From Snails to Whales: Catherine Zhang -- Whale Watch day!

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Catherine Zhang -- Whale Watch day!

I don’t really remember my last whale watch in Cape Cod, but this time of whale watch outside the Boston Harbor, it gave me a fantastic feeling and I learned a lot of things.

The date was Friday, August 1^st, the time was about 11. The weather was nice, sunny and windy with fresh sea breeze. The tide at that time was low. As we were in the ocean outside the harbor, we witnessed the power and beauty of the ocean.

At first, we went next to the dock where we fed the striped basses with onion bread. When we were there for the first time and threw bread into the water, there were more than 5 striped basses in the water chasing the bread. But this time, there was only one striped bass in the water. Then the whole class started to have a debate about why the striped basses were gone after two weeks? We came up several reasons. First, it can be the weather which affects the water temperature. Last time the weather was a little bit chilly, and last Friday it was so hot. The surface of water was kind of hot so that all the fish prefer to stay on the bottom of the harbor. Also the heat in the water may decrease the dissolved oxygen rate and fishes don’t want to stay on the top. The reason can also be the food change that last time; professor fed the fish with onion bread. Maybe it is the greasy and tasty flavor attack the fish to come up for food. This time, the food is just hot dog bread. Also the water flow direction may affect which way they go. But I think they are big enough to not be affect by the water flow.

As we walked around, sometimes under the dock or on the post under the water, there was small amount of bright-colored red tunicate stock on there. I learned some interesting things that tunicates are animals that they usually flow with the water wave. When they are smashed on any surface, they will then stick on the surface and start to reproduce to spread the whole place.

Then we finally got on the whale watch ship to see whales. At first, the ship was playing the soundtrack of whales, which sound like people yelling, crying, screaming with super low voice, and I consider that is very cute. Think it took us almost an hour to get the whale watch location, Stellwagen Bank. There is a girl on the ship telling us the information about whales. She said what we would see that day is humpback whales. Whales eat krill or other smaller fish who gather up all the time to live. They usually use the “Bubble Net Feeding” strategy to catch fish or krill. By using bubble to scare fish or krill to get close to each other so that the whales can swallow a lot once at a time. They don’t have teeth, so every time they swallow a tons of food, they filter the sea water within the food and push it out of their body and push the food down to the body. Humpback whales use to feed on their prey during summer and immigrate to the tropical or subtropical ocean to reproduce. I think we just saw same two humpback whale several times, which are North Star and Hippocampus because they have similar shapes of things on their tails. I realized that the humpback whales came out of the water for 10 second as its blowhole blows out water and then they slowly dived into the water with their beautiful tails. Then they are gone as they dive all the way deep to the ocean and come back up again after 3 to 5 minutes. My favorite things are its tail and the footprints the humpback whale left as it dived into the water. I watched the humpback whale slowly getting into the water and swinging up its black tail with white on the back, and then there was a special water area appeared. First I thought it was the oil from the whale flowing on the water. I kind of understand it is caused by the tail which pushes water up. After searching it online, I quote the introduction of footprint that “When a whale dives it makes mighty up and down thrusts with its tail. This causes the water pushed by the tail to well up to the surface forming slick spots known as whale footprints. Sometimes a series of footprints marks the path the whale is taking underwater.”(New England Seabirds: humpback whale). And I also love to see when they blow huge amount of water in the air from their blowhole.

Another thing is that I finally have a supported conclusion about where the pieces of broken blue mussels come from. I remember that time when I went to Fanpier and found a lot of fractured blue mussels and I was surprised to know that sea gulls dropped them there so that they can break the shell and eat the mussels. But I always wanted to see how they do that. So when professor was talking to the whole class about our plan, I noticed there was one sea gull flied out of water and climbed up really fast, and there was something black on its beak, and when it was high above the dock, it dropped the thing, and I gasped (Sorry professor, I didn’t fully pay attention when you were talking…I am probably an awful student, or a mother or a grandmother in the future as you said…). Then I realized that was probably a blue mussel. It dropped on the dock and cracked open, so the seagull can easily take out and eat the mussel meat.

Anyway, it was an amazing whale watch trip day. I have incredible feeling about these huge, intelligent creatures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWD5fIAmjLA

No comments:

From Snails to Whales

Welcome to Snails to Whales, Bruce Berman's blog focused on both the little and the big things that make Boston Harbor such an interesting and extraordinary place to live, work and play.

With 50 miles of protected water, four sheltered bays, seven river systems, 34 islands and a nine-foot average tide, Boston Harbor is one of the most diverse urban ecosystems in America.

This blog focuses on the flora and fauna of Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay - on the beach, the shore, and the harbor islands, and in the cleaner waters of Boston Harbor and Mass Bay - including this ecosystems most important species - people.

During the summer, it is also a place for my Boston University Students and my colleagues at Save the Harbor / Save the Bay to share their work and experiences.

Where I am coming from...

Love that clean(er) water
Learning about the Boston Harbor Cleanup from the waterway’s eyes, ears, and mouthpiece

By Brian Fitzgerald, BU Bridge

On Georges Island, Bruce Berman talks with his students about the history of the Boston Harbor Cleanup,
which is largely complete. Photo by Vernon Doucette

Bruce Berman, aboard a ferry from Boston’s Long Wharf to Georges Island, poses a question to his students: “How clean is clean enough?”

He’s talking about the water below.

It’s a brilliant July day, with the smell of salt spray in the air. The sky is clear, and so is the ocean. But there was a time when Boston Harbor wasn’t so clean, when the stench of sewage assaulted the nostrils of anyone who went near it.

Berman is the communications director for Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, a public-interest environmental advocacy organization whose mission is to help restore and protect the harbor and Massachusetts Bay. He also teaches a Metropolitan College summer course called Politics, Public Relations, and Public Policy: The Boston Harbor Cleanup.

“The Boston Harbor Cleanup is an amazing success story, and I just love to share it with students,” says Berman, noting that the harbor’s “bad old days” weren’t that long ago. Those were the days when untreated human waste, syringes, condoms, and tampon applicators routinely washed ashore. The antiquated sewage treatment plants on Deer Island and Nut Island were so poorly designed and maintained that they flooded during even mild rainstorms, sending millions of gallons of untreated waste directly into the harbor.

Since then, bacteria counts in the water have decreased by more than two-thirds. Now the harbor teems with plants and animals, and people can legally dig for clams on Carson Beach in South Boston, which was unheard of in the 1980s.

“It was one of the filthiest harbors in America, and now it’s one of the cleanest,” says Berman. “What I’m trying to impress upon students is how this incredible comeback occurred, and how business, advocacy groups, environmentalists, and government can affect the outcome of large projects such as the Boston Harbor Cleanup through negotiation.”

Paradise regained

Berman points to the left as the boat cruises by the cleanup’s centerpiece: the gargantuan white egglike tanks of the Deer Island waste treatment plant, which in 1995 replaced the antiquated facility. The plant treats an average of 350 million gallons of sewage a day.

“And what comes out of the Deer Island treatment plant?” he asks. Berman, his booming baritone competing with the roar of planes taking off from Logan Airport, has a habit of putting students on the spot to see if they’re paying attention.

“The outfall pipe,” say several simultaneously. “Treated water,” chime in a few more.

“That’s right,” he says with a smile. “The plant separates the solid and liquid waste, and it pumps the treated water through the 9.5-mile outfall pipe, which empties into Massachusetts Bay. The resulting sludge is converted to high-grade fertilizer.”

Now Berman returns to his original question: “How clean is clean enough?” There’s no quick and clear answer to this one. “It’s a question that at the end of the day the federal courts had to decide.”

In 1985, a landmark federal court case required that the harbor’s beaches be made swimmable and fishable by 2000. Save the Harbor/Save the Bay was formed the next year to raise public awareness of the $4.5 billion Boston Harbor Cleanup. Sewer ratepayers in the 43 cities and towns financing the project cried foul over the prospect of astronomically rising bills, but because of the determination of environmental advocacy groups such as Berman’s, the cleanup was largely completed on schedule.

Berman says it isn’t finished, however. There are still frequent beach closures because the counts of Enterococcus bacteria exceed the federal and state standard for swimming. The culprit: filthy storm water and sewage, much of it from leaky pipes and illegal hookups emptying into storm sewers, and then into the harbor.

“So is the harbor clean enough,” the Springfield native asks his students, “when you can’t swim in it one out of five days in the summer?”

Work to be done

Berman and his class look out from Georges Island to Gallops Island (left) and the white tanks of the waste treatment plant on Deer Island (right). Photo by Vernon Doucette

This summer the state approved one of the last parts of the cleanup: the construction, by 2011, of a 2.1-mile tunnel near the Dorchester and South Boston shorelines that will hold sewage and storm water during bad weather. It then will be pumped to Deer Island for treatment.

Berman is ecstatic over this development, the result of “tireless negotiation and consensus-building,” he says. “After 2011, we’re looking at beach closings once every five years, when there is a major storm, instead of once every five days.”

But he is not about to let his guard down. To say that he is a man obsessed with the harbor cleanup would be an understatement. Berman is also Save the Harbor/Save the Bay’s “Baywatcher,” and he lives on his 40-foot trawler Verandah. Polluters beware: if you’re discharging oil or sewage into Boston Harbor, the Baywatcher just might be watching.

He is quick to point out that his zealotry is not just on behalf of the harbor’s flora and fauna. “The harbor is for everyone,” he says. “If you’re from a working class or poor family in Boston, and you can’t afford a Cape Cod getaway in the summer, a clean harbor is important. The same is true if you’re a tourist vacationing in Boston or you happen to live in a pricey waterfront condo.”

Accordingly, Berman, who was a political consultant and contributing editor to the Phoenix newspaper before joining Save the Harbor/Save the Bay nearly 10 years ago, also teaches his students about the harbor’s role in the city’s economy. He points out that in the early 1990s, just a few ferries cruised the harbor’s waters. Today, more than 100,000 people visit its islands each summer, discovering their ecological and historic treasures.

“The best way to protect the harbor cleanup,” Berman tells his students, “is to make sure that the public has access to the resources and can see a return on its investment.”

Trevor Kosmolsick (MET’05) has lived in Boston for seven years, but until taking Berman’s course, he had never been to the waterfront. “I’ve also wanted to go camping in the area, but I never knew that you could camp on a few of the islands,” he says. “Bruce Berman is not only a great professor, but the ultimate tour guide.”

He also backs up his words with actions. Sometimes he takes off his shirt and dives in the water to demonstrate to passing boaters that it’s safe to swim. To show people on ferries that fishing is safe, he’s been known to grab one of the bluefish or striped bass he’s caught and (very carefully) plant a wet kiss on it.

“What I want everyone to understand is that investment in the environment really does pay off,” says Berman. “We’re willing to pay for a clean Boston Harbor, so we should enjoy it.”

From Snails to Whales

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Catherine Zhang -- Whale Watch day!

No comments:

Nature Blog Network

My Favorite Nature Blogs