Save the Bay Swim 2007

What a day for Save the Bay's Annual Swim! Last Saturday marked the 31st annual Save the Bay swim from Newport to Jamestown. It is always an amazing site to behold!

This year posed extra and new obstacles for everyone that was on the water. There was a wind of about 10-15 knots out of the west (northwest) (yes, right where the swimmers were swimming into) and quite a bit of chop in the water, probably a little over a foot. Just under 450 people were in the water swimming, a new record for Save the Bay, and many of them had kayakers assisting them. Many swimmers had difficulty with the wind and the chop, and many of the kayakers had difficulty with wind pushing their kayaks around. It was a little nerve wracking for Captain Rob and I to watch all of this from our vessel Swift, knowing that if anyone had too much trouble with the conditions we would be the ones to pull them out. We followed the lead swimmers to the finish line, while Captain Eric and crew member Dave were aboard our other larger vessel Alletta Morris following up behind the swimmers.

Conditions made it difficult for everyone involved. Even the winner of the Swim finished about 4 minutes past his usual time. In all, about 16 swimmers were escorted out of the water by us or the Coast Guard, and about 12 kayakers required asssistance. But everyone remained in good spirits for an excellent feel-good cause of the day, and everyone else crossed the finish line without problems!

There are too many individual motivational stories to give justice to each person's reason for wanting to do this swim, but they range from people overcoming overwhelming physical disabilities (from cancer to being paraplegic), to reaching milestones in their lives (just turning 30, just turning 70, just having a baby), to people just wanting to prove that they can swim 1.7 miles. It is always an inspiring day. So inspiring that I personally am hoping to swim next year instead of working!

How can you not be inspired by so many motivated people, all swimming for the better health of themselves and for Narragansett Bay?

For more information on this year's Swim event, visit http://www.savebay.org/news_06swim_final.asp?&pid=202&srcid=183

Pink snorkel mystery in Wickford Harbour

This week is our first BayCamp of the summer, and it is off to a great start! The camp is run out of Wilson Park in Wickford in North Kingstown, RI. We meet the campers at the park every day before getting picked up at the dock by one of our boats to head off to places like Rome Point, Prudence Island, or Ft. Getty in Jamestown. However, there is one day for each of our BayCamp weeks that we don't have a motorized boat, we have canoes!

Campers had been asking me all morning, "Abby can I be in a canoe with..." and "Abby, I'd be great in a canoe with... because I have a lot of experience and she doesn't have any." I made them wait to get their canoe groups before finally giving them the news. I think they were all equally unhappy with the groups I had chosen, because I broke up all 5 pairs of siblings and the 3 best girlfriends. But they were working in teams, and making new friends, and teaching each other valuable lessons. That is what camp is all about!

We departed from the Wilson Park boat ramp, and started off toward Rabbit Island. There was an osprey nest there with one large adult osprey keeping close watch over us as our 7 canoes rolled by.

We continued around Rabbit Island, and found our way over to a beautiful salt marsh. The tide was just past high, so there was plenty of water for us to canoe in. Picture the long, tall Spartina grasses in a pristine salt marsh, being in the back of the pack of campers where I was, and only being able to see people's heads drifting through as their canoes floated by. It was a beautiful sight! Next we made our way over to Cornelius Island, where we stopped to have lunch, explored the beach and then let the campers go snorkeling.

"A horseshoe crab!" "A whelk snail!" "I lost my pink snorkel!"

It was the third of those comments that had myself and the other educators, Rob and Maureen, slightly concerned. But Rob had it under control, immediately putting on his own mask and snorkel, as he began wallowing in the shallow water to look for the lost pink snorkel (Picture Rob being 6'4" with a kiddie size mask on his face and that becomes funnier). Maureen and I decided to focus on the critters, telling the students all about the animals they had found. One of my favorite facts to pass along about the knobbed whelk snail that one of the girls had found crawling around the bottom is about it's raspy tongue. It pushes it through the pointed area farthest away from the pretty spiral of the shell, and can drill a hole into another shellfish in order to make it it's meal. Many snails have this radula on their tongue in order to eat this way.

By this point, the girl who had lost her snorkel had other girls and Rob all virulently looking for it. Some of the boys teased that it was a lost cause and that she wouldn't be able to find it. Eventually, we all started walking back toward shore to get back into our canoes.

"My pink snorkel!!!" the girl who had lost the snorkel exclaimed.

And just like that, laying near some eelgrass and a green crab, the mystery of the pink snorkel was solved.

Prudence Island T-dock

Our campers through Brown University's SPARK program this week are from all over the country, New York to Arizona! They were fortunate enough to visit the northeast, south, and west sides of Prudence Island, the third largest island in Narragansett Bay, 4 of their 5 days with us. Two of those days were spent at the southern end of Prudence, and the old T-dock area, which is where these pictures were all taken. It is one of our favorite sites to bring camps, due to the great sandy beach (at low tide you can walk on FOREVER before getting too deep), the healthy eelgrass beds, and on the south side of the T-dock, there is a long rocky shore that you can walk down and almost around to the south east side of the island. We also love the T-dock because it is a great place to eat lunch while watching the terns dive in the water to catch fish for their lunch!



Prudence Island is a wonderful place for people of all ages to see. The island really encompasses the feeling of old Rhode Island, just how it must have looked before all the development of the coast line. There are pristine beaches, rocky shores and tidepools teeming with life, beautiful salt marshes that are in excellent condition, and lots of eelgrass to explore. Save the Bay has both monitoring and restoration sites in different locations around Prudence, so it is easy to see what a natural bed that is flourishing looks like as compared to a restoration site that isn't taking as well. With the help of many volunteers, hopefully the eelgrass will continue to flourish.



With a population of only about 200 during the year (that jumps to closer to 2,000 in the summer), only 2 students enrolled in the on island elementary school for next year, and over half the island being preserved as reserve land, it is a unique place to visit. Many Rhode Islanders have never even been, and there it lies, a beautiful, rarely visited island between North Kingstown and Portsmouth!

For information on how to visit Prudence, visit http://www.prudenceisland.us/prud/helpful_information/info/ferry_schedule.htm
To book a trip with children or students to Prudence with Save the Bay, visit http://www.savebay.org/education_shipboardoutings.asp
To find out more about the island itself visit http://www.prudenceisland.us/prud/
and for more information about the reserve land, visit http://www.nbnerr.org/

Tall Ships Sail 2007

Save the Bay ran boat tours over the weekend for the Tall Ships event. They were beautiful to see, and I was lucky to be among those aboard Alletta Morris for the Parade of Sails on Sunday. Even though the town of Newport technically hosted the event, I like to think that Narragansett Bay was the actual host, as the boats didn't actually get up onto town land. We usually think of the Bay as being an important environment for the animals that reside within it, but if you were among the many on the water last weekend, I think you would agree that there is more to it; people love to be on the water! There were people boating, jumping off their boats to take a little swim (myself included), fishing as they watched the sails, and many on land just relaxing near the water. The Bay is of importance to us, the quality of our lives, and to the tourism industry of Rhode Island. A healthy Bay means a healthy place for us to enjoy!

Here are some of my pictures from the extraordinary event.

To find out about other events Save the Bay is Hosting aboard one of our vessels, visit

http://www.savebay.org/education_lighthouse.asp

Or http://www.savebay.org/news_eventcalendar.asp