Today as we returned to port, we sailed into Narragansett Bay with the red buoys on our right hand side. Red Right Returning. We pulled into port early in the morning.

Here is what the buoys look like on land!

I am very grateful to the CO, Commander Stephen Beckwith, the XO, Lieutenant Russell Haner, our Chief Scientists Phil Politis and the entire group of scientists and crew of the Henry B. Bigelow for their hospitality these last two weeks. Every person on board did everything they could to make this project a reality and to make this blog as valuable a resource as possible for the children who worked on it.

Thank you as well to Jennifer Hammond, Elizabeth McMahon of the Teacher At Sea Program, Commander Michael Gallagher in NOAA for support and for help with bandwidth issues, as well as Diane Stanitsky who made our Drifter Buoy happen.

Thank you as well to the SOCSD School Board, Administration, staff and students for their enthusiastic support for this project, and finally thank you to the SOCSD students and families who participated. It has been a pleasure working with you.

We made contact with our drifter buoy. Here is a map of where it has gone of far. It appears to be drifting south along the US coast. I can't wait to see what happens. We will have more data in the days and weeks to come. Check the drifter buoy link on this site to keep track of it.

This will be my last blog entry for this project.

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Now, final responses to comments and questions:

... And now the answer to the most frequently asked question of the entire trip: No, I did not get sick! Thanks be to good weather.

SP: Good question about the skate. I put the skate case back in the sea, and from there, I do not know what happened to it. Truth be told, most fish do not survive their first day. That is why most female fish lay many eggs many times during their life. Very few of the young ever become adults.

CM: Melting ice sheets and glaciers can (and has already) raise the sea level. Though it may raise it quite a bit, it will not flood the entire Earth. There is not enough water in the ice sheets for anything even close to that. But it will cause problems for areas near the coast that are low down. Climate change is also causing areas in the west of the USA to be a bit dryer and that has people worried about finding drinking water for some cities. Remember, you can't drink sea-water because of the salt. If it sounds confusing, think of it this way: Warm weather can cause deserts to grow and ice to melt. Thanks for your great question.

Is the water cold? Well, yesterday on my way home, I went swimming in the ocean on one of my favorite beaches in Rhode Island. It was not too cold, but it did wake me up.

The torpedo ray was about 4 feet long. I do not remember the weight, but it was very heavy.

NT: You are right, the shimp had eggs. Will the lobster be OK? Most of the lobsters we found on the ship went back into the sea and were just fine. They do quite well. We keep a few to analyze in the lab to see if we could solve the Shell Disease mystery.

HM: Were the fish interesting? Absolutely! Thanks for your kind words. I'll be back to school next week. See you then.

Are we having trouble finding fish in the ocean? No, but we do see changes. We did not find many cod near cape cod. We did find lots of fish that were not there many years before, like dogfish.

AR: Water pressure makes things smaller by squeezing on them from all sides. That's also what makes your ears pop when you swim in deep water.

SZ: I did not get stung by anything I touched.

LG: and many others: Zee and Snuggy are just fine. They are home too.

VP: I think octopus you saw were adults. That particular species of octopus does not get very large.

The shrimp were very small and did not weigh much. We weighed them in buckets together, so I don't know how much the individuals weighed. The cups start to shrink as soon as they hit water. The further down they go, the more they shink.

All the cups got small. I kept two on deck to show us how small they actually got.
I like to go to sea because I find it fun and because I like to learn.

B.B, the ray I was holding in one of the blog entries had an electrical charge if you touch it (I was wearing rubber gloves). That was the only dangerous creature.

J. I was not scared. I trusted the crew and scientists to know what I should and should not do.

P. I can't wait to show you that book as soon as it is done. Thanks for video conferencing with me.

Mrs. Christie Blick's Class. Yes, I will get you a water sample. I don't have a shell sample, but will try to get you one from Dr. Kunkel.

NW, they have a hospital that can handle many injuries. If the person is very badly hurt or sick, they would have to air-lift them to land.

MH: Wonderful comment. I enjoyed your thoughts. I have several baseball teams that I like, but while I was on the ship, I became a Red-Sox fan with all my New England friends for game 5 of the series. How exciting! Go Ortiz!

GH: I chose to go to sea. I love it. No one made me do it.
SQ: Good thought.

CP: Many species are affected by climate change. Many more than we probably realize.
I eat great things on the ship. They have excellent food.

Mrs. Christie Blick's Class: Dr. Kunkel has tested his shells in acid and is still working on finding out exactly what is going on. It may be that more than one factor are effecting lobsters.
MM: Coal helps create global warming when you burn it because carbon is released in the smoke.

JC: How long will global warming last? Even if we stop polluting now, it will take a long time to reverse the changes. The problem is we haven't stopped polluting, so the real answer is, no one knows. It depends on what we do now. Good question.

SP and TD: There are many things we can do to stop global warming and to help the ocean ecosystem. Let's talk about that in class when you come in. I have some video to show you about it.

KM: Because it is easier to say lets stop global warming, then to really do something about it.

KD: Carbon dioxide is a part of our ecosystem and it is important. Trees need it to breathe and without it in our air, the world would be too cold for us to live. We must have some carbon dioxide in our air. We just should not have so much of it. Think of it this way. They say that eating an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but eating 10 apples gives you a belly ache. Too much of even healthy things can cause problems.

AS: Good questions. No, we don't think that all the fish will die off, but change can be hard and it may cause a lot of damage to our earth if we continue what we are doing.

Mrs. Narciso's Class. Thanks for writing. Good thoughts.

Mrs. Beglin's Class: Great job. Thanks for writing.

MA are there huge spiders on the ship? No. There are no bugs that I saw.

JK and his mom: Thanks for your kind words and thanks for writing.