The census is almost over for this year and we tagged close to 600 crabs. I am ready to get caught up on my sleep! The hardest night was when I did a sweep of the local beaches for scouting purposes and didn't get home until close to 5am and Gavin was up and ready to go by 7am. I was quite the crab that day.
Gavin joined me in the backpack a few times to help when the other kids were in school. Both Zoe and Violet came out with me on occasion during the daytime surveys and Zoe got her picture in the paper from one of those days. Violet was dissapointed that only her leg was in the picture but was in a publication earlier for a bird walk so she made peace with it. We had a film maker scheduled to come out to make an episode for Expedition New England but they had to cancel for this year due to the heavy rains during the peak of the season. Unfortunately though we were still out there in the cold rain. :-) I am looking forward to next year and to see how many recaptures we find.
I added a few more pictures below.
The Limulus census is underway and I am excited about all the local interest in the project. I have been contacted by both the middle school and girl scouts and have heard that the High School is interested in getting involved too. They are very interesting organisms with such great economic and ecological importance. Our group has had a slow start with the first full moon but the new moon promises to be full of action. Here are some pics from the first three nights/mornings. So far the toughest survey time was at 1:39am but we had a group of 5 people and we all managed to save the crabbiness for the crabs.
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