Day 280, Year 10: Crazy Scallops and a Molting Green Crab
Date: Friday, July 17, 2015
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Still Windy
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, MA
We spent our day in Quissett Harbor. We drove in to pick up the boys and arrived back here around 10:30 am. The boys and I delivered Mark to Windbird where he could get some rest, and then Sam rowed the rest of us to the beach. We go to the beach with a huge bag full of boogie boards, sand shovels, buckets, and nets. I sit and watch and Sam, Jonah, and Ollie invent something new to do every day. Today Sam was into snorkeling and Jonah was into jumping off the dinghy into the water, over and over. Ollie spent a lot of time just sitting on the beach today, but once in a while he would have a short burst of energy. Sure hope he’s not getting sick. I think he was just tired, but he was uncharacteristically quiet. After the first frenzy of swimming and snorkeling, Sam took off on the dinghy to explore and Jonah started collecting specimens to observe. He found an Atlantic bay scallop (Argopecten irradians) and put it in a bucket. A little later, he got it out to observe and it started clacking like a castanet in his hand. It obviously viewed Jonah as a predator and wanted to swim away. But Jonah calmed him down and then the clam would stay open while he was holding it in his hand without clacking to escape. You could look inside and see the mussel and you could clearly see the bright blue eyes (about 30-40 of them) around the fluted edge of the shell. When the clam was out of the water, you could not see the tentacles, but as soon as Jonah would put the scallop in the water, the tentacles would drop like a stage curtain all around the edge of the fluted shell. He picked up another scallop and it did all of the same things. The boys have seen scallops open their shells at the Buzzards Bay Coalition touch tank, but never at the beach, and never with quite the same energy as this morning. We were all enjoying the show these crazy scallops were providing. Then Jonah found a green crab (Carcinus maenas). Normally he would never pick up a crab for fear of being pinched by its claws, but this one looked a little strange and Jonah wanted to observe it more closely. He called me over and I immediately thought something was very wrong with this crab. It looked like it was blowing up like a balloon and its shell was separating. I was just about to tell him to put it back in the water when Sam yelled out, “Its molting.” And sure enough, the crab was molting its shell right in Jonah’s hand. A slightly larger crab emerged and left the old, smaller shell behind. Unbelievable. You know this happens, but to see it happen in the hand of a six year-old was pretty amazing. Jonah put the emerged crab and its old shell in a bucket and we took pictures and showed him off to some interested people walking down the beach. The boys named the crab Softy and decided that we should write a story about him.
Mark and Jonah took Sam to Woods Hole for his last Ponds, Woods, and Fields class while I put Ollie down for a nap. They returned and then a little later I went to shore to go pick up Sam. Once we got back to Quissett, Sam and Jonah got in the kayak and headed to shore to play. I was sitting in a chair on the deck watching them and realized that they were doing more swimming than playing on the beach, so I got in the dinghy and headed in to be closer. They played for a bit and they ended up rowing the dinghy back to Windbird and I ended up in the kayak. It was a great day of exploration in Quissett Harbor, but it was time to get them home and fix dinner. Jed returned from DC this afternoon and he and Heather were at a party honoring the volunteers at WCAI public radio. While I was fixing dinner, Mark went out to put the garbage can away (yesterday was pick-up day), when the big plastic ‘can’ on wheels got stuck in a pot hole in the driveway. It happened very fast and his face ran into the edge of the garbage can and scraped the first layer of skin from a wide swath on this right cheek. I don’t know if I have ever seen anything bleed quite so much, but we finally got it under control. He is going to have quite an ugly place on his face for a couple of weeks, but hopefully it will heal without complication. Seems like there is always something—wouldn’t want life to be too boring!
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| 150717 Day 280 Cape Cod, USA–Crazy Scallops and a Molting Crab |
