On Tuesday we started giving the “Ocean Quest” multimedia presentation in the visitor center. Some of the sciences of the presentation seemed to go over the heads of some of the younger people present and needless to say that the number of people present in the auditorium was much higher at the beginning of the presentation than it was at the end. For the rest of the day we helped to work on Diana Roman’s project on shore erosion (in one of our new wave tanks). We removed the sand from the tank (which was clouding up the water) and replaced it with plastic pellets.

Wednesday was the 4th of July. For the occasion I wore a little British Union Jack button. I also gave an estuary tour on that day. Several of the people on the tour desperately wanted to see a small crab. I spent about 5 minutes chasing a good sized Purple Shore crab through the rocks in our salt water stream. When I finally caught him, he pinched me on the finger; ouch! Finally i just picked him up in my hat, that seemed to be amusing enough for the people. Around noon some strange person came into the visitor center and started asking us about the possibility of “artificially creating hurricanes in order to reflect more sun light in an effort to combat climate change”. We told him that that might be a tiny bit problematic but that we would be sure to ask an expert about.

On Thursday we did another ocean quest presentation. Fewer people left this time and I sat in the audience and took notes on the presentation so that we might find ways of improving it. I offered to do the estuary walk a second day in a row. This time I was able to keep the crowd busy the entire time by letting them play with the shrimp slurped out on the mud flats.

On Friday we got to work on our wave tanks again. Some of the calculations that we had been playing with in the previous week for the Tsunami tank were entered into the computer. Now the wave tank would not splash as much. We gave another Ocean Quest Presentation as well. I think that they are starting to get better but we still have a few bugs that we need to work out, such as getting more exciting videos of volcanic eruptions.

Saturday was my last day. We did yet another ocean quest presentation and an estuary tour. I had forgotten to eat breakfast that day so i ran into the gift shop and bought some “Astronaut Ice cream.” It was interesting to say the least, I don’t know how they figure that its ice cream though. The day was nearly as busy as the fourth of July had been. It finally winded down by 4:00. During the day instead of showing one long film (like Blue Planet) we decided that it would be better to “control the crowds”. When we locked up for the day we discovered that a family was missing their daughter. After a 5 minute search she was found hiding in the Woman’s restroom. Crisis averted.