NECWA News Blog

Today was the first official floating classroom provided by Captain John Whale Watching and Fishing Tours out of Plymouth, MA. The group onboard were high school students attending the 16th Annual High School Environmental Symposium sponsored by Mass Maritime Academy. Students participating in this two-day symposium came from all over the state of Massachusetts. Volunteering onboard the floating classroom was NECWA intern Nick Schomburg. This was Nick's first floating classroom as an instructor, but he had participated in a similar floating classroom program as a 7th grade student at Plymouth Public Schools. Nick jumped right into the Plankton Observation Station and co-taught the station with Dr. Sandy Williams. Students were fascinated to get a closer look at the plankton net that had just been used to collect a sample for their observation. And what a fabulous sample it was for it was chock full of copepods and amphipods as well as an occasional marine worm and ctenophore. Stud

Today NECWA joined Mass Audubon's Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary in Barnstable, MA for an Earth Day presentation on Salt, the humpback whale. The presentation was provided by Krill Carson with the help of NECWA intern Nick Schomburg. Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary is a 110-acre sanctuary that is part of Mass Audubon Society. This beautiful sanctuary is nestled alongside Barnstable Harbor and comprises pastures, marshes, ponds and salt-water beaches. Inside the sanctuary building are wonderful eduactional displays as well as animal displays including a tank of juvenile diamondback terrapins. Jodi Limon Montoya, Long Pasture's Education Coordinator, introduced Krill and Nick to an audience that included children of all ages as well as adults. During NECWA's presentation, Krill and Nick told the audience about Salt, the most loved and famous and well know humpback whale in the world. The PowerPoint presentation not only had color photos of Salt and the other unique coastal

This Monday, NECWA staff member Val, her daughter Nicole and Nicole's friend Abby were part of Right Whale Day at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. To learn more about this exciting event, read Val's update below. Hello from Val. Right Whale Day at the Whaling Museum in New Bedford was a huge success! My daughter Nicole and her friend Abby volunteered in helping with the two craft projects that NECWA provided for the event. One activity was making and decorating an origami right whale. It was fun to see how each child decorated their origami whale with stickers, glitter glue and markers. The creativity was just amazing and wonderful to see. The second arts & craft activity was decorating a right whale fluke and giving it a name based on one of the the right whale names that are currently in use for live animals. I was so glad to have Nicole and Abby helping out for we were quite busy and having lots of fun doing the crafts with happy children of all ages. And while doing the

On Saturday, April 3, NECWA staff members Krill Carson and Ann Cook along with intern Nick Schomburg participated in the 15th annual Cape Cod Natural History conference sponsored by MA Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. This annual gathering is a community-oriented conference that focuses on the unique flora and fauna of Cape Cod and the islands. At today's conference, Krill and Nick presented their research on the ocean sunfish that stranded on Cape Cod beaches in 2008 and 2009. Ann also participated in a number of these examinations so was well versed when updating interested participants. The work being conducted by NECWA focuses on better understanding the stranding patterns of ocean sunfish in our area as well as their biology and internal anatomy. Also at the NECWA table was material on NEBShark (the New England Basking Shark Project), NECWA's community sighting network for both ocean sunfish and basking sharks. And NECWA provided a number of educational display