New England Coast *Invaded* By Scientists!

I just got back from an 8-day trip surveying docks and rocky intertidal sites in Rhode Island (5 sites), Massachusetts (9 sites), New Hampshire (3 sites), and Maine (3 sites) for marine invasive species. The typical field day started at 7:30am and ended around 3:30pm, during which we visited 3 docks (or 1 intertidal site and 2 docks) and collected specimens. Then we brought the specimens back to the lab and sorted through them until about 8:30pm or so. Long, but fun days. My job in the field was to take water quality measurements (dissolved oxygen, salinity, and temperature) and later in the trip I also helped a fellow scientist, Niels, with amphipod and isopod collection. (Both are the "shrimpies" that you see swimming around in the water with you, often hanging onto algae. Amphipods are compressed side-side [laterally] and isopods are compressed top-bottom [dorso-ventrally].) In the lab, my job was to identify polychaete worms. By the end I had ID'ed 15 different (native) species in 9 different families! There weren't any newsworthy invasive finds on this trip, which is a good thing.

UPDATE (August 19)! There was a newsworthy find, apparently. I spoke too soon. A European shrimp, the "Rock Pool Prawn" (Palaemon elegans) was found in Salem. This species is a predator of small crustaceans in its native habitat back in England. Although the impacts here aren't known, its presence could result in a depletion of the local herbivorous invertebrate population, which would then result in an overgrowth of algae.

What follows are some photos from the trip. As you will see, the long days were worth it, because we did get to go to some really beautiful places. If you're interested in looking for marine invasives right here at home (in our own beautiful places) I conduct surveys in July and August around the South Shore - join me! (They're not nearly as intense, I assure you.)

My typical dock setup, with two water quality meters, a bucket with a Secchi disk to measure water clarity, and my trusty backpack (w/ trusty sunscreen)

Fort Adams State Park, Newport, RI (looking away from the fort and towards the bridge)

Popes Island Marina, New Bedford, MA - Not our cleanest site, but it looks pretty here!

Everyone busy on the docks at Mass Maritime Academy, Buzzards Bay, MA (we later got to see the training ship "Kennedy" come back to port after time in dry dock!)

The lab at Brown University where we worked for three nights (and scientists like Jim Carlton, in the foreground)

Brewers Marine, Plymouth, MA (the only South Shore site!)

Rowe's Wharf, Boston, MA

Rocky shore, Rye, NH

UNH Coastal Marine Lab, Newcastle, NH - there were lots of herring swimming around here, being attacked by stripers from below and terns from above

My station in the Harris lab at UNH, complete with three identification keys and a dissecting scope

Samples are brought back in big plastic bags (often with smaller "Whirlpak" bags inside) which are kept in coolers until we're ready to go through them

Winter Island, Salem, MA (and a lot of slippery rockweed)

Dyer Cove, Cape Elizabeth, ME

We ate at this clam shack at our last site in South Freeport, ME - a tasty conclusion to the week

Spring Showers Bring Spring Runoff (that's how that goes, right?)

A friend reminded me that we haven't updated in a while. Don't let the lack of blogging activity make you think we're not busy here at the watershed, though! We're very busy, in fact. The 60+ degree weather is making me very eager to get outside and start some of the projects I've been lining up all winter. Here's what's coming up this spring at the watershed - maybe you'll join us?

My biggest spring project is our coastal stream monitoring project. I'm working with my fellow Mass. Bays Program regional coordinators to install water level and temperature dataloggers in 25 streams along the Massachusetts coast. We're soliciting volunteers to help us count herring migrating into these streams, so if you're interested in counting fish on the South River in Marshfield, Bound Brook in Scituate, or the Herring Brook in Pembroke, let us know. (Check our website for more details.)

We are continuing to check our stream gauges on the Third Herring Brook, so you're also welcome to help out with that. The recent nor'easter brought so much water to the Third Herring Brook watershed that our gauges were underwater! (Compare that concept to this - that's a lot of water!) The water levels have dropped in the past couple of days though, so they're legible again.

Finally, we're trying to get into 5th grade classrooms all over the South Shore to teach about water conservation and watershed science. I've been making presentations for the teachers (including "Watershed Jeopardy") and we'll be holding a "Water Day" at each school, including watershed models, groundwater models, a water conservation game, and a tour of important water-related places in town. This is all part of our Greenscapes program for this year.

Of course, that's not the extent of our work - summer will be even busier. We have our regular Riverwatch monitoring and invasive species monitoring, plus a special project working with the town of Marshfield to track bacteria in the South River.

Keep checking our website and our Rivernet newsletter for all the exciting opportunities to get outside and help us (we need it!)

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