Photo credit: CBF Staff
This past Monday, out on the Baltimore Harbor, we saw the star-spangled Francis Scott Key buoy get deployed back into the Patapsco after a winter of repair and maintenance. The buoy marks the location of the British ship that Francis Scott Key was on when he wrote his famous poem, which our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner” is based on.
This week our students pulled in an awesome oyster catch. As they culled through the shells they found four gobies (a small fish that relies on oyster reefs) and also two empty oyster shells covered with goby eggs. It is rare that we find any fish out at the Fort Carroll oyster sanctuary so this was a very exciting discovery.
Our wrap-up with our North Carroll HS AP Environmental Science class this past Wednesday was focused on hope. Acknowledging that it is far too easy to focus on the problems that the Bay is facing, we asked them to reflect on things that they had seen, animals they had touched, and concepts we had discussed while on the Snow Goose that gave them hope for their environment. The students came up with great examples including man-made wetlands made from recycled materials that we saw floating around the edges of the Baltimore Harbor, birds thriving on the small but productive bird sanctuary that Fort Carroll has become, and the fact that several of them had a renewed interest in working in a field related to the environment after their experience out on the water. To learn more about CBF's Baltimore Harbor Program, visit: http://cbf.org/Page.aspx?pid=342.
–Jocelyn Andersen, CBF Baltimore Harbor Program Manager
Help Jocelyn continue to show Baltimore-area students the wonders of the Chesapeake Bay watershed and their connection to it. Go to Liberty Mutual Baltimore on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/libertybaltimore) and vote for CBF. We could win $30,000 in support of this tremendous program…but only with your vote!
