The Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge

Hi everyone

Today we are at the Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge.

It was set up 1966 as a refuge for migrating waterfowl that spend the winter here and other bird life. 　 The Discovery Center at the Refuge provides a place for refuge volunteers to meet visitors and answer questions.

Chanel McFollins has written my blog entry about our visit toi the wildlife refuge. I hope you enjoy reading it. - Through Ed the Bear's eyes

Although only the second day of the NABS youth summit, Today was a blast!! First, we went to the Discovery Center on Brazoria. There, my group first toured the environment on the bus with an interesting marsh view of all types of animals including alligators! There were many in the stream and we stopped to take pictures, then continued on to our destination to learn several key facts about the specific marsh land. Then, some of us put on fisher boots & caught some fish, brown shrimp, and a blue crab in the water.

Next, my group went to catch as many insects as we could to determine the freshness of the marsh water. Because there were dragonflies and shrimp caught, the water was undoubtly fresh, however we decided not to drink it.

During this time, there was a mother alligator watching us, for she had previously snatched a net from the preceding group. She swam back and forth, but need harmed us. Did you know alligators can go 2-3 years without eating? Or that the best estimate of its size is to change the units from inches to feet? Well, that's what we talked about in the next section, & I even got to touch one! It was so smooth. I also touched boxed turtles, corn snakes and more!

After lunch we went to OceanWorks, which is a company that creates, builds, and manufactures ocean technology and equipment for underwater building and projects. An example of this would be divers trying to fix the broken oil rig during the BP oil spill. They use a suit called an ADS, which stands for Atmospheric Dive Suit. One person usually goes down for half an hour to inspect the premisis, then goes back to land to formulate a resolution, and works for 6-8 hours at a time. They are able to come back to land so quickly because the ADS remains at 1 A the whole time, while their air is being filtered. If cut off, the air will last up to 48 hours! I even got to get inside of one. It was a bit oily, but the experience was priceless.

We also took put one copy of the cups Ms. Michelle had us make at 1,000 ft to understand why myself and the humans in NABS can't go deep underwater without the proper equipment. Today was awesome! I can't wait to see what NASA has to offer.

I was invited to take part in the 25th Anniversary Event of the Lewes Railway Land Nature Reserve back in the UK. This beautiful nature reserve has woodland, grassland and like the refuge, it has many freshwater habitat to. I was unable to accept because I would be here at the Youth Summit, so my sister Bella went instead. Bella took my display stand about my adventures and ran some bug hunts with visitors. You can read about her adventures and see some of the wildlife on Bella's weblog on the following links

Part 1

http://theadventuresofbellathebear.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/lewes-railway-land-nature-reserve-25th.html

Part 2
http://theadventuresofbellathebear.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/lewes-railway-land-nature-reserve-25th_11.html

Bye for now, Ed the Bear