Skimmer Says.... Happy New Year!

New year, same us! Join us for this episode as we discuss all that happened in 2025 and our goals for 2026. 

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 or Instagram at @delawarenerr.

Transcript

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Welcome to Skimmer Says, an estuarine podcast hosted by the Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve. We are your hosts. I'm Laurel. I'm Alissa. I'm not a host. I'm a guest. My name's Sadie. I'm also a guest. I'm Akshay. So for those of you that have been longtime listeners, you know that Sadie and Akshay departed us back in August. I think that you still got to see a podcast or two with them after they left. Yeah. Pre-filmed. The secret’s out. But Alissa and Zoe have taken their place. But it's a new year. It's a new us. But we wanted to reflect back on to the fun that 2025 was. So we asked for Sadie and Akshay to come back to talk about the first eight months of the year and Alissa to finish us out. So 2025 is over. It was a fun year. I figured that today we would go ahead and we would reflect on what happened in 2025, and then look to the future and what our goals and our hopes are for the year 2026. Are you ready for game time? Always. Yes. Let's play. All right, so this is kind of a stereotypical new year game time. I'd like to say New Year, New Me, but it'll never be that. So, I figured that we would go through some of our New Year's resolutions. So who wants to go first? I nominate Akshay. I literally nose goesed. It doesn't matter. Okay. I guess nose goes first now. Okay. I don't make the rules. My New Year's resolution for this year, which I guess is something I wanted to do. I would like to go skydiving, actually. I've always been afraid of heights, but I want to try it, so I feel like it'll be fun. Something new for 26. Yeah, like I said, I'm terrified. Anyways. That's okay. I, you know, I support you if you want to take up skydiving. You text me when you're done. I think it would be fun. I'll take a video. Yeah. That's cool. Alissa, one of my New Year's resolutions also is kind of basic. I do want to read more. I read six books last year. I want to go for 12 books. A book a month. That's my goal. You should join a book club, right? Yeah. Maybe. Any other ones? I want to dance more. Okay. What else did I say? I said I wanted to create more art. I think there's a long list. So those are. Those are the top three so far. Art, dance and read. Art, dance and read. In your free time. Yeah. Yeah. I'm having fun. Yeah. I think that I would like to read a little bit more. I think I set a new reading goal for myself every single year that I read one more book than I did last year. Okay, so in 2025, I read 39 books. I did not have to go to school at night. I had a little bit more time. And so this year I want to read 40 books. But I think that I also want to spend more time with my friends. And I think that that's my other goal for 2026. So every year I create a vision board for myself on Pinterest, and it always has the same things on it. But it's always like, make new friends, hang out with new people to have more adventures. But the one actual goal I set for myself this year was to read at least I want to try to read ten books. Cause with school, I don't read any of the books that I want to read. So I want to read ten of my own books, and I'm almost done with book one. Oh, congratulations! That is something that I always found hard when I was in college was like, by the time I got done reading my textbooks and doing my assignments, I was like, I don't want to read anything else. My eyes are tired. So I had a hard time reading like books for fun, so I love that. I think that you all three can accomplish your goals. I think Akshay's is the most stressful for me. It's going to be fine. I like it to be known. I also want to read more. I like it. I also enjoy reading. I would also like to read more guys. I don't want to be the odd man out here, but yes. They’re like, does he even know how to read? He says I'm totally part of like two book clubs, guys. Come on. If they can be done at the same time, I would prefer skydive while he's reading. Imagine that though. I think you shouldn't do that. I think there's like safety things you have to consider. That picture would look crazy though. That would be so cool. Yeah. I think your eyelids would, like, have a hard. You wear goggles! I feel pages would be the hardest. What if I do it on like, a Kindle or something? The G-forces you're just going to drop it. And you’re supposed to stretch yourself out. I think they're supposed to like. Yeah. Hold your arms out. That’s true. And Alissa just destroyed the whole set. Yeah. Oh, I think we've just diverted from the reserve, so I think we should probably get back to the reserve. So what did we do in 2025? We started a podcast. We did, we did. We only missed December last year. Sorry about it. I was busy. Yeah, I think that the podcast was fun. I remember texting Sadie and Akshay when I had this idea, I think I was at a conference and I texted you two and I was like, I want to start a podcast. And you were like, I think the group text that I got back was, chill out until you get home. We'll talk about it later. Which I felt so mom-ed from my, from my team. They're like, we'll talk about this when you get home. But then when I got home, I was expecting you guys to be like, no, we have no desire to do this whatsoever. But we were interested. We liked the idea, but we had questions. Yeah, we had a lot of things we needed to work out before. Well, when I got back, you had, like, fully written a plan. You're like, this is what I think that you need to do. And we pitched it to Rachael, our reserve manager, and she was like. Which was an awesome pitch, by the way. Yeah. That was that was amazing. Take us to shark tank. Like, seriously, we can get anything. And she's like, all right, just get the things you need to get. So and then we got a podcast and we did it. We did it. And you're watching it. And you're watching or listening to it. Or listening. Yeah. So we appreciate all of our listeners for the last year with I think that Buzzsprout, which is where we host a lot of our stuff, if you want to find us, sent me, us wrapped like a creator wrapped for the year. And I want to say it told us that we were listened to in 15 countries and 169 cities. So. That’s impressive. Made it internationally. Internationally. So thank you to everybody specifically. Everybody that is a repeat listener, especially because we don't know who you all are. Like the random person from Katy, Texas, that always listens and downloads our podcasts and I have no idea who they are. Shout out to you. Yeah. You’re a real one. Yeah. We never thought that it would end up in like Wisconsin, Texas, New York. So thanks for listening. Japan. I think Japan was one. Yeah, yeah, I think it was. Yeah, I think Japan. Norway. So we did a podcast. Katie. Katie. Texas. Sadie worked really, really hard in conjunction with the rest of the education team. So Akshay and I and then with our Office of the Secretary, Public Affairs section and put out a calendar for 2025. I made a fact a day calendar. A fact a day calendar. Yeah. My fiance and I were looking in the kitchen the other day. He says, well, we only have three more facts to read. Are you going to have a new calendar? And I said, maybe next year. So that was a huge lift. But I think that there's I go into a lot of people's offices and they've got their fact a day calendar up. And I think that that's cool to see. Yeah, I think we're still one at my mom's house. Probably still in August. No judgment. Laurel’s is in July. The calendar in my office is in July. I have three separate calendars in my office. I think one of them is on July, one of them is on December, and one of them says like December, January, February. So at least one of them are the right month. Yeah, for now. Tag Alissa with flipping my calendar every once in a while. Add it to my other duties assigned. What else do we do in 2025? Well January, February, March I would say is always like our down days. But like lots of preparation going on and stuff like that. School programs and things. Yeah. So it's a bit more relaxed. But also it's like every new year you start like thinking about what you want to improve on. And I think we do that too here. Yeah, we had a lot of meetings planning out like the like the first several months of 2025 and beginning of January. And I think that was good. You know, like we able to have a lot of events and like planning out Make a Splash in the beginning of the year was also really good. So yeah just us. Yeah. And we have Make a Splash coming up again for fourth graders in the state of Delaware to get water science and history. And I love Make a Splash. I love it too. So we're excited to come back for another year. I actually just started like, making all of the forms and files to send out, so that'll be soon. Which is always really stressful cause I remember just you telling Akshay like every 30 minutes. Can you reread this? I just got everything right. Well that's when I make the schedule. The schedule is an adventure in its own right. It's like a puzzle that I'm putting together a lot. It is really like a puzzle, honestly. Yeah. And when it all fits, then it's like. It's so cool. But, man, it's a puzzle. It's a puzzle. So Make a Splash happened. That was probably preparing for that and preparing for horseshoe crab surveys. It took place in May and June. Yeah. Like there's a lot of front end work for that. So it's like training our volunteers, reaching out to our volunteers, assigning our volunteers with dates, communicating with our volunteers. So that takes a lot of our time in the spring. Because even the horseshoe crab like schedules, almost every schedule here is like a puzzle. Horseshoe crabs and then fall fest. It's like, where can I fit all into? Yeah, I guess I just really love a puzzle. You love puzzles, I love to make schedules. Like, I love to make little, little things. Yeah, what else? We filmed the podcast. We already talked about that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, around horseshoe crab season is like, that's usually we're just busy with that. And then we have like a little bit of downtime. We have like summer camp people that come around and we go there. That was all. Yeah, they come to us. Yeah. Fly season is always an adventure. We host a little bit less programs during fly season because they will fly away with you. And Alissa knows all about that because she used to work outside. She was working outside with the flies. Yeah. That's where Alissa got her start here I guess. We're sitting here talking about the spring in the summer and we're like, oh, la-di-da what happened in the spring, in the summer? I was outside cutting grass. And building benches because that's what we're doing. Yeah. Alissa started with our conservation tech team. And she was amazing and wonderful, and we loved having her around. And we said, do you want to come inside? And I said yes! Would you like to come inside for the winter? And so we, we poached her and she joined our crew in August. Happy to be here. Happy to have you. And I knew she was perfect when she was so down to do social media. Like, if you were like, Alissa, are you interested? You'd be like, yeah, I can do that. And like, yeah, that's a perfect fit. Because that's all you get to do now. No it's not! You guys having more responsibilities than just writing social media. Alissa has been coming up with programs on programs, new programs, because every year I'm like, I want I want more new programs because like, don't get me wrong, we've done hikes with JDP, we've done hikes on our own. We do boat trips. We do Tree ID workshops like we're doing all of those things. We're doing them regularly. But I love some fresh new burst of excitement. I think Alissa's working up a tie dye program right now. Oh, that sounds awesome. Yeah, it's going to be fun. So yeah, because we love to tie dye. Give us an excuse, I guess. A little teaser for the tie dye program out there. Yeah. To, she's coming up with new trivia questions for trivia night. Nice. So, yeah, more than social media, right? No, because that's Zoe’s job, social media. And you get to be in all the videos. Yeah, it's fun. We did so, sorry Sadie and Akshay, I took Zoe and Alissa on an education retreat. We did go on a retreat. We retreated all the way to the hunter ed building. Our retreat was across the sidewalk in the barn. Jealous. They had comfier chairs in the barn. Oh, I bet nothing beats those chairs Yeah, there's a really comfy chairs. But we went and we planned out our whole year. We talked about roles and responsibilities, but then I said I really loved the tone of our social media in 2025. And so we went back and we watched, rewatched a lot of our like greatest hits. The reels. I was like, let's watch Agatha. Yeah, let's watch. Everyone loved Agatha. That was a good one. I did not expect people to like Agatha, but people liked Agatha. Yeah. If you haven't followed our social media, check us out on Facebook at Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve, DNERR. Or you can follow us on Instagram at Delawarenerr. We'll tag it below. They post good stuff. Yeah. But we were like going back through the Olympics videos. And guys, the Olympics are happening again in February. Yes. You better get started. Round 2. Winter Olympics. I'm ready. I love the Olympics, but that's not what we're here to talk about. I love dinner. I love dinner. I love the hayrides. I love the Olympics. Okay, so maybe I say I love things a lot. Sorry. That's okay. You're filled with love and that's it. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Great thing. So catch us putting out new social media is what I guess I'm saying. Go rewatch our old reels like Agatha. Because they still live up to the hype. Yeah. And I think it's like the only one that stars me. You're in a lot of the other ones. Just you, yeah. Yeah, but that one was all you. That was all me, like, so guys, so go like it. Go like, repost, comment. I'm going to go repost it today. Yeah like throwback. Yeah. Good stuff. What else guys what what happens after. After? Are we like in the not the end times. But the after Sadie and Akshay, ASA. Yes. Okay. All right. So I after Akshay left, one thing that Sadie and I did together was the persieds meteor shower. That was so fun. That was really cool. Even though we saw that weird orb. Yeah, that was a rocket. Akshay, have we told you about this. Oh, okay. So we're all laying out there, right? And we've all got blankets and things like we're doing it again. Keep an eye out. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, lots of fun. You should come back and. Sure. We basically go to Blackbird Creek because we have permission to be there after dark. Because we work here. And I don't know why I agreed. Because you're going to sign up for the program. Yeah. And, we all went out and just laid our blankets out in the field and looked up at the meteor shower that was happening. And I was laying there and we kind of like, took different sections of the field so that, like, the public was covered. If somebody had a question, we were all around and we saw this orb and we were like, we were looking for planes and we'd seen satellites and we'd seen different things, but this was like glowing on both sides. It was like shaped. It was kind of like warping. Yeah. And it was really strange. And it looked like it was coming straight towards us. Oh. And I, I, I was like, this is aliens. I know what this is. And then I look up and Sadie and Alissa we're standing next to my blanket and they were like, what is that? I don't know what that is. And not too much longer. Larry, our conservation tech was there with us, too. He goes, so I don't know what that is. And if Larry doesn't know what it is, we don’t know what it is. I don't know what it is at all. So my brain went aliens because. Yeah. That's right. That's giving aliens. But we also we also like grew up here. So like we've seen rocket launches from Wallops Island and we're like that's not the direction of Wallops Island. That's not what it looks like. That's not what a rocket launch looks like. We've seen them before. Yeah. And so luckily Larry did not immediately jump to aliens because he's an adult. And he said that there was a rocket launch from Cape Canaveral that day. And what we were seeing was it had entered into a different section of the atmosphere. And so it was looking different. And that's what we saw. And we were able to, like make an announcement and say like, hey everybody, we figured out what the glowing orb is. No fear. Not aliens. Nobody knew we were a little oh yeah. Yeah, we are a little confused. But I thought that that was really cool. And then when I was down in Florida for work, in November, we were able to watch a rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, like, we were not at Cape Canaveral, but we were able to, like, go up to the top of the hotel and see the rocket launch happen. And I was like, I know that in a couple of minutes I could text everybody and be like, go outside the glowing orb is back. It's back. It's visiting. So I thought that was really cool. Yeah, definitely a highlight. Yeah, I really liked that program. And then we had coastal clean up. Yeah, we clean up the coast to clean up the coast with a lot of volunteers. Very awesome. We went on to have Fall Fest. Fall Fest was fun. You guys were back for Fall Fest. Yeah, I think so. Akshay’s first Fall Fest. Glad he is here this time. I think that I love, I love all of the people that have formerly worked with me, but I love the fact that you guys come back. You come back and you're like, I actually want to participate in Fall Fest. That's so fun. It was a lot of fun. So much fun. And you can see what I loved about the hayride. You can actually see it this time. The hayride was pretty fun. I did love it too. But we just have a great time doing Fall Fest. Yeah. And I think, I think everyone just did such a good job, like putting everything together like a puzzle. And it all just fits in so well. So go back to Fall Fest. Always the third Saturday in October. Come see us at the Blackbird Creek Reserve. Absolutely. Okay. Anything. So then we went on to do a tree planting. At Blackbird. Whoo! Yeah, we did reforest. We do. We did reforest. We had trees and we put them in the ground, and then we nurtured them. Yeah. Part of our reforestation plan. Yeah. With our stewardship team. We also use our volunteers for that and love them. Yeah. It was great. We I do you remember exactly how many trees Larry said we planted? It was like 180, I believe. It's like in that high. Yeah, it was a lot of trees and we got it done pretty fast. So a big shout out to all of our volunteers and everything. And Larry and Mark did a lot of prep beforehand to make sure that we were able to go through it fast. Yeah. Shout out them. Yeah. So shout out to them. Larry's just getting nothing but shout outs. I, I like he deserves them. Thanks for letting me steal your staff. Thanks for keeping us safe from orbs. Thanks for planting trees. Thanks for teaching us how to use the audio. Thank you for and thank you for getting us a soundboard so that our audio sounded right. And thank you for taking us to the musical shop so we can get a new microphone. Oh, yeah. We. Yeah, we needed a microphone stand and we didn't have any. And Larry's like, don't worry. Do I know a guy? He took us to the store and we assigned everybody at the reserve a different musical instrument, but we didn't buy them. Not yet. Yeah, but it’s still on the list. Maybe 2026. Maybe a band. Skimmer Says - Skimmer Sings. Something to look forward to. Guys, I love it. Skimmer Sings. We held one of our hikes with the John Dickinson Plantation. We had a few people come out for that good hike. Good stuff. We visited SERC, which is the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and we looked at the their native tree plots and that help towards our reforestation efforts. You're making really intense eye contact with me. But I was out sick that day. I cannot tell you to let you know what you did. Yeah, we were there. You're on your own. You were out sick that day? I was I was not there. Sorry I missed it. Well it was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was really great field trip. We learned a lot. Talked to a lot of smart people about what they're doing. Yeah, I think it was Zoe’s second day. It was, yeah, it was Zoe’s second day. Yeah. You know, it was great. Great time. I had a great time. We did a pollinator garden cleanup where we basically took everything out of it to be able to have it restart for the season. We're going to refresh a refresh. We're getting back to the basics of what the garden was intended for. Because it was kind of getting taken over by like trees and shrubs and stuff. And sometimes it's nice to just start. Yeah. Start from the ground up. Start fresh. No, it definitely needed up. So it's already looking good. And then we had our Teachers of the Estuary, our Teachers on the Estuary. Teachers on the Estuary, our TOTE. All about our trash bird nest. Yeah. Project. And so we had 11 teachers with us, and we were able to walk them through how to do our trash bird project with a permit, if they were to file for their own permits and then how to do it just observationally based so that if they, it was not in their scope to be able to get a permit, they could do it without ever touching bird's nest. So kind of like categorizing what kind of nest you're looking at and if there's trash in them. Our passion project, if you want to go back and listen to more about that project we actually did an episode about that. So go back and listen there. Yeah. And it was one of my favorite projects to work on in 2025 was The Bird's Nest because I just it was so fun looking for them and then identifying them. Yeah, it's a really interesting. Yeah, we had so much fun. And, it's one of my passion projects. I really like the bird, the Bird Nest project. So. Yeah. And then and then, the volunteer dinner, volunteer dinner. Because we appreciate our volunteers. Yeah, we appreciate all that you guys do. Volunteer with us, then we invite you to come eat dinner with us in December, and you get a certificate. Yeah. And a little prize here for coming and for all that you do. Yeah, because we can do it without. I cannot do my job without you guys. We cannot do our jobs without volunteers like you that come out and help us with all of our projects, because it's a lot of work. Many hands makes light work. Yes. So looking into 2026, what do we want? Sorry to hear, but like, what do we want out of the year for the reserve? I always want you guys to have an abundance of good ideas and good luck with programs, but I also want you guys to see more and new people to come, because I love when we have like regulars that show up to every program with you get to create a relationship with them. But it's also so, so cool to see where different people are coming from and like how they heard about the reserve and that type of stuff. So I hope you guys get more of the visitors from everywhere. Yeah, yeah, more visitors, new visitors. Same visitors. Just more people, more interactions. Right? Yeah, that's a big deal. I'm excited. We're getting new signage on our trails. We're getting new waysides. Alissa, so I started out Sadie and I wrote the text, and then Alissa did a deep dive for all the pictures, and it's in with the designers now, working on that. So we should we have a new waysides soon. And that's really exciting for me because we've needed them. Yeah. So you should come and see them. Yeah. See the new signage I love. They're not out there right now. I know, but soon I say yeah because I love writing some of them. Not all of them, just some of them. You can tell the ones that we were like, this is so scientific. Look at us talking about marsh migration. And then we did one that was like a seek and find like, can you see these animals in the marsh? So yeah, some of them are more serious and some of them are us some of them are fun. You can tell it was written by the education team. Yeah. What do you want for the reserve in 2026, Alissa? Like Sadie said, more luck with programs, more people, same people, more people in general. I want the fun. Fun? I think that one thing that sets us and the reserve apart from anywhere else that you could work is that we have fun. I think that we all get along. We have fun together. We have fun doing our jobs. We have fun coming up with ideas for things that would give us more work. We have fun doing the things that are just mundane, making a schedule, but make it fun. Yeah, so I want more fun for us. That's a good one. Yeah, I like that. So do you guys have anything else to part from 2025 and look to 2026? I just want to thank everyone that watched and listened to us. Because we started this not really knowing what we were going to really get into. So to see like just how many people were listening is kind of it melts my heart a little bit. Yeah. That's cool. So we want to say thank you to you. And I also want to say thank you to you guys because this was a pipe dream for me. And it's something that I always wanted. And then I was like, what? We can do it. And I couldn't have done it without you guys because you wrote the scripts. You, there's a plane flying overhead. You wrote the scripts. You set the podcast room up. First time I had to set the podcast room up by myself, I was like. Do I? Did I plug in the soundboard? No. Did I plug the microphones into the camera? No, I didn't do that. So I appreciate the journeys, the things we've learned, the fun that we've had. The thankfulness that Alissa has had. And I'm looking forward to another, fun year podcasting. Hopefully. I don't know how long we're going to keep going. This is technically a limited series. We’ll see. If you want to hear more from us, please let us know. Leave a comment anywhere you want to send us an email. And we'll go from there. But for now, thank you guys. Thank you guys. And I think that's all the Skimmer has to say. Bye. Bye.