save the Harbor office, they are stepping into a land of marine science in every nook and cranny. We have evolved from our 4 or 5 desktop computers from the summer of 2009 to 5 more Macbooks last year to 6 more Google Chrome books this summer.

Blogging in the office

       The office now has mobile hotspots that allow us to have internet access everywhere we go to blog about the amazing things that we do for the kids we have at the eight sites along the Harbor. I can't believe how accessible everything is now and it has been incredible to see how much more our influence can spread with our new technology. Blogs can be written, edited, and published in a blink of an eye. Emails can be sent within seconds.

The first spider crab in our crab traps!

       For a first hand experience, the moment I click the capture picture button on the camera, I can upload it to our photobucket folder and be used in our blog as soon as possible. So many things are possible now and   everyone can see how we progress through the week with our new field guides so we can identify each and every creature that passes our line of sight.

Pulling up the crab trap!

       Besides the laptops that reside in the office and the Chrome books that follow our Senior staff at all sights, there are also new crab traps and lobster traps that are much more efficient in grabbing up the interesting animals living in the harbor to put in our touch tanks to show the thousands of kids throughout the summer. If kids are interested in chemistry and how the quality of the ocean water changes often, they can use our water quality tests that can be recorded in our logbooks.

With the dipnets and the touch tank!

       Another great device that has come into the hands of our staff are our underwater cameras! They can just be lowered into the water and a whole other world can be seen in a 3" by 5" screen.

       I love our new technology and although we have come all this way and have all of these gadgets, I would love to see how much more equipped we can be in the future! We still have many parts of our program that can be more effective and nudged along until we reach the maximum preparedness to spread our message of loving the harbor and doing our part of the responsibility to keep it clean.

Stay updated,

Thi Tran

Harbor Exploring

I was the first of the Save the Harbor staff to arrive at Piers Park Sailing Center this morning. I got there just as the first campers were showing up. After Mark arrived I soon found out that we had to work the whole day without a Senior Marine Educator. At first I was a little bit worried but I knew Mark was up to the challenge so I manned up and got ready. We started off the day with a rousing game of sharks and minnows. Just as we were about to start another game I noticed that the kids were itching to get down to the dock. I grabbed the stuff while Mark led the kids down onto the dock. Although most people would say catching a striped bass from the dock at Piers Park, I beg to differ. Hooking a crab is nearly impossible, for unlike fish, the hook does not actually hook through the crab. The angler must reel in his/her line at an easy, constant rate so the crab does not fall off the hook. We lost multiple crabs today for that very reason.

After putting that disappointment behind us, Mark and I scooted on over to the Courageous Sailing Center at Charlestown. Mark and I set sail on the Green Boat with Kathleen the instructor, Norah, and Naomi, who are both Step 3 sailors. While we explored the Boston Harbor we ran some scientific tests on the water. To start things off we checked the temperature of the water. Our thermometer read 15 degrees Celcius, which, with the help of some speedy calculating on my part, we found out is approximately 49 degrees Fahrenheit. I can tell you earnestly that I had no plans to jump in the water after that. Next we checked the pH level of the harbor water in several different spots. Using simple pH strips, we found that the pH level was between 7 and 8, making it slightly basic. Usually, ocean water is about 8, which fit with our data. After these exhausting scientific experiments we decided to relax a bit and enjoy the breeze.

-Alex

Green Boat Discoveries: Arctic Terns in the Boston Harbor!!

After the lunch-hour madness (20+ kids power-walking—“we’re not running!” they assure me—up and down the dock, pulling up lobster traps, testing water quality, measuring and counting crabs, showing each other how to cast fishing lines, asking a million questions a minute!) at Courageous Sailing Center in Charlestown, we’re ready for a slightly calmer (though no less exciting) afternoon. And we’re all in for a treat, because afternoons at Courageous quickly became one of the best parts of my summer (and I a real highlight everyone on the boat). After lunch, the kids split up into teams, known as “steps”: step 2 for beginners, step 3 for more experienced sailors (these kids can sail without a counselor!); step 4 for competitive sailing and racing. Our partnership with the courageous has resulted in an in-depth environmental education component “step” integrated into the step 3 program: “step GREEN,” where we take a small group of campers aboard the “green boat”(no, it’s not literally green;)to explore the ecology of the harbor they spend their days sailing in.

This week, we searched for Arctic Terns – and watched them swooping down to capture herring from the water, then tracked them back to their nesting grounds. The kids were enchanted, eyes-glued to binoculars as we circled the nesting grounds. Once they became eye-witnesses, they were ravenous for information! Here’s a sampling of just a few of the questions we talked about:

How old do they get? Average of 20 years, but up to 30.

How far do they migrate? From the Arctic! Massachusetts is the southern-most end of their range.

Are they really endangered? What does that even mean? This question lead to a pretty sophisticated conservation discussion – we talked about how organisms are designated (as either endangered or threatened) under the Endangered Species Act, and the different kinds of protection that can provide. We compared federal and state-level protection (which is what the Arctic Terns have—they’re listed as a Massachusetts “species of concern”), and talked about local populations—what it means for Arctic terns to be “endangered” in Massachusetts but still plentiful in the arctic.

What will happen to the terns if the ice caps melt? While we’ve made tremendous strides to protect this species nesting grounds, habitat loss in their winter home is raising higher alarm bells—scientists are concerned that temperature changes associated with global warming may be the next big threat confronting this recovering species.

~Emily

You can find more information here.

This Week's Highlights

A great week overall—I felt like I’d really gotten into the swing of things for the Piers Park/

Courageous -Charlestown rotation, and it was great to be able to build on last week and enjoy the beautiful weather we had for most of the week with bright, enthusiastic campers!

A couple of highlights:

-Three lobsters at courageous!

-The Boston Fire Department’s FIREBOAT made a visit to Piers Park on Wednesday! Harbor Explorers joined the sailing campers to listen to the firefighters explain the workings of the boat, and talk about some of the fires they put out. The kids were excited to see the demo, and even more excited to get to try the salt-water fire hose!

-My first morning at the Children's Museum was a flying success -- as the morning progressed Connor and Timmy helped kids with rods and crab traps, quickly filling our touch tank with fish, crabs, mussels, & sea-squirts -- a huge hit with passing families!

-I got to practice my very rusty and VERY limited high school Spanish with some very patient campers at Piers Park; I remembered that fish is pez (pezcado, once it’s cooked) and learned that crab is cangerojo. These conversations got me thinking even more deliberately about how to communicate science most effectively, and reminded me to supplement my narratives with non-verbal teaching tools to better engage people from all back-grounds—native speakers included!

-We had several successful afternoons on the Green Boat @ Courageous – stay tuned for a post devoted to these adventures!

-A terrifically popular "Science Wednesday" collecting data on crabs and water quality!

I’m sad to leave these sites, but excited to experience the last two: Courageous-Dorchester and Southie!

Enjoy you’re weekend—and try to get out on the harbor!

Emily

A Crabby Couple of Days!

If you scroll down read my previous post ("Testing the Waters!"), you'll see that the youth staff here at Save the Harbor / Save the Bay is proudly taking part in a large effort of citizen scientists across the Harbor to holistically understand the water, and the species that inhabit it, better. In addition to testing salinity and clarity, we're also counting crabs! At many of our sites, especially the ones with shores to explore, we are taking random samples of the beach and counting what we find within a predetermined dimension. We're recording quantity, gender, and size (we measure the width of the carapace of the crab-- the main part of its body, which doesn't include its legs). Wednesday, our crab counts officially began!



I have to begin by telling you that South Boston is CRAWLING with green crabs and Asian Shore crabs. Put a trap down off the dock, and you'll have a green crab within a few minutes. Overturn any huge rock, down past the swimming beach, and you'll find several Asian Shore crabs frantically scuttling sideways for cover. Look at our friend Emily, elbow deep in a bucket of Asian Shore crabs! They're everywhere!

That being said, when we took our predetermined circle (a bike tire- how's that for citizen science?) and headed down to the intertidal zone in Pleasure Bay... can you guess how many crabs we found in our circle?

When we did the experiment on Wednesday afternoon, at first glance, the answer was zero. NO crabs, in SOUTH BOSTON? It's crab city over there! When we turned over a few of the bigger rocks in our sample area, we finally counted 5 tiny green crabs scurrying about. Each had carapaces under 1 cm in width and were so sneaky that they evaded their capture, so their genders are all still unknown. But what South Boston lacked in crabs during this experiment, it certainly made up for in periwinkles. In just our little sample circle, we found 32!

Today, Thursday, yielded similar results. The tide was slightly higher, which gave us even lower hopes for crabs along the shore-- it was much more likely we would find them in the lower intertidal zone, if we were going to find them at all. And, as expected, each time we threw down our circle, no crabs were found within. I am confident that low tide will expose many more crabs to our analytical fun, but the gray rocky shore at high tide seems less welcoming and far more exposed than what I would personally prefer if I were a crab. So I can't blame them for not coming out when we needed them, because that's science! And no experiment is a failure. Especially not when you're having fun.

Harbor Love,

Michelle

Testing the Waters!

Hello from Week 3! To a Senior Marine Educator such as myself, the third week means that I'm at completely new sites in our biweekly rotation around the Harbor. And I couldn't have asked for a better farewell to my sites last week, nor a better start to the new week!

I wrapped up a phenomenal week at Piers Park with a great group of truly enthusiastic and engaged Harbor Explorers. We caught our first fish, took a field trip to a local pier to see our harbor habitat from a different angle, and really bonded as a group of people excited about the water and what it has to offer. They'll be on my mind for the rest of the summer. Thank you everyone!

At both Piers Park and Courageous Charlestown, we were charged with two special projects during our second week. Dr. Judy Peterson, a great friend of Save the Harbor / Save the Bay, came to us asking us to join a large network of "citizen scientists" across the area in a large-scale effort to better understand the Harbor and how it is changing. Piers Park and Charlestown are specifically measuring the water for clarity - how clear or not clear the water is-- and salinity - the amount of salt in the water. The tests were great hands-on tools for the kids at both locations to consider the water in our Harbor a little differently, and to see how its composition isn't the exact same every single day, for various reasons.

We used a Secchi Disk-- a fairly simple tool, in fact-- to measure the water's clarity. The Secchi Disk consists of a black and white disk on the end of a nylon line, along which little beads are placed every meter. All our citizen scientists (like our very enthusiastic explorers at Piers Park) needed to do was hold on the line and slowly drop the disk deeper and deeper into the water until they cannot see the white part of the disk any longer. However deep the disk is when the white goes out of sight, according to the beads along the line, was our measurement. At both Piers Park and Courageous, our measurements were falling between 3 meters and 4 meters all week, with much higher measurements (more clarity) as the week went on, which also happened to correspond with the rain half way through the week.

To measure salinity, we were privileged to use a portable refractometer provided to us by Dr. Judy. If we place a little drop of water on the lens of the refractometer, it measures the deflection of light through the drop of water, which is affected by the amount salt (measured in parts per thousand, or PPT) in the water. When we did the test at Courageous last week we got readings of 26 PPT on Tuesday (7/13), 27 PPT on Wednesday (7/14), and 21 PPT on Thursday (7/15-- again, after the rain!). Both tests were a great activity for everyone to gather together and do at both sites, not to mention a great effort to be a part of across the Harbor!

Lots of Harbor Love,

Michelle

Fishing 101 on the Fort Point Channel

Yesterday I had a chance to watch new fishers try their hand on the Fort Point Channel! I worked with Save the Harbor this summer on water quality in the Fort Point Channel, and Fishing 101 at the Boston Children's Museum was our culminating event.

I collected water samples over the summer to evaluate the quality of the water in the Channel. The results show that the Channel is clean enough for fishing almost every day! We had a group of summer staffers out on the Channel to help teach families and visitors how to fish and to bring Bostonians back to the water.

Adela and Jasmine joined us from Worcester.

We had visitors from Tyngsboro, Worcester, Revere, Newton, Braintree, and much more. It was a successful day as people from all over Massachusetts came to enjoy the Channel and catch some fish!

Bruce Berman and some of our fishers admired their catch.

We hope to see even more people for Fishing 101 next summer!

-Jaime