finding inspriation in the chesapeake

I spent Thursday on a small boat with some NOAA scientists helping them recover crab pots, measure and tag crabs, and learning about what it is like working as a marine ecologist.
It was a lovely day out on the Chesapeake - something I needed after a long, hard week.

This guy's lucky number is 393

They get put back in the pot so that next week the scientists can see who is getting in and who is getting out. Good luck, buddy.

Luckily in the middle of the day we came upon some marine trash - a balloon. This is a very very typical and unfortunate piece of pollution. I hate balloons. They fly away and where do they go? Into our river systems, our bays, and our oceans. People - don't buy balloons. And if you do, make sure they get popped and put in the trash. Else a turtle is going to try to eat it or it'll get trapped in the gills of a fish. Really really not good. But this balloon was so special we had to get a picture of it:

The balloon reads "with god, all things are possible"

We feel blessed on our trip. Unfortunately to properly secure the balloon we had to stab it multiple times to deflate it.