Ecology

Joppa Flats Education Center invites families to join them for a full day of free outdoor and indoor nature activities, art projects, and birding! While some songbirds have left for a warmer climate, our resident winter birds are happily preparing for the cold and the snow.

As part of Coastsweep 2012, volunteers are encouraged to come to Back Beach or Front Beach to help in the statewide effort to keep our coastline clean. Trash collected will be measured and analyzed, and the data will be sent to Washington DC to aid the government in creating legislation to minimize trash in our oceans! These specific beach cleanups are coordinated by Renee Waller. 

As part of Coastsweep 2012, Joppa Flats Education Center and Parker River National Wildlife Refuge encourage volunteers to come to Plum Island and help in the statewide effort to keep our coastline clean. COASTSWEEP is the annual statewide cleanup of Massachusetts coastal and riverine environments. Over more than 20 years, COASTSWEEP has engaged thousands of volunteers in cleaning hundreds of miles of shoreline and riverbanks.

This is a whale watch with a birding twist! Mass Audubon's Joppa Flats Education Center has teamed up with Newburyport Whale Watch, to create this birding whale watch. This program focuses on seabirds, but we plan on seeing and learning about marine mammals as well.

As part of Coastsweep 2012, volunteers are encouraged to come to Crane Beach on the Crane Estate to help in the statewide effort to keep our coastline clean. We’ll begin the morning by picking up the beach after a busy summer and we’ll end the morning tallying our efforts.  If you come to help out, please feel free to stay for a complimentary lunch!

What creatures live in Salem Harbor? Find out at this Trails & Sails 2012 beach seining demonstration at Waikiki Beach at Winter Island Maritime Park! Salem Sound Coastwatch staff and volunteers will walk a large seining net into the water and then drag it back to shore.  We'll lay it out, gather around to examine the catch and talk about what we find. Seining is used by marine scientists to gather information about species living in a body of water. SSCW staff will answer questions and share information about marine habitats and the ecology of Salem Harbor and Salem Sound.

Lisa Hutchings Teacher-Naturalist from Mass Audubon's Joppa Flats Education Center and the crew of Newburyport Harbor Tours Inc.'s Yankee Clipper invite you and your family for an exciting exploration of the lower Merrimack River ecosystem.

The Whalemobile is coming to Maritime Gloucester! Join whale naturalist Cynde McInnis for a very special Creature of the Week, featuring a life-sized inflatable humpback whale named Nile. Kids will develop an awareness of and fascination for whales that inspires them to care about the oceans and the wild world around us.  Great for PreK - 6 yrs with an adult.

Come to Maritime Gloucester and discover what lives near the bottom of the oceanic food chain!  Does the term plankton define a certain species? No! It is a term used to describe the enourmous biomass of microscopic sea creatures ranging from nascent shrimp, fish and jelly fish to the tiny frye of lobster and squid. Explore the depths as we take samples directly from Gloucester Harbor to the lab where attendees will have hands-on experiences with the lifeforms that serve as a major source of food in the sea!