From Snails to Whales: Day 2: The Under-Dock Experience at the Barking Crab

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Day 2: The Under-Dock Experience at the Barking Crab

Field Experience Observations

Location: The Barking Crab docks, right off the 4-Point Channel

Mini Habitat: The Lower Intertidal Zone

Time of Day: ~10AM - 11:30AM

Tide: going out, low tide at 11:30AM

Water Clarity (1-10): 8, Where water closer to 10 is more turbid

Temperature: 75+ C degrees toward the latter half of the morning

This is one of the most common specimen we discovered on our tour around the peers and tidal zones of Boston Harbor and the Barking Crab more specifically. Barnacles. North Atlantic Barnacles to be more specific. The difference is really just in the surrounding attachment, these barnacles have more of a flared attachment rather than a more distinct circle. You can see the lines on the side which help show that distinction.

Another specimen we found a lot of was algae. We discovered two types, red and green. Also, to be more specific, they were very leafy and coincidentally we identified them as Green Sea Lettuce and Red Sea Lettuce which I found to also be called Halymenia. The two algae have a very slimy texture and are swarmed with creatures in this location!

The picture to my right I believe to be baby sea anemones. I say this because they are very squishy to the touch and when you do touch them, they retrieve into a smaller ball (look at the anemone on the left for that example) which larger anemones also do. I also believed they were anemones because the one on the right shows a bunch of white squigglies in the center. None of which come out, but that may be because they have yet to fully develop? Who knows. Either way, I looked them up and found they match a description of "Striped Anemones" especially considering their orange stripes on the black body.

In the picture to my right are two sea anemones and some Bushy Bryozoan. The two sea anemones while similar are quite different in color. The top anemone is a more pale apricot, while the bottom anemone has more of an organish-tint to it... interesting yes? Well I thought so, so I tried to see if they were any different in the guide book and came up with the following conclusion. They are the same. Haha, the speces just comes in different shades. They are both Frilled Anemones.

These creatures were easily seen by the hundreds along the dock. They were literally crawling and squiggling over and on everything. While when there are that many of them they can be hard to distinguish between, but I believe we either found more than one type of arthropod, or there is a major distinction between the female and male sex of these creatures... it's one of the two assuming they aren't asexual.

Look closely to my right and notice that the long stick creature on the lower left portion of the picture is more of a dark red color and seems to be tougher than that on the upper right above it. This creature on the upper right seems a bit more transparent as seen by the end of it's leg/tail that we see. If they are different creatures, the bottom specimen may be the Long-horn Skeleton Shrimp. Unfortunately though, the guide is also makes it a little difficult to distinguish between these creatures so lets hope that until I adapt to using this tool my gut instinct is leading me in the right path.

This picture on my left also suggests further that these specimen are not the same. Notice how the creatures you see in this picture are more transparent and have more defined claws than the darker red creature depicted above. For these reasons, I think this specimen on the left could be the Smooth Skeleton Shrimp. It is fairly long although not 2'' like the guide suggest, however it was the closest picture match I could find. However, as we discussed in class the pictures aren't the most important information to go off of, so though it could be the Smooth Skeleton Shrimp, I think it is more probable to be the Linear Skeleton Shrimp, since it's location includes Boston Harbor.

If you look closely at the orange matter on the mussel displayed at my right you will notice it is a very bright orange and has little clustered holes. This organism is Orange Sheath Tunicate.

Here is a close up of the weird piece of metal/plastic that at one point served as a bumper for the dock. It has a different specimen of orange biomass. This I believe to be Club Tunicate, more commonly found on docks and tends to be a rougher, stalked organism.

Bait Fish Comparison

Fish #1

Chub Mackerel

Fish #2

???

2 comments:

Janelle B. said...: Hi everyone this is Janelle, I meant to fix this the other day but did not realize I woudn't be able to fix it laterm so hopefully Professor will read this comment and count it, but I wanted to correct the following:

Fort Point Channel---not "Four Point Channel"

You could see about 3-4 feet into the water as far as water clarity/turbidity goes.

-Janelle; July 28, 2011 at 7:25 AM
Janelle B. said...: Also, the second fish was a Herring.

-Janelle; July 28, 2011 at 7:26 AM

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

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Day 2: The Under-Dock Experience at the Barking Crab

2 comments:

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