From Snails to Whales: Day 4 - Island Adventures

Monday, July 22, 2013

Day 4 - Island Adventures

On day 4 of our exciting class we had the opportunity to board The Belle in order to go Bass fishing and to explore Lovells Island. Around 8:30 AM we boarded the ship that would lead us away from the city and into the vast waters of the Boston Harbor. After a few minutes of traveling away from the harbor, past Castle Island, we began our fishing adventure.- For this trip we used sea worms as bait.- They were a reddish brownish color, with multiple legs, and they bit. According to Bruce, it only feels like a pinch when they bite, but they looked very angry and slimy.Because I only carried a pen with me on this trip, here is a very amateur image of what they looked like. The one I held was probably around 7 inches long.

There were enough fishing rods for everyone who wanted to, to have a chance to catch a fish. The Captain and his helpers helped the students put on the worms and cast the lines out. It didn't take long for the first fish to be caught. The first fish caught was a small black bass, which was caught by Lorraine. The fish I caught was about 12 inches long and it was one of the larger ones of that type that we caught as a group.

Black Bass

Bruce made sure that everyone who wanted to catch a fish had the opportunity to catch one. In the picture above is me holding my Bass that I caught. It had small teeth that I could feel as I held it's mouth open for the picture, but nothing extremely sharp.It was so much fun!
The biggest fish we caught as a group was a Striped Bass.

We learned how to filet a fish and how to remove its insides in order to cook the fish in whichever way we would like.

Once we got to Lovell's Island the hot,white sand felt great between my toes.

Bruce let us do our own explorations in the tide pool the minute we placed our bags down. I was able to find 2 interesting species.

1. Crab- Asian shore crab- This crab was only about 4 inches in length from left to right. It was reddish/purple with some brown. These crabs were fairly easy to pick up and they moved extremely fast. we could find these under pretty much every rock we moved near the shoreline.

2.Hermit crab- Pagurus-I played around with a little hermit crab for a while. When I placed him in the water he would move around a lot, but when he was in dry land he mostly just hid and waited for me to put him down.He was hiding inside a gray shell that was probably about one inch in diameter.They tend to share these shells with periwinkles. Because we were in the water I didn't get a chance to draw this species.

After exploring in one tide pool we had a delicious lunch and moved to another tide pool. In this tide pool Bruce told us to find species that we hadn't found before.

I found an Atlantic razor shell or Common Razor Clam, which Bruce said gets it's name from it's shape. The shell was a light gray mixed with brown, with smooth lines going up and down the length of the shell in ringlets. This is the picture from the guidebook. My shell looked almost identical.

I also found the Common slipper shell- Crepidula fornicata.
These small shells attached themselves to rocks or to other shells and in order to be removed they have to be slid off with pressure. I actually ate three of these oyster tasting shells, and they were delicious!

Something familiar that I saw a a huge family of blue mussels in between the rocks that divided the two tide pools.These were the same mussels that everyone found at the dock the day before, which I think is a very interesting fact to point out. These mussels have spread all over the harbor islands.

After picking up a big rock I was also able to find Golden Star Tunicate- Botryllus Scholsseri on some rocks as well just like I did in the dock by the Barking Crab.

Finally, Bruce pointed out a specific shell to us that seemed to be of interest to him. This shell was white with dark stripes going around the shell. At first we thought it was just another shell that hermit crabs used, however, the shells seemed to have specific holes/spaces that were different from other shells we had found.also, these shells were on a metal plate like surface instead of in the water like the other shells we found.

I think these are called lipped banded snails, because we later found out that these shells actually belong to land snails and not to hermit crabs or water species.On our way back to the boat Romina found a snail that was actually using its shell. The stripes were beautiful and the shells came in different sizes and colors(mostly less than an inch in length).

Overall, this was my favorite day we have had so far because I got to learn so much about 1. Striped Bass 2. different species .

http://www.arkive.org/white-lipped-banded-snail/cepaea-hortensis/#text=Description

sources:http://www.neaq.org/education_and_activities/teacher_resources/classroom_resources/teacher_guides/documents/CompleteSeasideGuide1.pdf

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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

Monday, July 22, 2013

Day 4 - Island Adventures

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