Friday, August 7, 2020

constitution beach and water quality

Hello there, I'm back and ready to tell you all about my time at constitution beach. Constitution beach is in East Boston. The vibe that was there was very family friendly and also it seems like a place that the community would go to come together, to catch up, spend some time at the park, take a swim or to just take in the scenery. We learned a lot about the invasive species there and we also walked around and learned about the history of the beach and how how the harbor islands changed and formed into what we know now as East Boston. While there we did a lot of great activities like sand raking and fish seining.

The topic that I wanted to talk the most about today is the water quality of our beaches and how that affects us. When we think about water quality, we need to thing about how the water affects certain animals, about the water's ph, and also about the pollution. Knowing that the Boston harbor is the cleanest urban harbor in america, Boston is held to a high standard that the people that use the beaches need to uphold. While learning about the invasive species, we learned about how they got here, and how they are in competition for food which hurts the native species.
Ways we can check the quality of the water in the harbor is something I learned when I was at the site of Fort Point. One of of the days we went on an old boat (the Roseway) and talked to the crew. We learned a lot about the history of the boat and how they serve the community. While there, we also learned about how certain ph balances of the water on certain days can affect the ecosystem and what animals will be prominent in the part of the harbor we are in. We did this by collecting a sample of the water and putting a few drops of dye in the water. The dye would react to the water and whatever color the water would turn would match with the ph scale. This affects the animals there because some animals favor a different type of ph than others, and would mostly stay in that part of the harbor. The animals that don't would probably move away from that part to find a better spot. If the ph stays the same for too long or changes too frequently it can drastically affect the animals there.


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