A Watershed Cinderella Story

The other day I trained a new volunteer who is helping the NSRWA read our stream gauges in Third Herring Brook. (This is something you can do too! Just contact us - we need you!) As part of the training we walked down the street to the Mill Street gauge, and I was embarrassed to find it unreadable due to an accumulation of scum and organic gunk during the lower flows of the summer. It was time to do some scrubbing.

I like to say that ecologists are the MacGyver's of the science world - we tend to use a lot of household objects and ordinary things to accomplish what we need to do. Behold the official NSRWA Stream Gauge Scrubber. It gets the job done.

I went first to our River/Broadway gauge, which is the easiest to access. I scrubbed it clean and was a bit chagrined to notice that somebody had been taking potshots at it. I'm hoping that the appeal of such activities has worn off. The next stop was the Route 123/Jacob's Pond gauge. I wonder if people passing thought I was a bit off, walking around in hip boots wielding a scrub brush. I climbed down into the stream, and flows were low enough that I could look through the culvert under Rt. 123 and into Jacob's Pond. For being essentially underneath a busy road, it was very quiet down there. I always feel special when I get to explore small, quiet places in the watershed that might go unnoticed by others.

My final stop was the Mill St. gauge. The road over the brook is narrow and immediately after a corner, and people tend to drive far too fast over the little bridge. I climbed over the guardrail as soon as I could and looked for a good spot to hop down off the culvert. The best spot was occupied by a big, beautiful web woven by a spider with an opalescent abdomen - I apologized to it and neatly disconnected the bits of web that were in my way and shooed it onto a branch (what can I say, I took this book to heart as a child). I carefully stepped along the stream bottom, hoping that one of the boulders concealed by the murky water wouldn't be the snapping turtle who was hanging out there a couple weeks ago. I scrubbed the gauge clean, said hello to a few more spiders and some bumblebees busily harvesting from the jewelweed (a fascinating plant - it is also called touch-me-not because of its seed pods that spring open upon contact, and is a folk remedy for poison ivy), and walked back to the office, having retained both my boots (glass slippers?).

Now that the gauges are clean, you can help read them! Let us know if you want to help out. It only takes a couple minutes a day. If you want to see what we've accomplished so far, check out the page for our gauges on the Riverways website, the folks who make these gauges all the rage.)

Great River Race 2009!

The 2009 Great River Race was quite a special event this year. Our own Watershed Ecologist, Sara Grady, swam the race in a record time of 3 hours 8 minutes and 7 seconds! Not to mention that fact that she has raised over $1,970 in donations for the NSRWA to protect and restore our watershed. Way to go Sara and thank you!


We thankfully had no rain or thunderstorms to contend with and the bridge work actually worked in our favor...but boy was it hot and humid! The racers were wonderful as were the volunteers... thank you to all who participate to make this day such a celebration for the rivers.

See you next year!

Samantha Woods
Executive Director
NSRWA

Little's Conservation Area Dedication

I had been meaning to post this entry to our blog a little closer to the time it actually happened but other projects and work demand my attention!

On June 24th 25 acres of conservation land near the North River was opened to the public. The new conservation land is named the John Little Conservation Area after one of its previous owners. This parcel is one that the NSRWA and partners in conservation have been looking at for some time because of its proximity to other conserved lands along the North River, its size, and its designation as Priority Habitat for Endangered Species by the state. The Marshfield Community Preservation Committee, Open Space Committee, Conservation Commission as well as the Wildlands Trust, the Marshfield voters and the NSRWA each played a role in seeing this parcel protected. The parcel was purchased using Community Preservation Act funds.

If you wish to visit this property for a walk (and I recommend it!) it is located off of Union Street between Oak Street and Corn Hill Lane--there is a small parking area and trails on the property. Enjoy!!

Nekton lessons

A week or so ago I was given the opportunity to hold a workshop on nekton identification for students and staff from the Cohasset Center for Student Coastal Research (CSCR) and Derby Academy. Both organizations are helping the Mass. Wetland Restoration Program (now part of the Division of Ecological Restoration in Mass. Fish and Wildlife) monitor pre- and post-restoration salt marshes. (That's me in the navy blue polo shirt poking at something in my hand.)

Nekton are aquatic animals that can move on their own - the opposite of plankton, which is at the mercy of water currents. Nekton in wetland restoration sites typically includes fish like mummichogs, striped killifish, three-spined sticklebacks, and silversides and invertebrates like shrimp and crabs.

Fish and invertebrates were collected from fish traps at multiple restoration sites and brought in buckets to CSCR, where we all worked with dichotomous keys to identify what we had and improve our ability to distinguish similar species (like all the different kinds of killifish!) A dichotomous key helps identify things by asking pairs of questions that lead towards a correct identification. Perhaps our most interesting discovery of the day was a juvenile tomcod! Finding young estuarine fish in restoration sites is great evidence that restored wetlands will recover and start to support species that are representative of a healthy ecosystem.

Raingarden Article in Boston Globe Magazine

I was recently interviewed about rain gardens by Boston Globe Magazine.

If you want to check out some rain gardens on the South Shore, here's some info about the raingarden project we completed this past year.


Hanover Rain Garden

Upper Reaches Photography Paddle

This post is on behalf of NSRWA board member and talented amateur photographer Andy Hebert, who led the Upper Reaches Photography Paddle on June 20th.


Despite a wet and overcast last couple weeks, this past Saturday showed patches of blue sky and some sunshine providing a very pleasant morning for taking pictures on the upper reaches of the North River and the Herring River. The six of us started for a slow, leisurely paddle down the Indian Head River from the Hanover Canoe Launch and up the Herring River and back again.

The river is just beginning to show us the extensive wild rice beds that can be found in this section of the river that are a major attraction during the late summer and fall for various bird species. This time of the year and throughout the summer wadding birds are frequent visitors here fishing in the shallows for the small bait fish that hide amongst the grasses and water plants.

Some subjects require a little patience and a slow approach but can often be a willing model if you don't startle them as can be seen in the next few photos of a Great Egret preening and drying itself after fishing in the shallows.


During the spring the river comes alive with an infinite variety of shades of green with wonderful splashes of colors in yellows, purple, white etc. All of these wonderful photos were taken by the paddlers and are just a small sample of the great
photos taken this past Saturday.




Photo credits: #1, #6 - Susan Driscoll; #2 - Rain Rodolph; #3 - Andy Hebert; #4, #5 - Craig Bradley

Three Projects, Three Places

I know that things have warmed up (even if it feels more like April out there) because its monitoring season. During the late spring, summer, and early fall, a lot of the work I do involves monitoring of some sort. Here's the rundown on the monitoring from this week:

Tuesday I went to Inner Little Harbor to collect a water sample for nutrient and chlorophyll analysis. I have been trying to do this on a weekly basis to supplement the data being collected with two automatic water quality loggers that have been deployed there by my CZM South Shore counterpart, Jason Burtner, and the Mass. Bays Monitoring Scientist, Christian Krahforst. The point of all this data collection is to understand Inner Little Harbor's water quality dynamics in relation to the management of the tide gate at Cat Dam. Hopefully this data will help inform management of the tide gate in a way that reduces eutrophication (excess nutrients and algal growth). My role is to collect the water sample and process it by filtration (using the Cohasset Center for Student Coastal Research lab) - the filter will be used for chlorophyll analysis and the filtrate (leftover liquid) for nutrient analysis.

On Wednesday I went out for some water testing on the North and South Rivers for our annual Riverwatch program. Although we are not training volunteers until June 30th (please join us!) I wanted to start collecting data, so I went out with our intern Adria. We also had a chance to do some additional testing of some stormwater catchbasins on the North River that may be contributing bacteria - we'll let you know if we find anything!

On Thursday I was joined by Jo Carey of Mass. Riverways for some habitat and water quality monitoring in the two impoundments on First Herring Brook - Old Oaken Bucket Pond and the Reservoir. This is the third year of monitoring to check whether the water quality in the impoundments is supportive for fish and other creatures as part of a larger First Herring Brook Restoration project. I can't say that it's a really tough time to have to kayak on the two water bodies, although we were getting bit by no-see-ums on Old Oaken Bucket, and I fell into the Reservoir getting out of my kayak (happens about half the time - I'm not very good at that.) One pleasant surprise from this sampling was seeing water flowing through the Reservoir fish ladder, which we hadn't seen during the previous two summers.

More monitoring news as the summer progresses!

Teaching the Next Generation of River Stewards

The last couple of weeks the staff of the NSRWA have teaching 4th and 5th graders in Hull and Cohasset (all 226 of them!) about their watersheds, rivers, and water conservation. In both communities we took the kids to visit their water treatment plants, waste water treatment plants and to visit a rain garden as well as view their local rivers. The kids were fantastic! They really appreciated learning about where their water comes from, how we can conserve and protect it, and where it ends up.

Connecting these kids (and the chaperones!) to their local watershed and rivers gives them a real world understanding of the water cycle they learn about in school. And we provide them with some of the environmental issues that they need to understand in order to become the next generation of river stewards!

We will be continuing these field trips in the fall thoughout the South Shore as part of our Greenscapes education program. If you have a young person in your life interested in the environment (or you would like them to be) please consider having them join our Watershed Explorer's Club online!

Yoga At Couch Beach

This past Saturday was the start of another season of Yoga at the River's Edge, and the first time that I participated. Saturday's session was held at beautiful Couch Beach on the upper North River with Kezia Bacon-Bernstein, founder of Yoga at the River's Edge. I assure you that there are not many things more peaceful than deeply breathing pine-scented air with the river flowing along the marsh in front of you and red-winged blackbirds calling. As I'm new to yoga I had a little bit of trouble quieting my mind and not thinking about the natural world around me - even when I am totally relaxed I'm still thinking about the tide and birds! Perhaps that's ok.

I really enjoyed it and will try to be at as many sessions as I can, and will hopefully see you there. Next Saturday yoga is at the Marshfield YWCA on Little's Creek, a tributary of the South River.