For those of you who want to explore the beauty and fascinating history of the Boston Harbor Islands, Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands (FBHI) are sponsoring a New Years Day trip to Thompson Island. This annual boat trip is the best way to start the New Year! Participants will visit Thompson Island with its meadows, forests, beaches and 40-acre salt marsh. Click on TICKET.
 
Pack a picnic, explore on your own or take a tour with an FBHI volunteer. There will be a building open for warm-up space and a book and merchandise sales table. Park policy is no pets and no alcohol.

You will travel on MV Freedom, which holds 300 people and is heated. The trip will depart at 12:00 p.m. sharp and return to the dock at 4:00 p.m. MV Freedom departs from Rowes Wharf; board at Mass Bay Lines, behind the Boston Harbor Hotel. Tickets can be purchased on the day of the trip (cash, check and credit cards accepted), but it's best to reserve in advance.

The FBHI of spirited volunteers has worked on behalf of the islands for more than three decades. The nonprofit group leads tours, provides visitor service, and hosts activities and educational programs. 

Maritime heritage tours

	One of many Boston Harbor tour vessels pass by LV-112 with their tour guides, who narrate the lightship's unique history to thousands of passengers from spring through the fall seasons.

In 2017, Nantucket/LV-112 will be included in a new maritime heritage program that also will offer tours to other unique historic sites in Massachusetts. The program is organized in conjunction with the UMass Boston Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI). The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UMass Boston is a membership-based community of mature adults who enjoy learning and want to spend time with like-minded people. OLLI's mission is to foster accessible lifelong learning, individual growth, and social connection for mature learners age 50+ by providing stimulating opportunities to enrich the intellectual, social and cultural lives of members, regardless of educational background.

Passionate lighthouse lover and climber, age 12

The USLM continues its enrollment in the Professional Development Sea Grant Workshops for Educators in an effort to offer students enhanced, timely and relevant oceanographic educational programs that replicate  Nantucket/LV-112's participation with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's ( WHOI) past partnership with LV-112 when it was a commissioned USCG lightship.

Students extract a plankton specimen, captured in a tow net off LV-112, for viewing under the microscope

The USLM is a staunch supporter of teaching students at a young age to become aware of their environment, especially the environmental effects of pollution impacting our food chain from the earth's oceans. Our most recent workshop focused on the problems that discarded plastic waste causes to the ocean environment. More than 5 trillion items of discarded and deteriorated plastic litter, weighing over 250,000 tons, are afloat at sea.
     
The ongoing Woods Hole Sea Grant professional development workshops for educators, based at WHOI, assist educators in preparing curricula or teaching units on subjects in oceanography. Packets of outreach and curriculum materials for elementary, secondary and continuing adult education are prepared by various WHOI offices. This most recent workshop focused on plastics pollution and the negative impact it has on the oceans, wildlife, organisms and potentially humans. Workshop presenters were Dr. Tracy Mincer of the WHOI Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Department, and Jeffery Brodeur, Woods Hole communications and outreach specialist.

	Several 5-gallon buckets of miscellaneous plastic litter were collected by workshop participants. More than 180 species of animals are known to have ingested plastic debris, including birds, fish, turtles and marine mammals

In addition, the workshop included classroom and on-site coastal field work, involving debris cleanup, reporting and documentation. During the field study portion, within a relatively short amount of time, workshop attendees collected several 5-gallon buckets containing a variety of plastic waste debris such as polypropylene rope, plastic bottles, cups, deteriorated plastic toys, and fishing line/netting, that had washed up from the tidal currents.

Jeffrey M. Brodeur, communications and outreach specialist for the Woods Hole Sea Grant Program, holds a plastic waste treatment filtration disc found on the beach, one of millions accidentally released in 2011 and still washing up on New England coastal beaches, including Falmouth, MA

In March 2011, an estimated 4 million sewage disks were accidentally released into the Merrimack River from a wastewater treatment facility in Hooksett, NH, following heavy rainstorms. To date, an estimated 4 million disks have been recovered from the 4.3 million determined to have been released. The 2 1/2"-diameter plastic disks have been found along the coast, from Maine to Long Island, NY.

A sea turtle with a partially ingested shredded and discarded sheet of plastic. Many incidents such as this harm and disfigure marine life and coastal wildlife

The Woods Hole Sea Grant and WHOI Professional Development Workshops for Educators is an excellent resource for teachers who learn information that ultimately can be passed on to students, helping them better understand our earth's environment, wildlife, and the positive or negative impact that can affect our health. For more information about the workshops, contact Katherine Madin, PhD, (508) 289-3639 or [email protected]

All electronic donations will be processed by PayPal.