The Grand Finale!

Today we learned all about the striped bass, a historically important species in Massachusetts. We lean red that they migrate from fresh water streams and rivers, where they spawn, into sea water. Unlike other fish, they stay close to the shore and feed in shallow water. We then learned that there had been a depletion in the number of Striped bass in New England.  It declined for many reasons, some of which are: catching too many female fish, the popularity and sales of omega-3-fatty acid pills, and Illegal Fishery.  Professor Berman named three reason why we are able to manage the striped bass. The first being that it is a polar fish that lives close to shore so people cared. Second, that congress men take things more seriously when they can see it, and legislators live close to where the striped bass do. And the third reason was because of science and regulation. There was a 5 year ban on catching striped bass and now in order to keep a striped bass caught by commercial or recreational fisherman, it has be a certain size, so that the smaller fish have a chance to grow and spawn at least 3 times. Professor Berman said that from last year to this near he has seen many more big strippers meaning that they are coming back! After learning all about the striped bass we got to cut one open and eat it! Here are some photos from today's cutting of the bass...

Fins

First incision 

Cutting down the spine, cutting not too deep

Cutting the fillet off the spine, deeper incisions

Internal organs

Holding of the fish to cut the head off

Small pieces of fish the bass ate left behind, taken out of the intestines 

Cutting some of the "fattier" part off of the fillets 

Thank you so much Professor Berman for a truly wonderful experience, every day we had class. I feel so lucky that I now am filled with knowledge of the Boston Harbor, a place I intend to visit often for more exploration! I wish other classes were as interactive, allowing us to discover what we learn with all of our senses!

-Liza Zipursky

Something tastes fishy......

For my Experiment I tried three different types of fish to see which one I liked best, based on taste and texture. My hypothesis would be that I would like the bass, since I enjoyed it in class. I also thought I would like the salmon because I have eaten salmon before and have enjoyed it. For the blue fish I was skeptical, since I’ve never tried it, but thought I might enjoy it too.

First, I went to Whole Foods, to the fresh fish station. I looked at the types of fish, and choose to buy an Alaskan Salmon Coho filet and a Blue Fish Filet. I showed the man behind the counter the size of my bass, and asked him to give me cuts closest to the size of my bass. I realize now I should have probably have him weigh my filet of bass and have each piece the same weight. He informed me that the blue fish was caught locally, as was our bass.

When I got home I put ¼ of a cup of Whole Foods Mediterranean Herb Marinade on each piece of filet and spread it on them as evenly as possible. After an hour of letting the marinade sit on the fish I put in the fridge, I placed each piece on a pan, covered the whole pan in foil and set the oven to 350 degrees and the timer for 30 minutes. I paled the pan on the middle rack in the center. After 15 minutes, I checked if all of the filets were cooked thoroughly, by cutting open, to the bottom of the pan, and looking at color of the fish. They all were cooked perfectly, by my taste.

Then came the tasting…I laid each out on a plate in the same position I had had them in to start and did three rounds of tasting. The first two from left to right, and the last, after a half hour going by, from right to left. After each bite I cleansed my palate with drinking water with lemon.

Round 1:

1.     Bass-not very fishy tasting and enjoyed the texture. No lingering flavor on the Pallet.

2.     Salmon-broke into smaller pieces upon the first couple of bites, compared to the Bass and has more flavor, lingering on the pallet after tasting. Not too fishy tasting either

3.     Blue Fish-Yuck! Thickest texture and tasted fishy with a slight bitterness lingering on the pallet.

Round 2:

            Liked the texture of the bass the most and the flavor of the salmon the most. Blue fish texture was not bad, but the taste was!

After a half hour….

Round 3.

Blue fish tasted worse and worse. Still liked the texture of the bass the most and the taste of the salmon the most.

I concluded that I liked the Bass and the Salmon equally; the bass for its texture, and the salmon for its taste. I think I didn’t like the Blue Fish because it was a fattier fish. It would have been useful for this experiment to know exactly what time each was caught and have more specifics as to where. Also, It would have been useful to have each the exact same weight as well having the cut from the same place on the fish in order to draw conclusion as to why I liked what I did. 

The three filets. From left to right: Bass, Salmon, Blue Fish

Marinade 

Filets on the pan

Covered pan with tinfoil and oven settings

Final Product!

-Liza Zipursky

Lovells: Finding on my favorite Island in the Boston Harbor

Yesterday, we started on our trip to Lovells Island. First we went to Georges Island until the DCR's Abigail too us to Lovells! Thank you so much!!! We examines the tide pools at Lovells as well as the tree life on the Island. We found similar species to what we have seen at Peddock's, Castle Island, and Under the Docks at the tide pools, such as Periwikles, Blue Mussels, and all sorts of tunicates. There were much less tunicates than we have seen on our other adventures. Although it was a rocky beach like Peddock, there were huge accessible tide pools. 

According to my guidebook, there a are two types of periwinkles that could be found in the region we were exploring, these include the Rough Periwinkle and the Common Periwinkle! Here are three periwinkles I found that looked much different than the common periwinkles that were scattered all over the tide pools. Although there form of the shells were similar to the common periwinkle, the color variation was quite different. Also, I held a few of the common periwinkles in my hand, and as i held my hand steady they came out of their shells, and bodies were blackish-blue in color with two antennas. The periwinkle shell closest to the bottom in the photo had a hermit crab living in it, but the two others did have snails. When i turned these over the color of the snail was white and orangey/red. Those two were much more timid about coming out of their shells. I tried holding my hand still, as well as trying to position them so they were touching the outside of another shell but although the moved slightly, they would not come out. After looking at my guide book, I think these are Atlantic Dogwinkles.

According to the Article "The Land Snails of New England", the land snails we saw were mostly likely Helix Supressa or Helix Concava. The reason we might have found the there terrestrial snails on a rock on the beach from from predators. The article "Differences in predatory pressure on terrestrial snails by birds and mammals" confirmed that snails that were broken on the beach, possible by bird species or rats. The birds use the rock to crack the snail's shell and eat the inside. 


 Akshat Jain's blog post from 2010 concluded that that I was most likely wrong on in my identification of the land snails. He said, "The land snails that we saw on the Lovell's Island had white colored lobes and black - brown colored lobes. Thus, they most closely resembled the white-lipped snails (Helix albolabris) as well as the brown-lipped snails or grove snails (Cepaea nemoralis). The shells colors and the rings do not seems to classify them in different groups. The colors are merely a way of adapting to the surroundings. However, the color of their lobes are important in determining the kind of snails they are and the group they belong to." I thought this was very informative, thats Akshat!

Rosin, Olborska and Surmacki. (2011). Differences in predatory pressure on terrestrial snails by birds and mammals. Journal of Biosciences. September 2011, 691–699.

http://www.springerlink.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/content/3242035067755805/fulltext.pdf

The Land Snails of New England (Continued)

Edward S. Morse

The American Naturalist , Vol. 1, No. 8 (Oct., 1867), pp. 411-414

Published by: The University of Chicago Press for The American Society of Naturalists

Hermit Crab coming out of it's shell

Club Tunicated cover in seaweed and small periwinkles. I found a few of these attached to rocks.

Shell of Sea Urchin

Bone, most likely from a bird.

Asian Shore Crab

A Boy I think?

Worm

Worm on it's back

Green Crab

Crab Holding a Shell. It has a pretty strong grip! Although it was the size of the asian shore crab its colors were much different.

-Liza Zipursky

Hmmmmm.... Contemplation about the value of having clean water means to me

I decided to focus on salt-water places for my blog post, and not drinking water. Other’s blog posts were very compelling, and I do recognize the need for access to clean drinking water as being a major problem, in many countries, and would like to have also focused a little more on that subject if I had a change to write this earlier in the evening.

If you asked me before this class began if clean water in our harbor was a core value of mine, I would have probably answered…. Hmmmm…. “To some extent”.  I would have probably said that a clean Boston harbor was not very important to me because I knew nothing of it, besides maybe one or two trips to the Long Wharf in the 5 years I have lived here. I also visited revere beach and some others about an hour up the coast but didn’t enjoy them, mostly because of the huge crowds and finding the water too cold for me to swim in, especially compared to other beaches I have been to. I have enjoyed beaches all around the world, in different countries and in various parts of the US, including, in mass, the beaches on the cape and on Nantucket.

After taking this class my views have changed. Although it is not an issue that I would define as being very “close to my heart”, like issues such as mental health treatment and education, especially for population of low socio-economic status, I would still say that it is very important to me. I have loved all the experiences we have had in and around out clean harbor, most of which I didn’t know existed.

Today the issue of clean water in the harbor reached a bit “closer to my heart” when I saw all of these kids, from various walks of live and programs, enjoying and using the beach, as well as gaining education from it. I love working with kids, and have worked with them, at a daycare for homeless children as well as a private day care. Seeing and talking with the kids around how much fun they were having was so awesome for me! What a great and assessable place for kids to play and learn! This made me very happy that we have a clean harbor.

It also seemed as though there were people of all ages, races, and from different walks of life doing a countless number of activities in and around the harbor, and I do value what is important to others, especially in their own communities.

Beyond what I saw today, a clean harbor and clean ocean impacting people enjoying the water and engaging in recreational activities. I think the impact of clean water is even more far reaching. Things that come to mind are that clean water impacts fishermen and their families, as well as possible real estate and development. Also, the clean harbor and other bodies of clean ocean bring in business and jobs, something we need in this economy. In terms of real estate, who would want to buy a house if they had the choice next to a body of dirty water?

For me personally, I value clean beaches because it helps the livelihood of others and have enjoyed them by the sound of the waves, whale watching, fishing, snorkeling, and scuba diving. I think I enjoy fishing the most, and remember when I was about 12 years old and caught a Dorado (mahi mahi), almost ¾ of my size, and was able to eat it that evening! That experience was awesome and would not have been possible if the oceans were polluted.

I definitely do value a clean harbor, but if you gave me the money it cost to clean it up, restore the islands, and keep it clean and functioning, I don’t know that I would not want to put that money towards public education, or mental healthcare for those who cannot pay “out of pocket”. With that said, I’m glad that the investments have been made for our harbor and a now probably my most favorite gem of this city.

-Liza Zipursky

Crabs! Crabs! Crabs!

The other day we took an adventure to Peddocks Island, close to Hull. The boat ride over was really beautiful, and when we arrived we got to chat with the ranger, who lives in the stables on the Island and we saw a few buildings, one that is currently in use as a visiting center, and the others were boarded up. We learned that there are other private residences on the Island. We took a little hike down to the beach and started our walk down the beach. We learned what a Wrack is: lines on the beach where the tide has hit and is usually full of things! I learned that the tide moves very quickly, about 1 foot each hour. I saw evidence, from the shells, of mussels, Oysters of two kinds, and Periwinkles. We observed that the beach we were on was a crescent beach with pebbles. As we moved along, cobblestones. We then ate lunch and had a lovely swim, although I thought it was a little bit cold for my liking. As we made our way back to the beach, we picked up crabs, periwinkles, and "little shrimp like things". We also learned that the presence of Periwinkles may account for out beaches being less sandy and more rocky. It was a great excursion, but after returning home I was exhausted and slept for, i'm ashamed to tell you the number, let's just say A LOT of hours. Here are a few highlights in pictures....

Old Chapel

Tide on Beach

Shell of Green Crab

Slipper Shell

Clam Shell

Horseshoe Crab

Dead Skate

Asian Shore Crab

Asian Shore Crab

-Liza Zipursky

Under the Boarwalk

Although I was late to class today, I did get to pull up some of the things living under the docks near “The Barking Crab”. The rest of the information I got was from my teammates telling me about their expierence and showing me pictures.

1. Sea Lettuce- This I found under the dock of “The Barking Crab”. I think it is a piece of Sea Lettuce, but am not convinced because the piece was about 4 inches long and string-like with many small groves on the sides. It looks exactly like something I have seen in seaweed salad and tried to look that up but didn’t come up with anything.

2. Golden Star Tunicate- I found this on one of the Mussel’s. It was squishy in texture and covered about half of the Mussel, containing “star-like” blue shapes all around that look to be about a ¼ of a centimeter.

3. Smooth Skeleton Shrimp- These seemed to be everywhere! They were small, maybe also a ¼ of a centimeter, they looked transparent with a skeleton inside. They moved all over my hand and also, while attached to the mound of stuff I pulled up stood straight up and constantly curled their bodies back and forth.
4. Sea Lettuce and Blue Mussel

5. Rock Weed

6. Orange Sheath Tunicate- I wasn’t able to see this personally but from a photograph my group took I am convinced, after looking in the Audubon Society
Field Guide, that that’s what this “Orange Blob” is.

7. Mackerel- Saw this fish when the very nice man showed up his bait.

It seems as though there were similarities and differences between what the group saw last year and what we saw today. In the post, “The Mighty Mighty Starfish” by Marriam, they also saw Blue Mussels, Orangs Sheath Turnicate, Sea Lettuce and Skeleton Shrimp. Another group saw something called “smooth burrowing” on the Mussels, which I didn’t see today. Also, in a post by Murat Arsia, their group saw the Sheath Turnicate, but the one I saw was blue, and the one they saw, in a picture on his post was orange. I’m not sure as to why we saw different things than the other group. I speculate that the weather, the temperature, or storms may have brought different things to the docks that we saw this year.

All pictures are courtesy of Chris and Brenda, my group partners.

-Liza Zipursky

I Never Knew That Bruce's Toilet Could Be So Interesting!

Yesterday, took a boat ride from Long Wharf in Boston to a dock in Quincy. It was about 85 degrees but if felt like 95, and was very humid! I observed that the sky was overcast. We started at the dock in Boston, at 1:20, and observed that it was low tide. I learned that how I could tell it was low tide was by observing the seaweed that was the closest to water. It looked like it was still wet, implying that it was recently under water. Also at the dock I observed rocks, oyster shells, and decaying wood. We went to the top deck of the boat when we boarded and left shortly after. The boat was going slowly in the beginning but sped up after about 10 minutes. During this time I noticed the “finger wharfs” jutting out, as I had seen on the map I looked at yesterday. These wharfs were full of boats and sometime people. The boat sped up after passing a green floating booey like tower. Shortly into the ride I was able to see east Boston, the mystic bridge, the north end, downtown Boston, and South Boston. This help me get my barring straight as the map of the harbor I lad looked at the previous day “came to life”. I also noticed as we passed the ICA. The boat ride became a little bumpy, and I learned that the bumps were from the wake of the other boats and not from the tide. I realized it was very clear and the water and air seemed to be free from pollution. As the boat continued on I saw Castle Island, named quite obviously because I saw a huge castle on it. Then we passed some of the bigger islands such as Blue Hills Island, Spectacle Islands, Long Island, Moon Island, and Deer Island and learned about why the Islands were named what they were. There were also small rocks jutting out of the water, in what used to be an Island, and learned that erosion and water would eventually put them under sea level. I noticed some of the Islands were very green, from trees and other plant life, and other Islands had beaches where people where basking in the sun. I the noticed all of my class mates participate in an exercise called “Bruce’s toilet”, by each person making a motion with their arms to represent the process a goldfish would go through as it travels from Bruce’s toilet all the way until clear water sprinkled out, and particles turned into seed pellets. As we approached Quincy some of the land I observed had beautiful big homes one them, one had a housing project, and others seemed to look very industrial. The Wharfs I observed in Quincy looked much more industrial, in contrast to the ones I observed a short distance away from Long Wharf. On the boat ride back from Quincy, I observed people taking use of what the harbor has to offer, some using the Islands, as well as motor boats and sail boats. I was so amazing to see all the people using the harbor, what used to be full of sewage, in a positive and enjoyable way!

-Liza Zipursky

Response from First Day of Class

            My name is Liza Zipursky, I’m 24 years old, and I am currently a student at BU’s Metropolitan College, majoring in Psychology. This summer, in addition to taking classes, I am a research assistant at the Center For Anxiety and Related Disorders at BU. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California but have been living in Boston for five years, and currently live in Jamaica Plain. I have had the great fortune on traveling around the world, and have also lived in Vermont, New York City, Paris, and Thailand. I love to socialize and also DJ on the side. I can’t wait to see what we will find in our exploration of the Boston Harbor!

            In our group observation today we looked at the direction in which the water rotated when draining in a sink in the women’s bathroom. We watched as the water drained and did not see in rotating in a particular direction until the very end where the water created a vortex and spun clockwise. All members in our group were in agreement that we observed the water draining in a clockwise direction.

            When I was about 11 years old I made a trip to Australia and remember my Dad telling me that the water spun counter clockwise because we were in a different hemisphere. So I assumed that the way water spins depended on the Hemisphere until I did some online research and found that what my dad had told me was actually a myth.

            First, I watched a youtube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBsYaudxjWg, that showed a man testing this theory. It showed water draining counter clockwise in Australia, a country in the Southern Hemisphere, but much to my surprise he tested the direction in which the water drained in Hong Kong, a city in the Northern Hemisphere and water drained counter clockwise there too!

            I then found this, “A popular misconception is that the Coriolis effect determines the direction in which bathtubs or toilets drain, and whether water always drains in one direction in the Northern Hemisphere, and in the other direction in the Southern Hemisphere. This myth is perpetuated by the Simpsons episode "Bart Vs. Australia." In reality, the Coriolis effect is a few orders of magnitude smaller than other random influences on drain direction, such as the geometry of the sink, toilet, or tub; whether it is flat or tilted; and the direction in which water was initially added to it. Note that toilets typically are designed to only flush in one rotation, by having the flush water enter at an angle. This is less of a puzzle once one remembers that the Earth rotates once per day but that a bathtub takes only minutes to drain. When the water is being drawn towards the drain, the radius with which it is spinning around it decreases, so its rate of rotation increases from the low background level to a noticeable spin in order to conserve its angular momentum (the same effect as ice skaters bringing their arms in to cause them to spin faster).” From the website http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question75645.html. Under this post there was a like to Wikipedia on the Coriolis Effect.

            I clicked in the link to Wikipedia and found the following under the section, “Draining in Bathtubs and Toilets”, In 1908, the Austrian physicist Otto Tumlirz described careful and effective experiments which demonstrated the effect of the rotation of the Earth on the outflow of water through a central aperture.[27] The subject was later popularized in a famous article in the journal Nature, which described an experiment in which all other forces to the system were removed by filling a 6-foot (1.8 m) tank with 300 US gallons (1,100 l) of water and allowing it to settle for 24 hours (to allow any movement due to filling the tank to die away), in a room where the temperature had stabilized. The drain plug was then very slowly removed, and tiny pieces of floating wood were used to observe rotation. During the first 12 to 15 minutes, no rotation was observed. Then, a vortex appeared and consistently began to rotate in a counter-clockwise direction (the experiment was performed in Boston, Massachusetts, in the Northern hemisphere). This was repeated and the results averaged to make sure the effect was real. The report noted that the vortex rotated, "about 30,000 times faster than the effective rotation of the earth in 42° North (the experiment's location)". This shows that the small initial rotation due to the earth is amplified by gravitational draining and conservation of angular momentum to become a rapid vortex and may be observed under carefully controlled laboratory conditions.

In contrast to the above, water rotation in home bathrooms under normal circumstances is not related to the Coriolis effect or to the rotation of the earth, and no consistent difference in rotation direction between toilets in the northern and southern hemispheres can be observed. The formation of a vortex over the plug hole may be explained by the conservation of angular momentum: The radius of rotation decreases as water approaches the plug hole so the rate of rotation increases, for the same reason that an ice skater's rate of spin increases as they pulls their arms in. Any rotation around the plug hole that is initially present accelerates as water moves inward. Only if the water is so still that the effective rotation rate of the earth (once per day at the poles, once every 2 days at 30 degrees of latitude) is faster than that of the water relative to its container, and if externally applied torques (such as might be caused by flow over an uneven bottom surface) are small enough, the Coriolis effect may determine the direction of the vortex. Without such careful preparation, the Coriolis effect may be much smaller than various other influences on drain direction,[30] such as any residual rotation of the water[31] and the geometry of the container.[32] Despite this, the idea that toilets and bathtubs drain differently in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres has been popularized by several television programs, including The Simpsons episode "Bart vs. Australia" and The X-Files episode "Die Hand Die Verletzt".[33] Several science broadcasts and publications, including at least one college-level physics textbook, have also stated this.” This quote comes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect#Draining_in_bathtubs_and_toilets. 

-Liza Zipursky