From Snails to Whales: Catherine Zhang (Barnacle group)-- Assginment 3: naming the species

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Catherine Zhang (Barnacle group)-- Assginment 3: naming the species

After describing the species our group observed, we used a lot of resources which include online sources, two required guide books and other things, we finally got the names of these species. When I tried to put all species with the order from plant-like to animals, the blog messed up my paragraphs and pictures. Here are the described species and their names.

I saw another animal on the top of the black shells. A lot of them almost cover the whole shell. The average size of them is half inch (there are bigger ones and smaller ones). It is white or light grey and it has a shape of a volcano, and from the top I can see two pieces of shells inside the “volcano”. After I opened the shells, it is squishy and yellowish.I think it is Thatched Barnacle

One plant is dark green, it has thick leaves and stems. On the tip of the leaves is plumped up with lighter color (kind of pods). This tips which are plumped up are also covered with tomentum. It can be one foot long or even more. I think it is Fucaceae.

One plant is dark brown or dark grey coral-like thing. It covers the side of the dock. There are tiny white flower/star (about quarter inch big) shape thing all over the plant. It is soft and about 2 inches long.I think that is
Golden Star Tunicate.

One plant is dark or light green; it looks like a piece of board and flat lettuce, but it is thinner than lettuce that it is a little bit translucent. The one we found is as big as two of my hands. When I touched it, it is slippy and a little bit sticky.I think that is Ulva Lactuca.

http://protistaproject.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/2/7/12279313/516921448_orig.jpg

One plant is light green and smooth. It has thin stems and almost no leaves. But it seems have tiny aerial roots which are 5mm long on the stems. It also has protuberances on the stems or on the tip of the plant.I think it is Knotted Wrack.

One plant is covering or attached flatly to the dock like some kind of red painting. It is like a piece of soft plastic since it is easy to break. It is very red like red velvet, and it has tiny holes all over it.I think that is Velvety Red Sponge.

Velvety Red Sponge - Ophlitaspongia pennata

One plant is like a tiny white Christmas tree with no leaves on it (or it is like rime covering the plant) and waving in the water. It is fluffy in the water. The one I saw in the water is more than 15 inches. I think it is wine glass hydroid.

This plant has a huge root which is light orange color, its hundreds of branches or tentacles are black with white tips, and they are waving in the water. As we use hand to touch the tentacles’ edge (the white tip), the plants suddenly shrink immediately, and then they open slowly after a while. I think it is Frilled Anemone

First animal I saw has two pieces of black shells. The animals attach to the side of the bock under the water. Most of them are open in the water as the inside color is pearl white with light orange body parts. As soon as they are out of the water, the shell shut tightly. It is long on the side and round on the two ends. The one I saw is around 0.8 inch. There are carved lines on the whole shell, they look like the growth rings on the trees that one line is after another tightly. I think that is Blue Mussel.

One tiny animal I saw is shrimp-like animals. It looks like a tiny white or translucent shrimp with same size of head, body and tail (shrimp’s head is bigger than the body as the body is bigger than the tail). It doesn’t have carapace as shrimps so its head looks shortened. It seems have four long antennaes. It moves its tiny legs and swims in the water. I think it is Hyallela Azteca.

One animal I saw is a stick-like animal. It is like the insect walking stick in the water. It is either white or translucent. It has two long antennaes and two big arms with six small legs at the end. It uses the six legs to attach to the Christmas tree-like thing and jumps around by curling its body in the water and using six legs and two arms. It is about half inch long. I think it is Smooth Skeleton Shrimp.

One animal I saw is a huge size of shrimp with hard carapace and two huge claws. It also has two long antennaes. It has different colors on it such as black body, red claws, orange tail and green legs. It is about 30 inches long. I think it is Northern Lobster.

One animal I saw is kind of crab with red or bright orange color. It has an oval-shape carapace covering its back with white spots on it. It has eight stick-like legs and two big claws. It is about 7 inches long. I think it is Jonah Crab.

Another animal I saw is also a kind of crab which looks like an ugly rough rock with eight long sticky legs. It is about 4 inches long and the legs are two times longer than the body. It is excrement yellow from my point of view (sorry about saying that color….). I think it is Common Spider Crab.

Another animal I saw is a star-like animal. It is dark red or dark orange color with white lines and dots sticking out from it. On the back it is yellow. At the front it is hard as the back is soft. It is about one inch long. I think it is Asteriid Sea Star.

One animal I saw is clear jelly-like thing. It is round like an umbrella with tentacles covering its edge. In the middle of it, there are four circles which look like a four-leave clover. It is floating in the water. It can be as small as half inch or as big as 16 inches. I think it is Moon Jellyfish.

One animal I saw is big white bird with grey wings, yellow beak and feet. It is paddling the water as it tries to catch the sea species near the ocean surface. It is about 10 inches long. I think it is Sea Gull.

Resources:

Required two guide books

http://protistaproject.weebly.com/ulva.html

http://www8.nos.noaa.gov/onms/Park/Parks/SpeciesCard.aspx?refID=4&CreatureID=1577&pID=11

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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

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Catherine Zhang (Barnacle group)-- Assginment 3: naming the species

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