The marsh has browned and we’ve had snow on the ground since last we wrote.  While we have not been up-to-date with our posts, rest assured that as the last green leaf of Spartina fades to brown it has seen a whirlwind of work.

Lest you’ve forgotten, the TIDE project is a long-term, large-scale fertilization project in the salt marshes of the Plum Island Estuary, MA.

On with the show.

I have had the fortune of spending 9 summers in the marshes of Plum Island as part of the TIDE project.  Each year I am impressed by the summer field team (undergraduate and graduate students and a post-doc sprinkled here or there).  I’m also impressed that these individuals come to this land of marsh to live together, work in the mud, the sun, and the bugs together and play together without any murderous eyes at the end of the summer.  This project has been incredibly fortunate to have such hard-working and good-spirit people working on it.  And this summer was no exception.  Below is the 2011 summer crew.

Eric Kretsch was an REU as part of the Plum Island LTER and is a student at U. of Rhode Island.  He worked closely with Jimmy Nelson, a post-doc, and looked at fish and shrimp community structure in the tidal creeks. 

Jimmy Nelson is a post-doc on the Plum Island LTER and his research is focused on the production and export of secondary production in the form on nekton from the tidal creeks.  That is, he looks at how much fish and shrimp biomass the marshes create and how much is then exported to the surrounding waters.  I study invertebrates.  So Jimmy studies fish and I study bait.

Imogene Robinson was a high school intern from the Governor’s Academy in Byfield, MA.  2011 was her second year on the TIDE project.  She was fearless in the field and worked with everyone on the project.  We don’t know how we could have made it without her!

Austin Ritter joined TIDE in 2010 and came back in 2011.  He worked with Dr. Sallie Sheldon of Middlebury College to look at benthic algal production in the tidal creeks and began his undergraduate thesis this year on the subject.

Anjali Merchant is also from Middlebury College and worked with Dr. Sheldon.  Anjali looked at the benthic algal communities.

Erik Yando joined TIDE in 2010 and returned in 2011.  He worked with Dr. Scott Warren from Connecticut College to examine the response of plant communities to nutrient enrichment.

Clara Chaisson is an undergraduate at Connecticut College and worked with Dr. Warren on estimating Spartina alterniflora production over the growing season.

Kate Morkeski is a Master’s-level research assistant at MBL and works closely with Dr. Bruce Peterson to look at marsh biogeochemistry.

Mike Lerner was an intern from Michigan University and his project focused on finding the presence of Burkholderia, a genus of microbe used in pollution remediation.

Meghan Short joined the TIDE project as an unpaid intern in 2009, just after her freshman year at Brown.  In 2011 she started work on her undergraduate thesis focused on above- and belowground decomposition dynamics of the high marsh plant, Spartina patens.

 

In August, Eric, Meghan, Clara, and Austin presented their work at the MBL Undergraduate Symposium.  TIDE and the Plum Island LTER were well represented!  Above, ‘big brother’ Jimmy fixes ‘little brother’ Eric’s tie.

I just like these photos.

Below are a series of photos featuring Chris Haight.  Chris joined TIDE in 2009 working with Dr. Warren at Connecticut College to look at plant communities. He returned in 2010 to look at plastic degradation in the marsh.  In 2011 he was hired as a Research Assistant and he was central to making the project run smoothly this year.  I dubbed him Tide Executive Facilitator but he should have been called Mr. I-can-do-it!. No matter the hour, the weather, the job or how long he had been working, Chris always said, “I can do it” when someone needed help or something needed doing.  Chris was a great TIDE Executive Facilitator and made everyone’s life much, much easier.  And as you can see below, he had a good time doing it. Thank you Chris!!

Below is most of the field crew from 2011 (Jimmy was absent on picture day).  To the field crew I say Thank You.  I, as well as the PI’s on the TIDE project (Linda Deegan, Bruce Peterson, John Fleeger, Scott Warren and Linda Deegan), appreciate your hard work and sharp minds.  Without you and others preceding you, this project would not exist.  Thank you.

Until next season…

– David

As of May 25^th, twenty-four different people have seen our TIDE creeks so far in 2011, we’ve had one sunny field day, and have only just accomplished our second tank fill for the season. More scientists, sunshine, and fertilizer are due any day. We’ve already lost track of how many batteries and pumps we’ve lugged out onto the Spartina marsh.

We first ventured out into the low pressure system that was late April for a round of shear vaning at all six creeks with our dear geomorphologists Carol and Zoe from Boston University. We were measuring the resistance of the sediment to torque applied with a specially designed vane in order to understand if the fractures, slumping, and sliding we see at our fertilized creek are related to decreased soil strength. The monotony of six hundred shear strength measurements was occasionally broken by an especially squishy or strong layer of mud, a shift in the weather from rain to merely fog-rain, or a traditional Welsh ballad. We do extend our thanks to Zoe for spending so many hours peering at the dial of the shear vane and to both Zoe and Carol for making light work of the Sweeney dripper platform construction, bringing us a victorious end to an otherwise rugged day.

For the next couple of weeks we left the marsh to its own devices: getting its chlorophyll mojo working, apparently, as it started to turn intensely green. Then we introduced it to the new Plum Island LTER postdoc Jimmy, who helped build the Clubhead dripper platform within hours of arriving from Florida.

Jimmy quickly showed the marsh who’s boss by carrying double the fertilizer of any other researcher and fixing water pumps that otherwise refused to start. We filled both tanks with fertilizer and allowed the marsh to ponder its fate over the weekend before the ides of May would once again flood Clubhead and Sweeney with good old sodium nitrate. Our target date for beginning the year’s nutrient addition is always May 15^th. Since it fell on a Sunday this year, we decided to give the marsh a day of rest and turn on the drippers shortly thereafter.

The week of the 16^th brought big tides of water and of people. Linda, Bruce, and Rich came up for a visit, and even Skyler and Xi stopped by.

We all had a bit of a scramble to install equipment, sample pre-fertilizer sediment porewater, and turn on the fertilizer drippers before MBL’s eight Science Journalism fellows and their leader, Chris, arrived at the end of the week. In the gathering gloom of Wednesday evening, enough of the pieces were in place, and it was go time. David and Jimmy flipped the switch at Clubhead, and Linda did the honors at Sweeney while Bruce and Kate wandered in the mist nearby. We all met halfway between the tanks for a foggy cheers to the beginning of another season of TIDE…

…Only to find out the next day that when it’s May in New England and the temperature lingers in the 40s, the pumps disagree with the whole idea. While dinner for fourteen set off the smoke detector—twice—bringing visitors from the Byfield Fire Department, Linda became a pinch-hitter and gave the presentation David had prepared for the journalists because he and Jimmy were on a nighttime safari to Sweeney to try to persuade the dripper to drip. They concluded that our coastal nutrient addition is meant to be a summer endeavor: in weather like this, the guaranteed-to-be-the-best tubing in the peristaltic dripper pumps is cold enough to lose all of its pliability, and the pumps give up.

Nutrients or none, sunshine or none, the journalists crammed a season’s worth of field work into two days with trips to Sweeney, West, and Plum Island Sound and measurements of geomorphology, nutrient flux, soil respiration, and invertebrate abundance.

A little more persuasion and slightly higher temperatures have allowed the pumps to cross some tides off their to-do lists. Austin and Meghan have arrived. We have continued our usual schtick by filling the tanks, checking in on the instruments, and sampling chlorophyll, curiously in the absence of David, who is rubbing elbows with some freshwater ecologists at the annual meeting of the North American Benthological Society and even hosting an invited session there on the connections between watersheds and estuaries.

As we have visited our fertilized creeks, we’ve been amazed to see some dramatic changes in their shape.

Peat blocks we knew and loved last summer have been sheared away, and more than a few chunks of the marsh surface—we can recognize them by their Spartina patens vegetation—are now in the bottom of the creek. The last few weeks have also brought some changes to the local landscape that aren’t caused by nutrient additions. Ipswich has a new windmill, conveniently placed near Sweeney Creek to allow us to precisely gauge rain-fog intensity by counting the number of blades visible. As we were building the Clubhead platform, the Murphys from Newburyport were here tearing down the ell of the barn and the fondly-remembered goat shed.

– Kate

I know you’ve all been on the edge of your seats, in a cloud of suspense and disbelief, wondering, what happened to the TIDE blog?  Well have no fear, the Nor’easter has lifted from the marshes (both literally and figuratively) and it’s time to reflect again.

Since there has been a serious lack of TIDE blogging, I am going to heroically attempt to get you up to speed with our lives.

Before I get to the part about how David left us to become the next Crocodile Hunter in the Australian outback, let’s talk about week one.

August started with a bird survey!  O.K. now, everybody shout, hooray for birds!  I realize not everybody wants to get out of their seat and cheer for our feathered friends like I do, but I love birds and have been on three bird surveys along the Rowley River this August! Robert Buchsbaum (MA Audubon), Christina Kennedy and I have been able to set aside a couple of hours each week to survey along the Rowley’s expansive mudflats.  We have counted hundreds of birds, including semipalmated plovers and sandpipers, great and snowy egrets, least and common terns, willets, black-bellied plovers, and a dowitcher!

The plant peeps, set to work surveying the marsh; setting up their tripod and autolevel on the marsh platform.

Our dynamic REU team, also known as Mashley, made the trek down to Woods Hole with David to spend some quality time with the CHN machine to run their Spartina Patens litter.  They took some time to do a little exploring around the village.

Mister Samwise, in the wake of Austin’s departure, spent most of his time with light/dark bottles.

Kate and I diligently filled both tanks and collected marsh grasses for 15N NO3 analysis.  We braved the rain, midges, and sharp-blades of grass.

Week two!  Spring into action!

David made sure to fit in one last visit to American Barbeque with the crew on Friday before he relinquished his power for the next two weeks.  With tear-filled eyes, the crew presented him with a goodbye present of $20 to David’s new addiction: White Farms Ice Cream.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from assuming David’s role as project coordinator, spring tides wear you out!!!  We successfully seined over 200 mummichogs from the Rowley River in order to paint tag them for catch efficiencies.  These hearty fish managed to survive throughout the week in our laboratory aquarium, only be re-captured by our flume nets once again (a few crafty juveniles squirmed their way out).  Late evening/early morning flume netting was a success this month, with fish retained in every flume (including many silversides!).  Aside from falling in trap-door mosquito ditches (and getting soaked to the core), we were treated by a spectacular light display.  As the bioluminescence flashed brightly below us in the knee-deep water, Perseids meteor shower drew our attention to the night sky.

As with any spring tide, the tanks do not stay satiated for long.  Along with help from our extremely hardworking crew, we managed to complete four tank fills as well as a routine nutrient sampling.

Week three!  We love science!

Let me just take a moment to thank our Jill-of–all-trades, high school volunteer, Imogene.  She makes fieldwork look natural and is one impressive mosquito ditch hurdler.  None of us could have survived the summer without her!

While Meghan, Ashley, Ariella, Erik, and Sam prepared for their symposium presentations, Imogene and I spent Monday through Wednesday coring for benthic chlorophyll.  An archaeological discovery was made at both Clubhead and West Creeks during low tide: two glass bottles—one dating back to a time when Newburyport had a Coca-Cola factory (?).

On Wednesday, our fearless leader, Linda, arrived to take charge.  She immediately met with each of our presenters to review and edit their powerpoint slides.  Later that evening, she prepared a spectacular meal with vegetables sourced solely from her garden.  Stuffed zucchini, coleslaw, tomato salad, and corn on the cob.  Delicious!

With a solid meal in our bellies, we set off for our Woods Hole adventure on Thursday morning.  We arrived just in time to set up a small picnic on the shores of Eel Pond and relax before the symposium began at 1 P.M.  TIDE brought a strong and much-needed ecological perspective to the talks.  Meghan and Ashley each presented their work on invertebrate detritivores and microbial processing on litter.  Ariella and Erik each discussed the recent discovery of creek bank cracking and potential mechanisms driving this geomorphological change.  Sam and Austin, who could not attend the symposium, contributed a poster on their algae work to a poster session that was taking place in conjunction with the symposium.  Everyone did a fantastic job and should feel very proud of their work!!!

In the time it took to post this, David has returned and has contracted empty-nest syndrome.  While he was away, we lost Meghan, Ashley, Sam, and Chris to that thing we like to call SCHOOL.  Thanks for all your hard work, creativity, and humor!  We’ll miss you!

Until next time,

Enjoy the sun and blue skies!

– Sarah

Last week, the TIDE crew battled through the final week of July toward its culmination in the mid-summer All Scientists’ Meeting.

Just when we’d finished celebrating our victory over the giant trailer full of Nitrate, we were greeted by a new shipment to keep the tanks happy and our biceps in shape.

The Plant Crew resumed coring with a vengeance and took a record-tying ten cores this week. This concludes their coring for the summer, and brings their total up to 40! They also began surveying the marsh to get a profile of the creeks.

The algae duo, Sam and Austin, were accompanied by Sallie Sheldon for part of the week as they surveyed Rupia coverage in ponds. They also assessed productivity levels at the different creeks with two extensive light-dark bottle sampling events. The end of the week was also the end of the field season for Austin, who will surely be missed by all.

The REU’s, Ashley and Meghan, continued with their litter decomposition experiments, replacing deceased critters in Petri dishes and making final preparations to collect their litter bags. As part of those preparations, Imogene showed those microbes who’s boss by measuring their respiration with the IRGA machine.

Sarah and Kate continued with the saga of Sigma repair, and began to sort through the monumental amounts of data collected during the nutrient challenges.

PIs began to filter in at the start of the week, awaiting the mid-summer All Scientists’ Meeting on Thursday—an opportunity for TIDE-ers and others involved with our beloved marsh to share their summer’s progress and hear about others’ projects. The meeting started off with a presentation by the biogeochemistry crew, who shared the preliminary findings of July’s nutrient challenges. This was followed by presentations by other groups, as well as a general discussion of all things TIDE. All presentations were met with rapt attention.

Other important events during the meeting included the consumption of plenty of delicious lasagna, and a dip in the Rowley River.

…and of course, a trip to White Farms Ice Cream with the PIs.

The end of the week was celebrated with basketball…

…and awesome hairstyles.

– Ms. Meghan

With a week of the nutrient challenges behind us, the TIDE Project’s crew steamed on into the weekend, under the direction of their fearless leader Kate.  Tank fills, acid washing, filtering, and canoe sampling were some of the many activities that continued on through the weekend and into the early portion of the week.

With things wrapping up quickly just as the week started several key events were of particular importance.  Sarah cried briefly as she packed up her SIGMAs for the last time, we gave our farewell to Amanda and Jo from Boston University, and Kate went into an apparent state of well-deserved hibernation after multiple weeks of work and little sleep.

Things are never quiet around here even with the lack of nutrient challenges so here’s what we’ve been up to.

The REUs/The Girls, Meghan and Ashley, started to work on a secret experiment in their lair of the barn. Or perhaps they are just trying to get their critters to enjoy some tasty Spartina patens.

The Plant People, Chris, Erik, and Ariella, started to measure Mud vs. Veg. in hopes of quantifying Sweeny’s apparent collapse of the creek bank and tall Spartina alterniflora.  Mid-week we were visited by Scott, their PI, as well as Earl Davey and Cathy Wigand, from the E.P.A., to compare coring techniques and have some of our sediment cores CT scanned.

The Algae folks, Sam and Austin, worked to examine production of epiphytes and diatoms, and figure out what is going on in the shark-infested marsh platform ponds…okay, maybe they aren’t shark infested.

Thursday at noon was indeed time for another TIDE Power Hour of Cleaning in the barn and the lab.  No speck of dirt or misplaced item was safe from the hands of the TIDE people.

Head to head equipment washing challenges between Austin and Meghan was the main event in the lab.

Bench washing, floor sweeping, mopping, wiping, and reorganizing were also major events.

In the outdoor events, Austin dominated the beating of the rugs.

Chris won the mesh lift with approximately 25 square meters of mesh.

Ariella and David both had strong showings in the recycling events and were able to crush some cardboard along the way.

Additionally, there was a tie in the “Sharing is Caring” award between David and Sarah, for their work in the “Marking Sketchy Batteries”, and Erik and Chris, for their work in “Could you hand me that board?”

Every surface was sparkling.

To round out the day the TIDE Project donated some wooden pallets to the greater Plum Island Community.

[Note: Sam was not included in the donation]

After all of the hard work during the nutrient challenges, the cleaning extravaganza, and the regular work of the week, we all decided to take Friday to join in some TIDE Project bonding as we drove up to the Franconia Notch Region and climbed Mt. Liberty.

A good time was had by all.

Tune in next weeks for updates on the All Scientists Meeting, the continued saga of the REUs Amphipod lair, and what Sarah is doing in life post-SIGMAs.

– Erik

Picture 6am on the marsh.  The sky begins to brighten, mosquitoes begin their whining, early birds get their worms, and muddy scientists climb out of a ditch, eager to greet the next round of replacement labor, a hot breakfast, and a highly pressurized shower after a night of canoe sampling.

And so it began.  The July madness that David has been hinting about since May hit like a hurricane.  The week began innocuously enough, with Dr. Fleeger’s arrival from oil-soaked Louisiana.  He appeared, however, in the calm before the storm of 24-hour sampling that turned Marshview into a hotbed of planning and processing.

Friday and Saturday were devoted to becoming one with the Sweeney confluence, or what the less poetic among us would call “sitting in a canoe taking water samples every half hour”.  There was syringing involved.  As well as some napping.  Fortunately, neither occurred at the same time. (Though a filter bottle may or may not have overfilled as a result of some previously undiagnosed narcolepsy.)

Monday morning started with a shock after a snail cake brushed a bit too close to reality during an unplanned session in the oven.  Megan didn’t seem to mind her melted birthday cake, though the firemen may have minded the early morning call.

The rest of the week can be compared to a runaway amphipod – it only accelerated after its initial Friday scare.  All I can say is, whoever is foolhardy enough to challenge the marsh better be prepared for a barrage of filtering, fetching samples, feeding the tank, schlepping batteries and autosamplers, acid washing, filtering, sampling, crushing phosphate, and did I mention filtering?

Fresh fish Jo and Amanda from Boston University joined biogeochemists Kate and Sarah in getting their fill of ungodly early morning field work and late night lab work for the rest of the season, and preferably for the rest of their careers.  They could be seen shuffling weary-eyed from the marsh to the trailer and back out again, pushing to do almost inhuman amounts of work.  The trailer proved to be a godsend, becoming the estuarine filtration center of Marshview and most likely the state of Massachusetts.

As if nutrient challenges were not enough, another series of late night/early morning flume netting rode in on the spring tides.  Ariella and Erik got their first tastes of the irreplaceable sensation that is nighttime marsh swimming.  Sam and I underwent the singular experience of being hopelessly lost in densely foggy Nelson.  It was, euphemistically speaking, an exciting lesson in the importance of orienteering skills.  Meaghan and Austin worked hard to remove the flume nets after the night’s catch was collected and measured by Imogene.

Dr. Fleeger, Imogene, Meghan, and Ashley caught 1000 Philoscia, 160 Melampus, and 180 Orchestia to start a mesocosm experiment.  The marsh proved fruitful and petri dishes were assembled in the barn, ready for critters to start chowing down on some dead Spartina patens.

The algae team continued to investigate the mysterious abundance of algae in the dark mosquito ditches.  They also studied pond algae and counted diatoms like old pros.

The plant people wandered the marsh looking for crack.  They were successful.

And that, friends, was a week in the life of the TIDE project.

– Ashley

They have arrived. They like the dark, they enjoy feeding on human blood and their bite burns and can leave scars. Can you guess who they are? No not vampires, greenheads! Greenhead flies are out with a vengeance and adding an extra challenge to marsh life; however, we the persevering TIDE team, have overcome them by wearing long clothes, bathing in Skin So Soft and confronting them with courage.

Despite the little buggers, we have all had a very productive week.   Some of the many achievements have been:

   

Meghan and Ashley baked a good-bye cake for Konner.  We miss you Konner!

   

Meghan, Ashley, Chris and Erik made a birthday cake for me!

Two new members have joined our team:

Sam, looking fly with his shades and…

Sarah, also known as the queen of the SIGMAs.

Team Austin and Sam, or the algae people, have been installing fish exclosures and decorated the marsh with more bridal veil for algae to colonize.

   

Team Meghan and Ashley, or the girls, have been collecting their inverts including 4,000 coffee bean snails and deploying more invert filled bags.

   

Chris, Erik and I, or team Ariella-just kidding I mean the plant people, have been busily coring and sorting. We have a total of 20 cores so far. We also teamed up with the girls.

Kate, Linda (Lead PI) and  Bruce (co-PI) have begun preparing for the nutrient challenges. Here they are outfitting a canoe in preparation for a 24-hour water sampling adventure.

Other events of note include:

Erik embarking on his first fill

Plant people cleaning the bathrooms during a house clean up power hour.

Erik, Megan and David perfecting their rapping skills.

We work hard and play hard here in the marsh.

– Ariella

It’s getting a little hotter out on the marsh, but we are finding ways to cope.

Everything ran smoothly this past week and we will be entering July in full stride.

Erik, Ariella, and Chris counted root hairs at full speed; Meghan and Ashley did some early season data analysis; and Austin started examining algae in the ponds.

Kate and Bruce paid their dues to Isus, God of Nitrate.

Rio stopped by again.

David has become the proud father of some baby Melampus.

A few new bodies are still rolling in.  Imogene, a high-school intern local from the Governor’s Academy, has joined our ranks.  She has acted as a renaissance woman, collecting chlorophyll a samples, labeling bottles, entering data, collecting diatoms with Austin, measuring grass and counting inverts with Meghan and Ashley, and much, much more.  Everyone’s life has become a little easier since her arrival this past week.

   

As some are just getting their first salty taste of the marsh, Konner is saying his final goodbyes to the mummichogs.  He had what may very well be his last bite of American Barbecue on Thursday.

We conducted a little whiteboard poll this week.  It asked some important and probing questions.  Here are the results (n = 8):

1) Do you think Salicornia is tasty?
Yes: 75%
No: 12.5%
Haven’t tried it: 12.5%

2) Would you eat an amphipod for $10?
Yes: 37.5 (Note: David said he would eat one for $1)
No: 62.5 (Note: Meghan said that if offered $13 she would eat and amphipod and also drink 1 spoonful of tire water, whatever that is)

3) Favorite creek
NE:12.5%
CL: 12.5%
WE: 25%
SW: 50% (Note: for some this is highly contingent on boat availability)

4) Favorite truck?
Old Grey Mare/Silver Bullet: 50%
The Red Truck: 50%

5) Would you consider yourself a:
a. plant person: 45%
b. bird person: 9%
c. invert person: 9%
d. microbial/biogeochemical person: 0% (yikes!!)
e.fish person: 9%
f. ecosystem person: 27%

Another week of TIDE and the team keeps growing with returner Chris blistering back into the swing of things.

Two additions from Conn Coll, Erik and Ariella arrived looking to get to the root of the marsh cracking.

Some 2 and 3 am strolls and swims were taken on the marsh as the season’s first Flume Nets were deployed beneath the stars and pink glow of the sunrise.

Dr. Warren, Dr. Deegan, and Rio paid a visit to troubleshoot coring techniques and caught everyone up to speed in the first TIDE Project meeting of the field season.

The new chemistry lab trailer arrived and provides excellent additional, air-conditioned, lab space; and Kate’s new Lair.

Ashley and Meghan worked throughout the week to deploy their handmade detritus invert cages.

The tanks continue to guzzle and pump fertilizer allowing more team members to learn how to drive the boat. Back at the house all 9 inhabitants assisted Chris in devouring eight 100% Compostable Sun Chip bags that he will use for a plastic degradation experiment on the marsh. The chips helped fuel work for the week as well as late night Spades games and PIG and Knockout on the basketball court.

– Chris

The number of people in the house has exploded up to 6 people with two new REU’s joining the rest of us.

Meghan has returned for another year of what can only be described as fun in the sun.

A newcomer Ashley has joined us for a summer of marsh adventures she will try to forget.

Tank fills continue constantly, presenting unforeseen challenges and foreseen human error.

Bags of fertilizer open seemingly on their own adding clean up duty.  Sweeney couldn’t wait for the next high tide to pump and consequently overfilled with excitement and water.  A Clubhead mishap was attributed to an angry water hose which caused an unexpected early morning marsh shower.

In other news, flume nets have been installed at all 6 creeks.  The Marshview crew is restlessly awaiting their first midnight sampling assignments.  Hours upon hours of S. patens detritus sorting has taken place in the lab this past week.

The marsh hasn’t been the only source of work.  The dumpster has been moved in preparation for a new lab/trailer that is to arrive shortly.  A new toilet has also been installed in order to stop a potentially smelly leak.  The grey truck was given an oil change to ensure smooth running throughout the summer.

On a leisurely note, late night spades and Scrabble competitions have caused some team members to lose a few hours of sleep.  For some it was worth it, and sadly for some it was not.  Weekends have included a few fishing trips with the experts pulling in the fish and the novices gazing on jealously.  Only one person was foul hooked…

   

– Konner