Mr. Crabby

Ok. I just love this picture from my fall break at Wallops Island. And I could not not post it.

Say hello to the famous Maryland blue crab. He won't pinch. I promise.

Oysters in the Chesapeake

More about my Fall Break. The one day we rode out from Deal Island in Maryland on a boat with oyster watermen and another boat that was doing an oyster census. We watched as a giant claw thing scraped the bottom of the ocean floor to collect the shellfish. With evey dip, they only collect a few acceptable oysters. They have to be at least 3 inches, not have and spat (basically baby oysters) on them, and of course, be healthy and alive in order to keep them. Tons of the oysters are plagued by diseases, and the men who have been doing this job for generations simply can not survive on this livliehood anymore. The number of watermen and oysters decrease every year.

And then, on a less depressing note, we ate raw oysters. Yeah. Actually, it wasn't so bad. Without chewing, it just tasted like a lump of salt water going down. Tasty.

Good bye little oysters.

Wallops Island

My fall break rocked! Like I said in an earlier post, we took a trip to Wallops Island to participate in a celebration of Rachel Carson and do some marsh clean up. The weather was gorgeous and we had a good time. The first night we went to the Baltimore Aquarium. Saturday, we presented our lovely poster on Rachel Carson at the Fish and Wildlife Service and kayaked from Chincoteague to Assateague. *no wild pony sightings* :(

Sunday we cleaned up the marsh in the morning finding giant nets littered everywhere. We got muddy digging them out (and got attacked by blood thirsty mosquitos). Then in the afternoon we went to the beach. Haha. Playing in the ocean was so much fun. I remember my freshman year spring break when we got hit with a freak snowstorm, and here I was in the ocean during this FALL break in OCTOBER. Awesomeness.

I'll post more later.

Fall Break

Tomorrow, I am off to Wallops Island, Virginia for 5 days as part of my honors colloquium class in service learning. We are going to count oysters, ride in kayaks, present a poster on Rachel Carson, smell like fish, do some kind of service project, go to the aquarium in Baltimore, MD, visit Chincoteague (and hopefully the ponies) among other stuff. We are going to be working with the Marine Science Consortium. This should be an experience. An environmental one. I'm excited, it should be fun. Not something I'd usually attempt. Whooo, fall break!