Kristin recently took staff at CBFS for a tour at Tom’s Cove Aquafarms. We are proud to be part of a network of organizations on the Eastern Shore that are working to educate and empower people in making sustainable decisions and protecting the unique nature and ecosystems of the Mid-Atlantic region.

We hope that each camper that comes to our summer camps creates memories that last a lifetime. Kristin is just one example alumni of CBFS that has gone on to do great things in the field of marine science!

Interested in learning about the ways Chincoteague Bay Field Station can nurture your child's interest in marine biology? Visit us at www.cbfieldstation.org/summer-camps or give us a call at 757-824-5636!

​Night

Night falls suddenly when the sun declines
behind these granite hills. The boy sits on
the river side of the flood wall, his back
to the town. He smokes a cigarette, counts
the cars and tractor trucks on the state road
across the water. Wonders where they’re bound.
The boy would like a car, some way, any way
to leave the town, to drive past the farms
until the hills grow and the woods thicken
and sit beside the tiny stream that is the start
of this half-mile wide river. The boy rises,
heads into town. He walks past the little park,
a few blocks up Market, enters a tiny hot
dog restaurant, nods to Old Sam, who started
the place after the war. Sam knows, fixes
one with everything, uncaps a blue birch
from the old dinged metal floor cooler,
while the boy fingers the lone coin in
his pocket. Outside the wind rises and shifts.


Both were recently ​published in the online journal Zingara Poetry Review. ​

All of the dolphin sightings from class field work in and around the Chincoteague Channel and Wallops Island have now been added to a sightings data base operated by the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science (https://www.umces.edu/dolphinwatch). These are the first entries for the Chincoteague area.
 
In addition, for two summers, several students have conducted studies involving photo-identification of individual dolphins.  These animals have natural marks (e.g., nicks, notches, scrapes, tooth marks) along their backs and dorsal fins that are unique to individuals; and matches between subsequent sightings of an individual can provide information on local and regional migration patterns/destinations, residency times, and an individual’s age, among other things.  Silbers Marine Mammal students provided class-project dolphin photo-identification data to the Mid-Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin Photo-ID catalog/database portion of the OBIS-SEAMAP (Ocean Biogeographic Information System Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations, http://seamap.env.duke.edu) program, a global seabird, sea turtle, shark, ray, and marine mammal on-line database administered by Duke University.  The data is now available to related dolphin studies along the U.S. eastern seaboard. ​

Have you ever been standing on the shore and notice that, after a wave retreats from your feet, a bunch of small clams wiggle their way into the sand?
 
These clams, called coquina clams, have fascinated students and campers at the field station. They are very small, only about 10 to 25 cm, and can be purple, pink, orange, blue or gray. They are bivalve mollusks which means they have two hinged shells that cover their soft invertebrate body.
 
Coquina clams move up and down the shore by burying themselves in the sand after each wave moves them. This ability to burry themselves is thanks to their foot. This area where they reside is called the swash zone. They move so frequently so they can get the best feeding opportunities.
 
They are filter feeders that use two siphons which look like tubes to filter seawater. One extracts oxygen and collects algae, detritus and phytoplankton. The other gets rid of the waste that is in the water.

​Fish, crabs and shorebirds feed on coquina clams, and some people even make soup out of them.
 
Coquina clams are an indicator species because they are sensitive to environmental changes. They allow researchers to know whether or not the environment is healthy or not.
 
They can live up to two years in the wild, but without moving water for them to filter, they can only survive three days.
 
The next time you are at the beach, check around your feet to see if any coquina clams are making their way back into the sand when a wave passes!

Gretchen Knapp from the National Park Service stopped by the field station on Wednesday evening to speak to college students and CBFS staff about her job and the different jobs offered at the National Park Service.

Gretchen began by giving some background about herself. She was an instructor at CBFS for two years. This began her career with the park service where she has been for 25 years.

“That’s what gave me real life experience to do what I’m doing,” Gretchen said.

She started off as an interpreter by doing programs with the public and helping them engage with the environment around them. Now, she has moved up to be a supervisor. Not only has this position allowed her to use her background in marine biology, but she has also gained skills in many other areas including graphic design and website management.

“Park services is evolving as well to meet the needs of our visitors. We’re really trying to preserve cultural and natural history [and] the heritage of America for everybody,” Gretchen said.

During her presentation, she had everyone get into groups and assigned them a position with park services. Each group had to pick out a group of objects that represent the job from a table at the front of the room. Examples of jobs include law enforcement, maintenance, lifeguards  and administration.

Gretchen explained what responsibilities came with each job. She encouraged audience members to look into a job with park services and offered tips about resumes and the application process.

​“If you’re easily bored, this is the kind of career you might think about,” Knapp said. “There are a lot of other skills you can build once you get into the park services.” 

​They then tested the water sample for its temperature and they used a refractometer to measure the salinity of water. 

​After testing the current and using a secchi disk to measure the visibility of the water, the group started preparing to trawl.

​The trawl was a success! The group caught many blue crabs, a couple of squids, lots of algae, and a couple of fish including a striped burrfish.

​Another participant, Hazel, said her favorite part of the week so far has been the boat trip. The best part of the boat trip for her was catching animals in the trawl net, and her favorite animal that was caught that day was the comb jelly.
 
Shayla, an educator at the field station, led the boat trip. Her favorite part of working with adult and family programs is the endless learning.

​“They love and love to actually learn. They sign up for it and it’s not forced,” she said.

​The crab was not a blue crab, but a common spider crab! Not to be confused with a Japanese spider crab, a common spider crab is only about one foot wide when its legs are stretched out. They often walk forward, but they can walk from side to side like other crabs do.

​Spider crabs are slow and have poor eyesight, so it has tasting and sensing organs on its legs to identify food or mud. Examples of what they eat include starfish and mussels. 

​Wondering what’s all over the carapace of this spider crab? They’re decorations! Spider crabs are considered “decorator crabs.” This means they will attach algae and debris to their carapaces with hook-like hairs. This is used for camouflage as defense against predators. The spider crab caught by our day camp has tunicates on it. It sure was an exciting find!