Monsters Under the Ice

Our first snow fell yesterday and the first ice started to form today. Winter finally arrived a few weeks after the solstice. I suited up on the snow covered shore of Basin Run and fumbled in the dark to find gear in my bag: hood, gloves, mask, camera. I slid down the bank to this point and was a little worried about scrambling over the ice covered boulders that made up this part of Basin Runs shoreline to get into the water. I didn’t expect to see much life. I was going in mostly to experience the accumulation of the first anchor ice, the flocculent bits that form and cluster in the lee of boulders. I was going to admire the nocturnal winter sculpture of the river. The air was 20, -10 with wind, and the water was a degree above freezing. I didn’t expect to see much fish life. This was going to be a quick trip, a fast aquatic fix to get me through the next few days of frigid, until temperatures climbed above freezing again. I braced for the usual painful cold shock, but it didn’t happen. The barely above freezing water felt warm compared to the air. Something shot out from under me into the current, and swam around me. It looked like a large leach. I’ve seen those in freezing water before, then it looked more eel like, finally I was able to make a positive ID: it was a lamprey. This ancient jawless fish looked clean and silver, free from blemish. Very different than the last lamprey I saw, beaten at the end of its life’s journey. Lamprey migrate into streams to spawn. The lamprey I saw two Mays ago was at the end of its run. This one is just starting, and it looks fresh – new and shiny. The lamprey and I swam together, but mostly the lamprey tried to escape my flashlight beam. The current pushed me into an anchor ice shelf and the lamprey swam under it. I kept watching as the lamprey searched for a hiding spot a few feet away. I was tempted to follow the fish under the ice shelf, but there was only one way out: the way in and that would be against the current. I decided to watch the lamprey from a few foot distance and hoped I had a good enough shot. Sometimes I forget that it’s more about being here experiencing the underwater river than it is about documenting it. The lamprey successfully wriggles out of sight and I resume with my initial mission to explore the first accumulation of flocculent ice in the creek of the year. It’s easy to fool myself that I am exploring some arctic creek as my light glows through the underside of the ice that extends behind larger rocks in the river. I can see the masses grow as neutrally buoyant inch long frozen bits float down stream and stick to their comrades. The cold finally takes its toll and I need to get out. My feet freeze to the snow covered ground and stick with each step as I move towards my gear bag and safety light set up a little further up the bank. My flashlight freezes and I quickly wipe off my camera before the water can solidify. My drysuit gets stiff and crinkly. My chin sticks when it touches the ice on the suit. The moon starts to rise and lightens the dark night. This has been an amazing trip. I got to witness two, eons old phenomena: lamprey that pre date bony fish and other vertebrates in the fossil record, and the process of freezing water in a moving river. What an amazing world we live in.

Dark Water

The river looked dark but it was an illusion of the bottom showing through relatively clear water. The bottoms of our rivers get covered in thick algae this time of year due to increased nutrients in the form of fallen leaves, and more sunlight due to an open leaf less canopy. The algae covering the bottom of the Octoraro was dark green, almost black. It’s part of the seasonal progression of rivers. Just like leaf fall and leaf out on trees, our streams experience predictable seasonal changes few of us observe. Impressive water carved and smoothed bedrock slabs made holding positon in the river slick and difficult. Caddis cover the rocks in the parts of the river with a heavier flow. The still eddies were covered in tan sediments and pockets of accumulated leaves. There are a few main channels here since the water braids through a rapid and the force of the water in them is impressive. I have a hard time hanging on. I try not to drop my feet to avoid an ankle entrapment, but mostly so that I don’t knock the caddis that are clinging to the rocks into the current. An Asian clam is tumbled in the turbulence of a micro eddy formed behind a fist sized rock, like a ping pong ball on a jet of air. These animals came to North America with Chinese settlers as a food source and moved east across the continent with the immigrant rail road workers who brought them along. They are a part of our aquatic systems now, and this is one of two species I witness on this cold trip. I explore the base of the rapids a little more, creep up eddy to eddy into the lower part of the rapid, and then let the current push me through the rocks like the dark water in the creek.

Into the Worm Hole

Creeks are all different, largely but not entirely based on their geology. This one has a loose bed so it changes regularly. A large tulip poplar fell across the creek and formed a temporary dam. It holds back a couple tons of sand and gravel. Leaves are mashed up against its upstream side. It towers over my head as I lay in the stream below. Water has worked its way under the log and scoured out a hole through the gravel. Water blasts through the hole with impressive fury. I inch in and fight the incredible force to shove my head under water, and under the log, into the hole to see if anyone is living here. I work my shoulders into the hole as my toes dig into the bottom but can’t hold against the force, even this small creek produces. Bubbles blur past me the way stars look when the starship Enterprise speeds up, and I feel like I am flying through space. I can’t creep in any further, and I run out of air so I let the water flush me back out, and I drift downstream. A large school of assorted minnows congregate in what I am learning is a pre winter ritual. The trick is to follow them to see where they go when it gets really cold. A darter hops along the bottom. I passed a lot of fresh beaver chews on the hike in and I expect to see some evidence of the rodents in the stream but don’t. I was hoping to find a bank den I might be able to explore. They are here somewhere. I just can’t find them today. The bottom on the outside of a bend is scoured out to bare compacted clay, where the waters velocity is greatest. Roots overhang into the water and provide excellent cover for a school of assorted minnows, and I suspect there might be the beginnings of a beaver bank den here, but I can’t find any evidence. The minnows look like a swarm around a pile of leaves and sticks on the bottom. The gravel sides, scalloped clay bottom and orange tinged water remind me of pictures of Mars. Streams are familiar from the surface, but alien below, and exploring them gives a sense of adventure and discovery. I walk out of this stream and head to the next experience. Warp speed Mr. Sulu.

A Few Hours Apart

I was here last night just as the sun was setting to test out a new camera system. I didn’t see any fish and it didn’t work very well, but as usual, it was still an interesting swim. They always are. I returned the next morning with my trusted system, slipped into the cold water and hoped that a few hour difference would mean the presence of life. I saw a few fish as soon as I got in. They weren’t anything spectacular like brook trout or some kind of rare or colorful darter - the kind of fish that get people excited. They were just some non-descript minnow, common shiners. But even though they were common, and non-spectacular by most people’s standards, they kept me mesmerized. The water is getting cold, it’s about 45 today, and things should start to slow down. But these fish held in the current faced upstream, and watched for food morsels to pass within range. Their caudal fins beat hard against the flow of water to keep them in the same spot, but their heads barely moved except to nab something from the water column as it flew past. I am always amazed at how efficient fish make it look, as I clumsily try to hold position in the same spot. My feet get sucked through a chute and it takes all of my strength to claw back upstream. But the fish just swim in place with incredible grace compared to my awkward flailing. I pull around a large boulder and watch another minnow hold in the eddy, a little more sluggish than the two in the current, but still beautiful. A crayfish crawled in the lee of a rock that split the incredible hydraulic force at the base of a short falls. I am just as amazed by the crayfish as I am by the common shiners. I played with them as a kid, caught them by the hundreds from the stream behind my house, any they still hold my fascination. How did it come to be here in one small pocket of refuge from the torrent in one of the most violent places in the stream? Where will it spend the winter? Life amazes. Basin Run is settling down for the winter, but life is still abundant. Pretty incredible what a difference a few hours can make.

Racing The Mud

The weather forecast is for heavy rain, and the radar shows that counties just to the west are getting drenched. We are next, so I hurriedly pull my drysuit on, and head to Deer Creek. I hike upstream to a reach I don’t normally snorkel, stick my head in the water, ignore the cold water sting, and am blown away by the unclouded water. For a minute the clarity rivals that of the springs in Florida, then I look across the river to the opposite bank through the water rather than straight down at the bottom and realize there is probably only 20 feet of visibility, which for here is amazing. Rock weed covers the boulders that are interspersed with sandy bottom. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of case maker caddisflies covering the rocks and vegetation on the rocks. The insects cling to sprigs of rock weed that stick out into the current and the silver mica flecks in their cases make them look like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Some of the caddis flies quiver in the current and end up peeling off to flush downstream. The current blows me off the rock too and I float until I am able to drop my feet to the bottom and crawl back to the riffle. Hundreds of case openings point in the same direction into the current and a swarm covers the face of a rock. Each case sparkles with mica flecks and I have never seen such a large accumulation of case makers in one spot. I stay for as long as I can endure the cold and I enjoy the clarity. I know I am racing the rain. Once it starts falling our streams quickly respond with greater flows, higher levels, and cloudy water from the mud that washes into the creek. But for now the river is clear, and the view is amazing.

Introspection Falls

I wanted to explore these falls since I realized they were here two years ago, but my timing never lined up with the rivers and anytime I was able to jump into them, the river had other ideas with high levels and muddy water. The falls are a stair step arrangement of 10-20 foot drops that end in deep snorkelable pools and wind through almost a mile of glacially tossed boulders. It takes a little work to get to them and as I hike in I think about people I miss in my life: parents, old friends I lost contact with, and I think about places that have been special in my life. Most of them are aquatic. A pile of recently cut brush piled into a river pool signifies a beaver bank den. The pool is part of a mill ruin and low straight line stacks of rocks are all that remain of the foundation. Beaver slides lead to trails that strike off into the woods. The falls complex starts here as a series of low drops and get progressively more dramatic as I head upstream. I decide to get into the pool above the beaver mill pond, where the remnants of a more modern mill come into view. This mill worked through by diverting water around the falls in a 4 foot diameter green tube into the brick powerhouse that lies at the base of the falls, just upstream of the pool I plan to snorkel. There’s a story here. A human and natural history that is intertwined, so that they really can’t be separated. There aren’t any fish here that I can see, but I bet there are tons tucked in between all the voids the large rocks on the bottom provide. It’s cold and they are probably settled in for the winter. The water is murky and puffs of sediment float by. I start out in a relatively calm part of the river and work my way into increasingly more chaotic conditions until I am full in it and the force of the water tears at my mask with a disorienting curtain of bubbles. The underwater roar of falling water is immense. Algae transform rocks, even out in the strongest current, into underwater gardens and paint the river scape in red, green and orange patches. I fight upstream and drift back down to feel the full fury of the water, the loud chaos and quiet still. I remember past river experiences with my parents, and friends I don’t have much contact with anymore, and I miss them. I think about memories of my kids in rivers when they were little. My oldest is almost ready to strike out on her own, and I miss those days. Like the mill remnants, beavers and falls all play a critical role in the story of this place, rivers play a central role in my story, and the story of my family and friends. Maybe that’s why places like rivers are special. Because they evoke memories and help form new ones. The give us the space and opportunity to think about things we tuck away during the bustle of daily life, like people that were a part of our lives but aren’t any more. I have to come back to explore here in warmer weather when I can stay in for more than 30 minutes, and when more life is out and about. I need to spend more time in this water to get to know it better, to make new memories of exploration and adventure. I could spend a year just exploring here.

Muppet Hope

The river is hairy, and the bottom is covered in long wavy olive strands. It looks like shag carpet grew out of and over everything. The usual late fall algal growth has erupted. It has been 4 years since I snorkeled here, on a day when the June air temperatures reached 80 degrees and the 60 degree water felt good. Today the air and water matched a chilly 40, and I hoped to see mussels. I hoped I would see the slightly agape shells that expose peach colored frills as the mussels filter water. This used to be one of the best mussel beds in the river and I hoped they remained. Mussels are some of the most imperiled organisms on the planet, and while that may not seem like a big deal to some people, it bothers me that we are ok with eliminating organisms that can live to be 100, and that play critical roles in how our ecosystems function. Mussels filter ridiculously great quantities of water and destroy disease causing organisms. Our health is related to theirs. It is all connected. But I wanted these mussels to be here not because of what they do for us, but because they are amazing in and of themselves. I was hoping this mussel bed would appear to be in as good a condition as it was the last time I was here. My assessment is based on non-quantitative observations, but there is still a lot of value in sticking your head in the water and just looking. The cold water freely entered my wetsuit glove and I struggled against a full and moderate current. I wasn’t sure if I would see any mussels thought the algal hair on the bottom. I started to see empty halves and saw a recently dead adult, with bleached flesh still inside the partly opened shell. Then finally I found my first faint slit in the bottom. Then a second and third and soon I was in the middle of the mussel bed. I was surrounded by Muppet looking creatures with mouths all agape covered in soft long billowing algal fur. These were all eastern Elliptios. They have a close relationship with eels, and depend on them for reproduction. Eliptios produce a web like substance full of juvenile mussels called glochidia that need an intermediary host in order to metamorphose into a mussel. Eels play much of that role for elliptios, and as an eel swims through the glochidia containing web they become infested with the parasitic bivalves. After a month, the glochidia finish their transformation and fall to the bottom as mini mussels where they start to filter feed and live out their lives that can span 100 years. For as much biological complexity and genius there is in this strategy there is a cost. If the host fish declines, so too do the chances of successfully reproducing young. And that’s what’s happening with elliptios. Eels are declining due to dams and sediments, and so the mussels are too. But today it seemed that while this mussel bed had been seasonally transformed into Muppets, it was intact, and thriving even. I found a few juveniles which is always a celebration. A reproducing population is a surviving population, and I found hope among the Muppet mussels.