Summer's Finally Here!

It's the final day of June and only today is it finally beginning to feel like summer. For the first time since last year, the cobbled streets of downtown Nantucket seem to be alive with tourists and seasonal residents. Today is the first day I've been out on the water, assisting Craig in checking his lobster traps. The first trap we checked produced a lobster, the fourth of the season, already exceeding last year's bounty for this early in the summer. While we were out near the east jetty (a friend of ours identified it as "Jetty Betty"), we watched workers atop the fog horn and signal tower working on the tower's various mechanisms surrounded by nesting double-crested cormorants.

Here's the Eagle slow ferry passing by us on the other side of the jetty, on its way back to the mainland with passengers and vehicles.

Above, Craig is at work emptying the lobster traps of the hordes of spider crabs that had taken up residence in the traps since he last checked them during the past week and loading the traps with cans of cat food, the bait du jour since no bluefish remains were available from Gliddens's.