July continues to bring us together with friends.
A couple of weeks ago we said goodbye to Katsura and Kayoko Hirao who are moving back to their native Japan. The couple was in the US while Katsura (far right) finished his Ph.D. degree in Social Work at UCONN. Katsura was my research assistant the year I was Interim Dean and the four of us attended professional meetings in New Orleans and San Antonio. Our mutual friend, Aki Sato (not pictured) drove the couple to Colchester on the eve of their departure. We wish them the best of luck.
The following week we missed a tour of an oyster farm in Rhode Island when we ran into the back of a thunderstorm producing torrential rain and crackling bolts of lightning. I doubt that the tour actually happened, but our side trip for coffee and toast to let the storm pass made us arrive in Rhode Island too late. Maybe we will try again in August.
To continue the weather bulletins, we were in Enfield with Buffalo Bob and Anne when Tuesday’s severe thunderstorms swept through. I waited out the storm in a coffee shop and saw a descending funnel cloud drifting in the direction of Windham. Yuk.
Today we made an Oceanology cruise out of Avery Point, a location I mentioned in an earlier post. Gloria and I and our friends Neal and Dori joined several small families and a group of kids from a summer program at the Mystic Aquarium on a two hour educational cruise in Long Island Sound studying the Thames River estuary. The sea was calm, except for the wake of the large ferry boats that regularly pass through the Sound; the sun was bright and day warm.
The cruise is great fun in that it is very hands on, from sorting and examining slimy residents of the Sound to hoisting the anchor. Neal, Dori, Gloria and I were given the task to collect several measurements. Engineering professor Neal positioned the sensing equipment. Artist and chef Dori compared the readings to a standard table. Systems Analyst Gloria charted the data. Yours truly, a scientist by training but administrator by aptitude, read the field instructions and kept the other three on task. We may have been overqualified, but that didn’t diminish the fun.
The highlight of the cruise may have been a net full of spider crabs, lobsters, sea stars, squid, flounder, fluke, and rock crab. The good news is that the ecosystem at the eastern end of Long Island Sound appears healthy, with loads of life ranging from the very small to the very large and healthy levels of O2 and CO2. This hasn’t always been the case, and it was welcome news.
Speaking of large creatures, the occupants of the net who did not survive were hand fed to a cluster of a dozen or so striped bass that gathered around the boat when we returned to the dock. These fish, prized around here as game fish, appeared to be three or four feet in length!
These trips, and another style cruise to the Ledge Light Lighthouse, happen daily in the summer. We called ahead for reservations and were glad that we did. Project Oceanology is operated by an association of schools, colleges and universities and has a web site at www.oceanology.org.
The adventure ended with an excellent lunch at the Seahorse in Groton Long Point, and a visit to an artist next door. More on the artist on a later blog.
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