Through the Wind and the Driving Rain
You could say the weather was against me that day. I woke up in the morning to pouring rain and a temperature in the 50s. Not exactly the best conditions for planting wetland grasses on an island in the Chesapeake Bay. But nonetheless, the Baltimore Aquarium volunteer packet did say “RAIN or shine.”
So I hopped in the car with some fellow co-workers and began the hour-and-a-half drive from Annapolis to the planting site at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge. I had never been to Eastern Neck before, but I will surely return, preferably on a warm, sunny day! The refuge, located at the mouth of the Chester River on the Eastern Shore, is one of the top five waterfowl habitats in Maryland.
I arrived at the parking lot to find the hardy Aquarium staff ready to load us onto a boat and shuttle us to the planting site. So I suited up in layers and raingear and prepared for an interesting boat ride. The river was a bit choppy, so the ride was a cross between white water rafting and riding a rollercoaster with a bucket of water dumped over your head every five minutes. Taking a ride in a washing machine might be a similar experience.
Thoroughly drenched, I arrived at the planting site ready to get to work. My mission that day was to plant two species of grass on the eroding sandbar separating Hail Creek from the Chester River. We broke into teams and started planting. My team had a diviler, a feeder and a tucker. The diviler dug the hole, the feeder put fertilizer in the hole, and the tucker planted the plug of grass.
A tucker planting a plug of marsh grass
We repeated the process over and over and over until half of the sandbar was planted with new grass. The other half would be planted by more volunteers the next day.
Before and after planting marsh grasses on a sandbar at Hail Cove
After a long day of planting, we boarded the boat back to the mainland. Soaked to the bone, the Aquarium staff was nice enough to give us some trash bags to sit on or in, depending on our preferences. I went home knowing that through the wind and the driving rain, my blades of grass will remain.
Krissy stands in the driving rain at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge after planting marsh grasses at Hail Cove
Looking for fish habitat on the Magothy with a 4-year-old
Peter Bergstrom is a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Chesapeake Bay Office.
On Friday, July 3, I did my usual twice-monthly volunteer
water quality sampling at four
sites on the Magothy River near where I live. I started doing this in 1991 through
a program run by Anne Arundel County to get a better understanding of Bay water
quality, and I’ve kept doing it ever since. The county program was
discontinued, but I’ve continued sampling with the Magothy River Association,
which has other volunteers who also do water monitoring.
This monitoring trip was different from recent ones because
my four-year-old granddaughter came with me. This was only the second time
she'd seen any part of the Chesapeake up close
(she lives in Vermont
and usually visits us at Christmas). Thus, I was thinking about how she
was reacting to it. It’s been a long
time since my own kids helped me with monitoring (my youngest child is 26).
My granddaughter at
Bayberry next to the pier where we sampled, holding some crab legs she found on
the beach. Taken with a cell phone camera.
We started our sampling at the end of the Bayberry pier, on
the south shore on the lower part of the river’s mainstem, where all seemed to
be well. Several people were catching juvenile spot (Leiostomus xanthurus) pretty regularly, and my granddaughter was
fascinated by watching them. The reason they were able to catch these
bottom-dwelling fish at that location was apparent when we measured the
dissolved oxygen (DO): it was over 8 mg/l on both the surface and bottom,
plenty of oxygen for fish. The bottom DO here has not fallen below 5 mg/l
(the EPA and state standard for fish habitat) since I started sampling at
Bayberry in April.
The fish & DO story was different at the three other Magothy sites I
sample, and the news was not good.
At the first two these sites, Ulmstead in the mouth of Forked Creek and in my
own neighborhood (Stewarts Landing) on Old Man Creek, the bottom DO was less
than 1 mg/l at both sites, but that’s fairly common in the summer. There were no weird colors or smells, and people
were fishing or crabbing in shallow water nearby, although not in water as deep
as where I sample.
However,
in upper Cattail Creek in Berrywood, the water was a weird milky green and
there was a musky smell, so I knew before I lowered the meter that the DO would
be bad. The color and the smell are both signs of an algae bloom that
died and is decomposing. The surface DO was only 0.7 mg/l, the second
lowest surface DO reading I've ever made, and the bottom DO was definitely
anoxic with 0.00 mg/l, the lowest DO meter reading I’ve ever seen.
My granddaughter can't quite read numbers yet, but she knows zero when she sees
it. It made me sad to show her how dead the creek was. Amazingly there
were no signs of any dead fish; I think the fish usually avoid the whole upper
creek when it's such a dead zone. I’ve never seen anyone fishing or
crabbing nearby. A week after I sampled
there, Cattail Creek had a
health advisory against swimming posted by the county health department for
high bacteria levels, so that creek has multiple problems.
The water quality in these creeks was not always this dismal. Both Cattail and
Old Man creeks were much healthier in 2004 and 2005, when dark false mussels
covered almost all of the hard surfaces over a variety of depths in both creeks.
By pure luck, when I chose my sampling sites in 1991 I picked two sites that
would have some of the densest mussels 13 years later, so I have been able to
document the water quality improvements that followed their filtration. Water
clarity (measured by Secchi depth) and bottom dissolved oxygen showed dramatic
improvements in both creeks in those years, and underwater bay grass (SAV)
acreage in the Magothy went up in both 2004 and 2005. Volunteer divers and kayakers organized by
Dick Carey of the Magothy River Association estimated the number of mussels and
the volume of the creek. From that research they estimated that, in 2004, the
mussels could filter the water in Cattail Creek every two days, while it took
them 15 days in 2005. (Watch
an eight-minute video about the mussels and the 2004 surveys.) Imagine how
healthy the Bay would be if oysters were filtering its water every two days, or
even every 15 days.
People who remember the mussels from 2004 keep asking me how
we can get them back, along with improved water quality. I don’t have an easy answer. Memories of the mussels do give me hope that
improvement is possible. I just wish the
mussels and the good water quality were still here to show my granddaughter,
instead of zeroes on the DO meter.
Battle for the Bird River
I’m declaring war. No, I’m not assuming some
pseudo-political position giving me the power to aggregate our country’s
resources in a fight for power, peace or anything else dominating the headlines
these days. I, Liana Vitali, am declaring war and all the power I need is the
strength in my arms and a Sea Doo GTI with a 130 hp engine and a sleek,
ergonomic design. Combine this with my steadfast desire to restore the
Chesapeake Bay to its historic and unimaginable beauty and you’re looking at a
stealthy invasive species destroyer, equipped to rid the Chesapeake
Bay of its exotic aquatic vegetation invaders and able to leap tall
buildings in a single bound! (OK, that part might be an exaggeration.)
I bet you’re wondering who I used my incredible skills and
power to wage war upon . . . the dreaded Trapa natans. Here is its criminal rap sheet:
| CONFIDENTIAL |
|
Street name: Water Chestnut
|
|
Continents of Origin: Europe, Asia and Africa
|
|
Last Known Chesapeake Bay Residence: Bird and Sassafras rivers
|
Criminal Record: Convicted on multiple accounts of:
- Aggravated assault on native underwater Bay sea grasses
- Possession of a weapon in the form of ½ inch spikes sharp enough to cut through shoe leather
- Aiding and abetting by creating an environment conducive to the growth and cultivation of blood-sucking mosquitoes
|
Recently, I joined forces with Maryland Department of
Natural Resources biologists to seek and destroy water chestnut in the Bird River,
north of the city of Baltimore.
We deployed one Carolina
skiff and two Sea Doos to scour the shores of the entire main river and
creeks. This time last year, we worked collectively to remove what seemed like
half a ton of water chestnut from the river. This year, we returned to find
that the skills, strategy and no doubt awesome intimidation we imposed on the
invader must have struck fear into its very roots. Though their guerilla tactics of hiding amongst beloved native water lilies
nearly out of sight might have worked, they clearly misjudged our abilities and
dedication to the Bay. One by one, we yanked out less than a quarter of the
water chestnut we removed last year. OohRah!
So does this mean that I can now hang a large and lovely
banner across the front of the Chesapeake Bay Program building proudly stating
“MISSION
ACCOMPLISHED!”? No. But can I proudly say we’ve set an example of how combining
manpower and resources with a loyal devotion for the Chesapeake
Bay can result in tangible and positive changes to our creeks and
rivers? Absolutely.
Liana poses with a bunch of the invasive water chestnut she helped remove from the Bird River in Maryland.
Cleaning Up the Magothy, One Stream at a Time
Jim Edward is the
deputy director of the Chesapeake Bay Program
Office.
It was a Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m., and already it was in
the mid-70s and humid. After getting lost, I arrived at the Magothy River Day
and Watershed Clean Up, an event organized by the Magothy River Association
(MRA) to celebrate John Smith’s discovery of the Magothy River
on June 12th more than 400 years ago.
Once I arrived -- 15 minutes late -- the 25+ volunteers that
had gathered at Chelsea Beach in Pasadena,
Maryland, were already working
hard and craving the water cooler and ice that I was in charge of bringing. The
enthusiastic, hard-working (and sweaty!) volunteers, who ranged in age from 7
to 70, were helping to clean up Indian River Creek, which was riddled with hundreds of tires and
other debris from more than 25 years of neglect. The creek was
at the bottom of a steep ravine, and rolling huge truck tires up the hill was a
muddy and sweaty challenge for many of us (including me!!!!). But over the next
couple of hours we managed to nearly fill two 20-foot-long dumpsters with old
tires, rims, rusty lawnmowers, water heaters (???) and other “junk.”
Jim (right) and other volunteers clear some strange items of trash from the area, including a water heater and an old lawn mower.
The trash was located at the bottom of a steep ravine, so the voluteers had to push the tires uphill -- exhausting work!
MRA President Paul Sparado was there and working as hard as
anyone. But the real organizers for the
day were Juliet Page and Tom Hampton of the MRA Stormwater Committee, of which
I am a member. Along with other members of the committee, they worked with Anne Arundel
County to identify sites along the Magothy River in need of clean-up and restoration.
These before and after photos show what a difference this small band of people
made that morning and the value of citizens and government working together to
achieve a common goal.
Before: A pile of tires sat at the bottom of a steep ravine near Indian River Creek, which drains to the Magothy River.
After: The creek bed is clear of tires and other trash.
I just recently joined the Chesapeake Bay Program Office as
its deputy director after more 20 years of working for the EPA in Washington, D.C.
Not only has my carbon footprint become smaller, but my professional and personal
worlds have become one. I have done volunteer work for many years with MRA, the
Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Earth Conservation Corps, and now Bay-related
work is my everyday job, too. But I am only
one of the nearly 17 million people who live in the Bay watershed. It will take
efforts from each and every one of us to restore the Bay we all know and love.
President Obama and his family of five (remember, his
mother-in-law lives with him!) are among the newest residents of the Bay watershed,
and it did not take him long to embrace his new home and recognize the Bay as a
national treasure by issuing an Executive Order. It charges the EPA to lead a renewed
federal effort to restore the Bay by working with its state and local partners
and others throughout the watershed. But it is important to remember that the
government can’t do it all. The MRA cleanup and its volunteers are a prime
example of that. So lets each do our part…one by one….it’s a new day for the
Bay!
South River gets a 33 on latest report card
The South River Federation released its 2009 annual scorecard last night. The river received a score of 33, one point lower than last year. The federation scores the river on 10 key indicators, including nutrients, dissolved oxygen and the abundance of underwater life. Some of the individual scores include a dismal 1 for water clarity and zero for underwater grasses, and a more encouraging 7 for bacteria levels.
In the scorecard, South River Federation Executive Director Erik Michelsen gives people a few quick tips on how they can help improve the health of the South River:
"Everyone living in the South River Watershed can do their own part by trying to keep the rain that falls on their property in their yard, upgrading septic systems to the best available technology, and minimizing or eliminating the use of fertilizers on their yards."
Want some more tips to help the South River and the entire Bay? Check out the Bay Program's comprehensive list of ways people can make a difference.
See a PDF of the full scorecard.
This is the second river report card to be released in recent weeks. The Magothy River released its annual Magothy River Index in February, and it also reflected a decrease in overall river health. Stay tuned for more river report cards in the coming weeks.
Learning the Shades of Green
Krissy Hopkins is the Communications and Education Subcommittee staffer with the Chesapeake Research Consortium at the Chesapeake Bay Program.
Last weekend, I, along with more than 550 other passionate environmental educators, attended the annual Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education (MAEOE) conference in Ocean City.
The conference kicked off with a keynote from Doug Tallamy, a witty, insect-loving professor at the University of Delaware. I never thought about the connections between birds, caterpillars and oak trees until Doug commented that a single oak tree is a host to over 500 different species of insects. But instead of filling our yards with oak trees, we plant them with manicured green lawns and non-native (sometimes invasive) plants.
Birds and insects native to this region view our backyardsas if they were the surface of Mars. Landscapes dominated by plants imported from around the world serve an ornamental, rather than functional, purpose. We suburbanites have crafted completely sterile landscapes, as we’ve been taught that bugs are a problem and Raid is the solution. Now, hundreds of bird species are declining in number because we have cut out their food source: the bugs we loathe.
So what’s the solution? To turn our lawns back into native habitats that benefit both the birds and the bugs. Many Maryland schools are already taking this advice and landscaping with native plants to create schoolyard habitats.
Some schools take their projects a step further to become certified Maryland Green Schools. One statistic that astounded me was that primary and secondary schools spend $6 billion annually on energy -- more than they spend on books and computers. Imagine if we could cut that cost by 30 percent, or $1.8 billion. Sounds good to me, right? But how?
As I learned in one MAEOE conference session, 30-40 percent of our energy use is at the discretion of the occupants of a building. So by simply raising awareness about our energy use, we can cause substantial deceases in energy consumed. Energy conservation isn’t just about changing light bulbs; it’s about changing behavior.
This conference reaffirmed my belief that simple solutions and engaged citizens can make Maryland grow greener.