Hello all, today is our ninth day, or more importantly, Karen’s birthday.
Our day commenced with a shortened morning exercise of makeshift capture the flip-flop (or as its known in Cleveland as capture the flag). Then we all set out to prepare for the day, our breakfast crew set up the grits, scrambled eggs and toast while Riley and Sara cut eight loaves of bread for sandwiches. Riley was ecstatic just to be in the kitchen while Sara’s cutting skills failed miserably. Allie and Colleen made a batch of the famous GORP (a.k.a. trail mix), unfortunately the excessive amounts of chocolate made it difficult for Becca to pick out the minimal amount of raisins in the batch. At the same time, the chores crew was gathering supplies and loading the boats for the CEI researchers.
At 9:15, after our delicious breakfast, we all met at the boathouse to collect our snorkel gear and drive off in the bio-diesel, manual transmission vans to Kemp’s Creek, which is a tidal creek a few miles down the road. Once we arrived, we had to trek down a closed road to reach the creek and the boats where the researchers were waiting for us. We immediately began setting up the extremely long nets to catch bonefish that were eating in the mangroves surrounding the creek. In this creek, during high tide, the bonefish come in to feed on the mangroves and surrounding plants, but then must leave before low tide in order to avoid suffocation. Therefore, our goal today was to capture the bonefish as they were in the process of leaving the creek area. Unfortunately, the net inevitably caught more than bonefish and mahara, we ended up having to free several barracudas, crabs, needlefish – not even Aaron & Liam’s PB&J fish were able to escape. After we collected our 82 bonefish, we placed them in our ocean nets to be tagged by the researchers. The tagging allows the researchers to not only track the fish’s growth and migration habits, but also the approximate total population living in certain areas. During this time, Colleen, Becca, Sami, Allie and Riley were on sandwich duty, which meant they were responsible for making sandwiches for all 27 students and researchers out at the creek today. During the day, everyone pitched into the capturing and tagging of the bonefish, including Allie who is beginning to conquer her fear of fish! After a very long day we all returned to the Island School and unloaded all of the gear from our day at sea.
After a very brief shower, we all congregated in the octagon to continue our lesson about bonefish, tagging and conch from the lead flats researchers at CEI, Julia and Dave. Remember, if you are going to eat fresh conch, make sure you eat it at Coco Plum’s! After the long day, we had personal reading time which included our allotted time to call home – everyone was so excited to hear from their families! Then we had a delicious dinner of rice, beans, cornbread and our typical amazing salad bar, which included the radishes we picked yesterday at the Island School farm. After dinner Karen and Riley were surprised when the whole class brought out a cake for their birthdays (no wonder Allie was trying so hard to keep Riley out of the kitchen). Just after everyone enjoyed their piece of yellow cake smothered with chocolate Pillsbury frosting, which Mr. Wilson actually frosted. Once again, Riley was completely in her element as she got to cut and serve cake to all of our hungry students. We ended the night with our typical highs and lows; it was no surprise to hear the majority of students complaining about their sunburns. Then, to help with our fish identification, we all sat down to watch Finding Nemo.
Night all, we’re going to celebrate Riley’s last three hours of being sixteen!
Allie and Aaron will fill you in with all our festivities tomorrow!
Love, Kirsty, Jen & Riley
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