Last weekend, Mark Ruffalo came over to the Nantucket Field Station to speak about an exciting new water technology known as Opflex. Yep, The Mark Ruffalo, also known as Dr. Banner, The Hulk, and now as a true science geek (I mean that in a good way). Mark has created a foundation called Water Defense, which aims “to use technology and public engagement to keep our waterways and drinking water sources free from contamination and industrial degradation.”  Mark stopped by the lab with Scott Smith, the creator of Opflex, to work with Sarah Oktay to create an experiment for a press conference held following day. If you want to know more about Water Defense and Opflex, you can read Sarah’s article. In short, Opflex is a sponge-like material that can come in all shapes and sizes with thousands of small pores that remove oils and other pollutants from water.   A singular inch-by-inch cube, for example, can have a surface area of two feet!
It was a pleasure getting to know Mark and especially inspiring to know that famous people of his status are such strong advocates for environmental concerns. At the press conference, there were several children that work at the field station through the Junior Rangers/Scientist Program. Mark and Scott are strong believers that children should be taught to love science. Children, they believe, will be the environmental defenders of the future. All the young scientists at the field station will have a chance to work with the Opflex and a variety of other techniques as they experiment with ways to keep Nantucket clean.

–Wilkins Ventura, Jake Daniels, and Gabriella Diserio

Hello!

My name is Wilkins Ventura and I am this summer’s Nantucket Field Station intern along with my friend Michael Low! Now, I am to make use of this blog by posting interesting events and experiences Michael and I have here on the island. Sometimes, it is too hard to pick and choose because there have been so many good experiences within the past two weeks. I can only imagine what will happen in the next two to come!

I will list a couple of events so as to catch everyone up on what I have been up to recently. But first, I should tell you more about myself!

My first experience with Nantucket was through my school. I go to UMass Boston and every year the School for the Environment has a semester in Nantucket. UMass has a field station, which I’m sure you know about, right off of Polpis Road. It is through that field station that I began to learn about Nantucket, about oceanography, coastal ecology, and much more.

Flash forward to the end of April, I find out Sarah Oktay wants to have me work for her as a summer intern! It’s exciting to see large, green spaces replacing dull and cold winter fields. Summer time is delightful and it will be more so now that I am in Nantucket for the season! I am excited to work on water testing around the island, beach profiling, weed picking and so on.

Some of the events that I have experienced so far are large and small. For example, Michael and I have renovated the trail kiosks around the field station. They are brand-spankin’ new and they look darn sharp.  A couple of days ago, we found a plastic container in the lab which turned out to have an ootheca. An ootheca is an egg case where hundreds of baby praying mantis (known as mantids) come out of. This ootheca only had a couple of them (15 max).  Len Germinara, Dr. Oktay’s husband, came into the lab once holding a baby sparrow in his hand that had fallen from its nests. It’s memories like these that I am excited to make and hopefully it will be blog-worthy! I will try to post a blog post a week, so stay tuned for more posts about the Nantucket field station!

-WV

My name is Nicole Mangano and I am interning at the Umass Boston Nantucket Field Station during May 2014. I have experienced Nantucket for two winter seasons (January to April), so it is interesting seeing the island come to life.  So much more green covering the island and so many people! The seasonal changes have a lot of impact here.

So far, we have done lots of fun activities individually and in group settings. At several different locations, such as near the Grist mill, we have pulled garlic mustard, a plant invasive to Nantucket. This plant likes disturbed soils and can quickly overwhelm areas, outcompeting native plant species that would normally be there. Along with the Clean Team, who cleans trash from rotating areas on island each week, activities like this help keep Nantucket pristine and healthy.

At the Nantucket Field Station, education is an important aspect of protecting the environment for future generations. For five days, a group of students from North High School in Worcester came to the island and we showed them what the island has to offer, such as its history and its ecology. It was an amazing experience for the students to do hands on science. We seined Folger’s Marsh, saw horseshoe crabs mating, went to Great Point to see grey seals and do water testing in the harbor, and even checked out some of the biodiversity at the vernal pools in Squam Swamp!

This week, we will do some water quality testing in the harbor and at groundwater wells . We will also be working with the junior rangers, who do environmental activities with the field station, like garlic mustard pulling. I also hope to do some exploring, since there are so many wonderful, natural places to see all over the island. Every day is an exciting and new experience, so I look forward to whatever we do next.  Now, it’s time for me to make new memories to write to you about later! See ya around!

When most people see these creatures, they’re not quite sure what to think. Are they ressurected dinosaur fossils, searching to ruin our beach days with zombified claws? Are they sent from another planet to spy on us while we swim? And most importantly…Do they bite? Those have always been my thoughts, at least.

Please Don’t Eat Me, Mrs. Crab.

Here at the field station, one of our jobs is to track the amount of horseshoe crabs that we have on the beach during their mating season. Our numbers get tallied up with those from a whole bunch of other field stations on a whole bunch of other shores throughout the country to help formulate a rough estimate of the total population.

Horseshoe crabs have been around in a similar form for about 400 million years. Their eggs provide a food source for many shorebirds, and each female can lay up to 80,000 of these life-sustaining meals. The birds’ populations fluctuate in relation to the crabs’, as less females around to lay eggs means less food to go around.

Humans present one of the biggest dangers to the horseshoe crab population. Fisheries use them as bait, and so without any sort of regulation, we’d be likely to lower the crab count enough to impact negatively the shorebird population as well. In an effort to combat the damage we cause, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has set up harvest quotas for the animal which fishermen are not allowed to exceed. But how does the ASMFC know how large these quotas should be, or whether or not they’re having any effect?

That’s where we at the Field Station come in. We get sent out twice a day to walk the shore and count how many crabs we can see within a 5 meter range from the beach.

Horseshoe crabs come to the shallows in order to mate. It’s important for us to record whether we’ve found a crab of a certain gender on its own, or whether we’ve caught two of them in the act.
When we see a crab on its own, there are a few ways to discover its gender:

• Flip it over, and see if the crab has “boxing-glove” covered feet, or thin feet. Males possess the boxing gloves, while females have more dainty legs.
• Judge by size. Males are generally smaller than females.
• Judge by behavior. Males will usually try to crawl towards you, while you often find females burrowing themselves into the ground.

Whenever two crabs are seen right next to each other, or rather, on top of one another, we can assume that one male and one female are taking part and add a tally to each column.

Most of the crabs I’ve seen have been in pairs, which I was at first quite thankful for on account of their appearance. Despite assurances that they were harmless as long as you stay away from the tail, I couldn’t help the slight suspicion that flipping them over would end up with a trip to the hospital, with one of the lamest injury stories of all time. When it came to be that time, however, and I had to check the legs, I returned pleasantly unscathed. I’m now certainly more comfortable with the idea that they’re probably not out for blood, but I still think they look weird.

Jake Daniels

Read more about Horseshoe Crabs: http://www.yesterdaysisland.com/2011/science/5.php