Mangroves and The Storm

Activities Day Two: February 24th

After our pancake breakfast, we were led to the equipment tent to receive our snorkel gear and wetsuits. Then we headed to the swim channel for a swim test, snorkel lessons and diving instructions. Everyone was asked to participate, even Drossel and Patty! The goal was to have everyone practice clearing their masks, submerging and clearing their snorkel tubes as well as learning how to dive down without creating too much turbidity (we all passed!).We were told that the sign for "okay" was to pat a fist on the top of our heads, and that if we were in distress we should wave our arms above our heads as well as lift our masks off our faces.

After our swim test, we headed into one of the classrooms for a lecture on marine debris. A guest speaker, Todd Hitchens, from NOAA came to talk with us about the negative impacts of littering. In particular, he stressed the dangers of plastics in our waters - as they are ingested by organisms at all levels of the food web! He also discussed the consequences of fishing line entanglement, showing images of sea turtles dragging line and buoys behind them preventing them from being able to dive for food. Hitchens also spoke about the Pacific Garbage Gyre, a topic we had reviewed before our trip!

After a hearty lunch of macaroni and cheese we began our first service project: The mangrove clean-up. Our Seacamp instructors, Joe and Alex, took us over to a small beach that housed the camp's boating equipment as the plan was to access the mangrove fringed island - Horseshoe Island, by kayaks and canoes! We each were partnered with a buddy and our own canoe or kayak, which we paddled across the seagrass beds to the island. The goal was to recover garbage from the eastern side of the island. We measured the transect that we cleaned - two boats took on this task, while the remaining boats began recovering abandoned fishing ropes, buoys and the like. Many of us tied up our boats and waded into the water (about 3-4 ft deep) so that we could access the litter better. Some of the boys snaked their way up into the mangrove roots - particularly Clark and Louis! Once we finished the clean-up, we returned to the wet lab and began classifying and quantifying the marine debris. The shore perimeter that we cleaned was 392.7 meters and in that distance we recovered 342.15 meters of trap line! This is almost as much as the entire distance of the transect that we cleaned! (Much of this rope had to be cut out of the mangroves.) Every felt good about their efforts, despite the weather.

So, the weather...on our voyage back to SeaCamp it started to rain. As we were putting away the boats, the rain intensified, and we could see the front moving in across the channel. It was both eerie and beautiful. You could see bands of rain in the distance. Anyhow, we analyzed our trash in pouring rain as we watched the calm water turn turbulent. We all worked together to quickly untangle the line, measure it and bag it! As we ended the front hit with high winds and sideways rain! It was intense! The wind howled all night and the temperatures dropped quickly! Thank goodness we all had brought some warmer clothes with us - as we needed them to stay warm.

Post compiled by Samantha Busiello and Kathrin Fritz