From Snails to Whales: Jessica C. Gutierrez

Showing posts with label Jessica C. Gutierrez. Show all posts

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Striped Bass Ceviche!!!!

In our last class our professor was talking about the different ideas and organization that are helping to save the striped bass. Our professor explained to us that the striped bass was endangered species. Our professor explained that some ideas and law were developing to minimize the number of striped bass that people will fish. This allow the striped bass to have more babies because the striped bass need to be at least 28 inches in order for the fish man to keep it, allowing them to have babies at least twice in their life time.

As out professor explained to us it hard to save the striped bass because from Miami to Maine every state has different law to save the striped bass. If there was one law in every State will be easier to save the striped bass because could travel to another state and may fish more striped bass. This made me feels very sad because I wish my descendent to meet and eat the striped bass.

I took the head and part of the body and made a delicious “mariscada” that my dad enjoys eat it. As my last project I needed to cook a fillet of striped bass at my home. I made “Ceviche”. I left the fillet of the striped bass in lemon for more than 24 hours. I add tomato, reddish, red onion, cilantro, salt, and Tabasco. This was delicious, I always eat shrimp ceviche but this striped bass ceviche was the best. Thank professor for making this class a very interesting class and also for motivates us to Save the Harbor and the importance of taking care of animal and the ocean.

Striped Bass Ceviche

Friday, July 27, 2012

Head Soup

Process to make the Stripped Bass soup!!

At the end the soup was very good!!!!!! Tomorrow I will post the Ceviche pictures. Thank Professor Bruce

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Lovell Island

Today it was our last trip to the Island. It was supposed to rain but the whether was perfect and I arrived home safe not wet. We took a boat to Georges Island where we were going to take the boat to Lovell Island. It was stress when we heard that the 10:15 boat to Lovell Island was cancel. Our professor went to talk to the DCR people at the Island and after making few phone calls, we end it up with our own DCR boat that was going to take us to Lovell Island and was going to wait for us at the Island making this day a perfect day for us.

A lot of people were camping at Lovell Island. It seem that people were enjoying their time at the Island. As we start walking in the Island there was sand and pebbles along the island. Our job was to observed the habitat at along the beach. The Lovell Island was similar to the beach at Peddocks Island because it has pebbles of different colors along the beach. The rocky beach had some medium sizes rock but was different than the rocky beach at Peddocks Island that had bigger rocks. The Lovell Island beach was different than the beach at the Peddocks because it had different tide pool along the beach that contain different habitat. The Lovell Island was different too because there was more people than the Peddocks Island. Along the tide pool I found some species similar to the Dock and the Peddocks Island beach. A tide pool had colonies of tunicate, and had the red sheath tunicate. Our professor eat a slipper snails It look yummy but with lemon. I was also able to see the Common Periwinkles similar to the ones at the Peddocks Island beach but with the difference that there were a lot of them everywhere in the rocks. We also found three different types of Periwinkles along the tide pool that our professor told us that we needs to identify them We also found some snail in the a rock and on the trees walking back to the boat. Lovell Island has most of the habitat that we observed in the other place and it is also a peace place. I don’t know if it was the whether but I felt very relax at the Lovell Island.

Smooth periwinkle (yellow); rough periwinkle

Brown-lipped snails

“In some areas ducks and geese will feed on snails too. Many parks have small ponds where these types of birds reside. They will likely have lots of trees to which provide the shade for the snails as well. Even though these ducks and geese often get lots of food from visitors they still have a natural instinct to find various types of prey including snails out there in the wild.” (http://www.snail-world.com/Snail-Predators.html)

Looking for information about land snails I found that brown lipped snails are from Europe. I also find the reason why we found it in the rock, may be a bird eaten and drop it in the rocks.

http://insects.oeb.harvard.edu/boston_islands/bugmonth/0903_brnlppd_snail.html

Thank to Abigail (DCR Boat) and the DCR people for making this day a perfect day to discover new species.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Clean Water

I believe that clean water should be the most important substance that a human needs in order to survives. I grow up in El Salvador a very small country in Central America. I remember that in the small town that I grow up the tap water we have had at our home come out of the tap every other day for only one hour making impossible to have enough water to wash clothes, drink, and shower in a family of seven. I remember that my dad brought a water filter from United States because even do the mayor says the water was safe to drink; it smell and taste like Clorox. My family was lucky enough to have a filter but most of the families boil the water that they used for drinking and cooking. Sometimes in the summer we did not had enough water to have it every other day and we sometimes had it every two days and my family travel to the city to buy bottle water.

I moved to the United States 10 years ago and get used to have access to water 24 hour a day. In 2009 I had the opportunity to travel with Engineers Without Borders to Honduras to help then with translation. We went to Honduras as an assessment trip to bring clean water to a village of very poor families that did not have access to clean water. In this village children were malnourished and the village had a river but was contaminated. During our week at Honduras the people from the village show us from were they got the water that they though were clean, it was unfair for this family no to have access to clean water. This village needs the most important substance in the world and that why children were malnourished and people/animals were dying. I remember that I will never forget the trip that help me realized how lucky I was and even when I was growing up in my country I was lucky to have access to clean water. The families in the villages wish the rain every day for them to save the water of the rain and boil and used to drink. I ask myself now shouldn’t the government care about the right of people to have access to clean water? Why should people from United States volunteer they time in order to help bring clean water to poor people? Shouldn’t the government be working on it?

After my trip to Honduras my mind change 100% in how I should be thankful of having access to clean water. I was unable to continue attending to the meeting with Engineers Without Borders due to my busy schedule as a full time student and full time job but if in the future I have the opportunity to travel and help poor people I will do it with my eyes close. Is great experiences that allow us to be thankful of thing that we sometimes think every person have access to it because they are basic for a human life. My values change and I try to encourage the immigrant families that I work with to use the tap water but even do the doctors tell them is safe for them to drink tap water they don’t believe it. They continue spending money buying bottle water for their children because they think is safe for them. I think this is because tap water in our countries is not save for drinking. In our trip to Honduras and even in El Salvador we cannot drink homemade juices in a restaurant because you don’t know what kind of water they used so people always drink Coca Cola.

The river that was contaminated at Honduras

The pool that contains the water they use for drink

We find out that even the river was contaminated and they knew about it they continue used for washing and taking shower. We can see these two women carrying washed clothes on their head coming from the river.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Peddocks Island

Today we went to visit Peddocks Island. We took our boat at Boston Harbor at the Aquarium and we arrived at Georges Island. At Georges Island we took a boat taxi to Peddocks Island. Our professor explained that Peddocks Island become a National Park and people that own land, they need to give it to the State when they passed away. The professor explained that is only one family that live in the Island full time and the other families have their houses as summer houses but when this people past away the States will own the land. I think that our group where the only people that was visiting the Island, professor explained that this can be because this Island has not be open for the public and also there is not food and they are in process of cleaning and building up for people to visit the Island.

We walk around the beach. The Beach in Peddocks Island was most rocky beach. As we get into the beach the tide was getting low but was still little higher and the beach had pebbles of different colors. We also found some clams, (death), blue muss, crab skeleton, and few sea glasses of different colors. The professor also explained about wrack at the beach. Because of the tides going down we were able to see the wrack that are part of the beach were the waves push hard. We also noticed that the waves pusher most of the small and lighter stuff faraway while the big and heavy stuff closer to the water.

As we walk along the beach we start to find more alive thing than death. This a live thing live closer to the big rock and in the rocky beach instead of were more pebbles were. We see small green and dark green crabs. We also see snails that according to our professor are not from Massachusetts. They were brought to Boston. I was able to hold a small grab on my hand that it was a female. Our professor explained to us how to differentiated from female and male grab. Our professor was trying to make a Perywrinkle coming out by singing a song but Did not work. After our lunch we went to observe the mod flat. I was able to observed very tiny grabs in the mod.

I enjoy the day it was very nice, the whether was hot and think I burn few calories. The sun was really strong that makes us very tired. I learn a lot about the animal and how different the habitat in the beach is compared to the dock that we observed on walk path at Boston Harbor. I really want to learn more about the other Island. I also was really sad because I noticed that people continue throwing trash on the ocean because we find trash in our walk.

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.”