bay day with stack-up in oyster bay

We spent yesterday in Oyster Bay, celebrating "Bay Day" with the Waterfront Center. Not as attendees, but as vendors. We were there, in spot number 13, representing Stack-Up. I don't quite know how the opportunity came about. I assume it has to do with the fact that we participate in the Center's horseshoe crab census. Somehow Cameron (the guy running the census) hooked us up.

Blair and Ethan handled our table while I watched Asher. The highlight for me was our tour of the bay in a restored 19th-century sailboat. He also spent a lot of time at the touch tank with the crabs, sea cucumbers and other sea beasties.

Back at the table, BVlair and Ethan were handing out Stack-Up materials and getting strangers to do pushups. Anyone who could do 30 pushups in a minute was entered in a raffle to win video game codes. We also made some more contacts.

Music was provided by a Long Island band, Roy Wilson & the Buzzards. They're primarily a rockabilly band, though I noticed they play a lot faster than most traditional rockabilly bands. Not quite psychobilly, but fast. Their sets were a mix of covers and originals. I think my favorite number of theirs was the Moon Mullican classic "Seven Nights to Rock." Admittedly, I know of that song because of Nick Lowe's version.

Other vendors included the National Park Service and the Long Island Whaling Museum.

Unfortunately, attendance was low because of the weather. It was threatening to rain all day. That is, all day until it started to actually rain at around 1:00. Personally, I didn't mind the rain, but it did depress turnout. Hopefully next year's event will be sunnier.

horseshoe crab census: a new season starts

Last night was our first horseshoe crab count for the season. We've been doing this every year for a while. In the spring, we go out to the Waterfront Center in Oyster Bay and count horseshoe crabs. We count the lone males, lone females, mating pairs, and mating groups (generally a female with more than one male), and lone females (though there are rarely any of those). It's sort of like a Star Trek convention for arthropods. We adjust for visibility conditions, and somehow the good folks at the Cornell University Cooperative Extension take our numbers as part of a pool of data to determine...I'm not sure what. How many horseshoe crabs there are?

It was a slow night. We saw fewer than half a dozen. But later in the season is bound to be better, and we'll be seeing several dozen in an evening. Well, it is a chance to walk on the beach at night.

For information: Go here.