Skimmer Says... Volunteers and Programs

Want to be more involved at the Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve? Tune in to this episode to learn about the various volunteer opportunities and education programs that the DNERR hosts throughout the year. From the seedling potting to horseshoe crab spawning survey, there’s so much to participate in! 

To contact the education team about an education program or volunteer event, email us at dnerrprograms@delaware.gov.

You can follow us on Facebook at @DNERR, Instagram at @delawarenerr or on X at @DNERR.

Transcript

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Welcome to Skimmer Says, an estuarine podcast, hosted by the Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve. We’re are your hosts. I'm Laurel. I'm Sadie. And I'm Akshay. And together we make up our education team. Today we're going to be talking a lot about volunteer and education programs and how you can get involved in working and hanging out with us. Yeah. So if you tuned in to the last episode, you would have learned all about us who DNERR is and what makes up DNERR. So as the education team, we work with the other components to create volunteer opportunities that anyone can be part of. Yeah, so we work a lot cross-sectorally. So the education team, we work a lot with our stewardship and our research team to bring the science that we do to the general public. One of our longest standing volunteer projects is our horseshoe crab surveys. They are very popular. We've been doing them for, I want to say, about 20 years now, and they're a lot of fun. So let me paint you a picture. So we are going out onto the beaches at night in May and June. On the nights that are two nights before, the night of, and two nights after, the full and the new moons. And the purpose of these surveys is to get a snapshot, or a picture in time, of our male to female ratios of our horseshoe crabs on our beaches. So DNERR coordinates three of the beaches. We're just a very small part of a much larger project. So we coordinate, Kitts Hummock, North Bowers and Ted Harvey Wildlife Areas beaches. And it's a super fun time. That's how I really figured out that I really love science. And so now I'm really excited that I get to co-coordinate our horseshoe crab surveys at the reserve with one of our environmental scientists here. But it's a lot of fun. You're going out. You're counting horseshoe crabs it’s dark, the light of the moon, along with our headlamps. And I think it's a really fun time and a really good way to dip your toe into community science. And your hands too, right? Your hands too. Just your toes, your hands, maybe up to your elbows. Most of your limbs I feel like are in the water. Our feet. We're trying not to, you know, swim. Swim. Yeah, yeah. We're gonna let the horseshoe crabs take a swim at that time and not us. Okay. In this instance, it's not about us. So we do require trainings for our horseshoe crab surveys. So those usually take place around March. And we are going to have them posted on our Eventbrite page so that you can find out how to get trained for our surveys. So that's my favorite volunteer project. But I know that we have a lot of other ones that we do. Yeah, I'm really excited for the horseshoe crab training, actually. I've never participated in the horseshoe crab survey, so I'm really looking forward to it this year. I know it's a huge project here, so after just starting here, I feel like it's going to be a lot of fun. Sadie, you've done it before too. It's very interesting because I had never done it or seen it before until working here. And it's very hands on, very hands on. But that's the fun of it, right? Yes, Yes. I like looking at the picture that we have of all the horseshoe crabs in like the PVC like square that we use for surveying. And I think it's just, it's so unique because you don't expect so many to be out there. Yeah, I would say that it kind of fluctuates. So like you see there's seasonality differences. So I would say that our peak peak nights that we see a lot of the times can be towards like the end of May, early June, but you never know what you're going to get when you're walking out there. I think that's a little bit of the fun of it, of it might be in early May night and the weather conditions are perfect and the water temperature is perfect, and there's no wind and there's no waves, and there's tons of horseshoe crabs. And it may be the beginning of June and we're having a storm, and they don't want to come up to spawn and lay their eggs. So I want to say it's like a every single night you're not sure what you're going to be walking into. And I think that little level of uncertainty really is thrilling. You'll learn more about the science of horseshoe crabs later. Oh, yeah. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. After the Horseshoe Crabs survey, we have more volunteer opportunities. And this one I actually was able to participate in in the fall. But we have a hand in hand volunteer opportunity, which is our seedling potting and our tree planting. So every spring in April, around Earth Day, and Arbor Day, we first host our seedling potting. And this is essentially hosted at the St. Jones Reserve. We will have volunteers come down we’ll pot seedlings into our nursery here at the reserve, and they'll stay in the nursery and over time, probably about three years. They'll grow to be able to be planted in our fall volunteer event, our tree planting. Yeah. So a seedling just for those who aren't familiar, because I think that we think of seeds and then we think of trees, a seedling is like a baby tree. So it's a tree that's only about. Well, some of them are bigger than others. It can be like eight inches. It can be like a foot and a half tall. But it's baby trees. Yes. So we're putting those into pots, not just the like the small seeds. It's like it's obviously much bigger than that. We don't have a grow light out in the nursery. No, trying to make them sprout. Yeah. So those are, those are out in the pots in the spring. But then in the fall. So these actually the seedlings take about three years to develop until they're ready to be actually planted in another location. So in the fall we host our tree planting. And this is done at the Blackbird Creek, our other component of the Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve. So whether you volunteered in the spring for the seedling potting, or if you have never done a volunteer event before, you can come out there. And then we dig holes for everyone. We provide gloves and shovels and we're all just out there planting trees to restore a native barrier of all native tree species. So it's really neat how these two volunteer events go hand in hand together. And I think previously, we planted around 270 trees at Blackbird Creek. So it's a busy day. I'm always like 270 trees are so many trees, but it's a really big family event. I feel like you have all generations that are coming to help us plant these trees. So I think it's really rewarding to see, we have a lot of Boy Scouts and Cub Scout groups that come and hang out with us for that event, and it's really cool to see them come back year after year. So you're seeing them like grow up and their environmental journey, and you can kind of see like a little bit of yourself in them of like I was there once. But it's always like there's so many trees. How are we going to get them all planted? Yeah. No. It comes together really fast. The number of volunteers makes it a lot easier. So all of our volunteers we are super grateful for. I will say that there does need to be a huge shout out to our conservation techs, who put in a lot of work the week of digging all of the holes, because it takes a lot of time to actually fill the holes in properly. There is a science to planting trees, so I have to give a huge shout out to our conservation tech teams because they spend a lot of time working on digging the holes, planting, and like getting all of the trees up there, getting everything ready. Watering afterwards. There's so much that goes into it before and after that they take control and care of. So we're very grateful for that. Yeah, they make a huge difference. But I love that program too. Yeah I love them all. Yeah. That's a it's a lot of work but a lot of fun. They're all very satisfying when you're done. Yeah. Yeah. You can actually see some of the native tree areas when you visit us at the Blackbird Creek Fall Festival. That happens on the third Saturday of October. It is a family fun event, so you can come and visit us. There's hay rides, artisan vendors, informational exhibitors. It's free. It is free. It's at the Blackbird Creek Reserve. But if you want to volunteer, that's also available. We have volunteers to help us at the information booth, the kids crafts and face painting. But if you're more of a lone wolf, we have Parking. We have cleaning up or setting up the festival. Trash collection. Yep. And we would not be able to run the fall fest if it weren't for all the volunteers we get. They make the event run so smooth for us and I appreciate everyone's hard work for that festival because putting it together is a lot of work, but it's beautiful when it comes all together. Yeah, we see well over a thousand people at that event yearly, and I think that it's really cool to see the community come together. It's really our opportunity to get back in touch with our Blackbird and Townsend community. And you see a lot of the same people coming back year after year, and they're coming because it's really like a one stop shop for talking to a lot of our local DNREC agencies that are coming in and they're talking it's like our wetlands group and us, our coastal team, our climate team. And then, a lot of our partners that we work with. So if there's like a question that they need to have answered, it's a really great opportunity to come and engage with our DNREC family. And it's also a really great time. There's artisans, food trucks, there's music, music. I love the music because I can be all the way back by the hay rides and hear what’s being played, and I think that that's a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah. Sadie, you put in a lot of work into the Fall Festival this year. What was your favorite part? I really love the hay ride, like I even as I was the attendant. So I did the talking and stuff on the hayride. But it was very fun conversing with people and just being able to go through the reserve. Yeah, I love the hayride. Our hayride drivers do a really great job. Even if it gets a little dusty. That's just because we it was we hadn't had a lot of rain, so usually it's not quite so dusty. I would say I really enjoyed setting up and like seeing the pictures of everything that happened. I thought it was so cool that like seeing like the vision of, oh, we have tables here and the people will be like sitting and eating there. And then seeing the pictures of it all come true. It was like, wow. That was a lot of work. And it really worked out. Yeah. Whenever I onboard a new team member, I'm like, just bear with me. My picture that I've drawn you, it's going to come to life. And on the day of it'll make so much more sense than this little picture that I've drawn on a piece of paper. I promise that it will all come together, and it always does. But it is a team effort for sure. It's an all hands on deck sort of thing, and our volunteers make a huge difference in making sure that that runs smoothly. We love our volunteers, we love the people that come and work with us and hang out with us, and we do like to take our time to tell them that it's not just a come volunteer with us and then you're done. We'll see you never. We really like to take the time to recognize our volunteers. So at the end of the year, in December every year, we host a volunteer recognition dinner, and we invite all the volunteers that have spent time with us over the past year. And during that time, we have dinner. I love dinner, and we also have a presentation on the latest research, usually from one of our scientists or from one of our partners. But we do so much fun science and work that people are loving to hear updates about that and a lot of times it's what is the latest thing happening at the reserve. And then we also give them a certificate of appreciation so that you can keep it in your records, keep it in your files, and you just know that, we really enjoy the time that you spend with us. I actually went back, I was going through some folders at my house, and I found one from when I was volunteering at the reserve from when I was in high school, and I sent it to Sadie and Akshay and I was like, look, look at this. This is so cool. So definitely you can hold on to this. And it's really fun. So I mean, we obviously appreciate all of our volunteers, but for some people volunteering just isn't for you. So we host a variety of education programs as well. And those I think personally are for everyone because they're free and they're almost always available every season. So every season we host different events, but usually we'll have some similar ones, such as our nature and education hikes. So we kind of host two, one here at the St. Jones Reserve, and some are at the Blackbird Creek. Besides that, we host a variety of joint programs with the John Dickinson Plantation. We like doing a lot of the science while they focus on the history. So we have some old programs with them, such as the bayberry candle workshops, where they all kind of explain how colonists used to make candles. And we'll explain the science behind bayberries, and then we'll all go and dip our own candles, which I got to do this year. And that was a lot of fun, because I've never made a candle before. And then doing it like how the colonists used to do it was really interesting. It is one of my favorite events to send my new staff to, to help the John Dickinson out, because I thought it was so cool the first time that I did it. And so I'm like, you have to go. You have to go to the bayberry candle workshop. Besides the bayberry candle workshop, there's also lantern tours, and then some of our newer ones include, like an assortment of like game nights. So we've had bingo and trivia nights and those are always very popular. Yeah. And we usually like to try around the, late winter, early spring to hold a tea time program where we talk about our tea program that you'll hear about in future episodes. Teaser, teaser. And we also talk about the historic uses of tea. So I really love our partnership that we have there because it's really a unique blend of the science and the history, and I feel like it complements really, really well. So we love their team over there. They do a really great job. But I'm also really excited because you two have been brainstorming up so many fun and different programs. So we do usually run like our boat trips in the summer and our hikes seasonally, whether they're at Blackbird or at the St. Jones Reserve. But you guys have been coming up with a really, really cool stuff this season, and I'm really excited to see what else you guys brainstorm up, because it's a lot of fun new programs. So a lot of cool things. I think besides those, there's also some workshops that the three of us here at the reserve have been working on. So those are usually drop in or we'll have you register for them. But we kind of just have you come in and we'll teach you a little bit some, some science or some topic, and then we can make some arts and crafts. So I love arts and crafts. We did have some questions from a couple of our viewers. So shall we get into some questions? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Our first one is are there any volunteers opportunities we can do from home? That is a really good question. So we are currently brainstorming some ways. So I will start this off by saying at this time no, we are brainstorming some ways that hopefully we can make some accessible volunteer programs that are capable of being done from home. I know that one of the things that we've looked at is our trail cams and our wildlife cams and kind of being able to look at and catalog some of that. So still at this time, a work in progress. But I'm really hopeful that we're going to make those, up and running soon. And then we have are there any programs for toddlers that are really interested into nature? So that is also a really good question. I know that we've done library programs in the past that are kind of geared towards toddlers. We do toddler programs upon request. So usually if there's a homeschool group or a preschool that wants to bring their kiddos out to us or have us go to them, then we'll do that. A lot of the time we don't run a ton of specifically toddler programs at the reserve, but Akshay was mentioning a little bit earlier some of our drop-in workshops. This previous winter season, we had an ornament making workshop for the winter season. So we use tree cookies and we use different materials that we could decorate with and put around your house. And so a lot of our programs are family friendly. We just require that an adult is with your younger kids. But I won't say that necessarily. At this time, we're running a lot of specifically toddler programs. They're pretty much on request. But if you wanted to request one. Yeah. You can reach us at dnerrprograms@delaware.gov. Yeah, we'll drop that, that email up on the screen here. And also in the link, the description down below. So that you can figure out how to contact us. DNERRprograms@delaware.gov is the best way to get ahold of us. But also I encourage you to follow our Facebook page. It's @DNERR and we post a lot of our programs on our Facebook page. Registration that we do have for programs that have limited space We put on our Eventbrite page, which if you type in Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve, we'll also link it in the description below. But if you type into the Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve into Eventbrite, our page pops up. You can find out what it is that we're doing. And like I said, we put all of our stuff out on our social media. So follow us on Facebook @DNERR, Instagram@delawarenerr, and on X @DNERR. So yeah, well, I think that's all for this episode. Thank you all for tuning in. And that is what the Skimmer Says about programs and volunteering. Next month, we're going to be talking about our very muddy marshes with our very first guest, Doctor Molly Yacano So she's our research coordinator. Yes. So we're excited to have her join us on the couch. Yeah. So stay tuned for that. And that's all for now. Bye bye bye.