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.