No Better Way to Spend the Day

It has been a busy summer. The first half evaporated before I realized it was gone, and it hit me this morning that in a month, the kids will be shackled back to a school routine. We have been running a lot of trips, about one a week, and while on those trips our focus is on introducing a new group of people to creek snorkeling, making sure people are safe and seeing the cool things we see, finding the right places to go to ensure an abundance and diversity of fish, making sure folks are comfortable, having fun and being amazed by our creeks. We aren’t necessarily there for our enjoyment, though I can’t think of a better way to spend the day.

We slid into Big Branch, and as usual, the group was loud and splashy, but soon they settled into the water and started to see things. First it was the bluegill then the fall fish. Soon they were spotting hog suckers, marveling at the abundance of common shiner, and making satisfying comments about how cool creek snorkeling is.

This was my sixth trip to this stream in as many weeks and it never gets old. Everything is different; nothing is ever the same except for the feeling of exploration and discovery. Some days the first hole holds a large school of large fall fish. Others it holds shiner. Yesterday the big surprise was a school of mixed sized hog suckers, no fall fish and a trout. It was a day of connection at Eden Mill Nature Center, sharing what I know and learning more. There really is no better way to spend the day.

Swimming With a Wall of Fish

The bottom of the pools looked grey from the bridge. But the grey patches moved. I knew the pools we full of shad. I walked fast, like a kid on a pool deck, down off the bridge, down the embankment to the shore. I suited up quickly. So fast that I almost forgot to zip my dry suit closed, waded into the river, and when I got close to the first pool, laid down in the two foot deep water.

Before I thought I should, I was surrounded by foot long fish, all moving in unison. I found a large rock, planted my feet on the upstream side and stretched out upstream into the current. The shad were jittery and each time I cleared water from my snorkel, each time a car drove over the bridge above me, or each time I got too sideways to the current and was thrown off the rock that kept me propped against the current, they scattered with panicked jerky movements. But soon they returned to their upstream quest and rhythmic almost mesmerizing undulations.

The few hundred fish strong school was made up of gizzard shad and smaller river herring, and it looked like each pool held about the same number. They all swam together and presented their sides to me to form a wall of fish. Swimming with this many fish is always a thrill. But the fact that many of the fish in this school were endangered American shad made the experience that much more special. To think that I was surrounded by possibly hundreds of a kind of animal that is at risk of dying off gave me hope that these fish would make it. I also felt honored to be witness to this incredible run, to possibly be one of the last humans to see such a sight. I have hope for the shad, but it is a guarded optimism. Their numbers started to drop in the 1800’s and we tried to reverse the trend even then, with little effect. We are good at destroying, not so good at restoring. It seemed the trend of declining American Shad populations reversed at Conowingo Dam a few years ago, and then another unexplained decline occurred, in a population that is already at historic lows. Turns out that the latest threat to the shad may be rockfish. Rockfish eat menhaden. However the menhaden fishery has been largely unregulated, and as many fish as possible were sucked from the Bay and converted to cosmetics and fertilizers. At the same time, one of the few fisheries success stories, rockfish, made a tremendous comeback after a moratorium on their take. Rockfish are top predators, and when there weren’t enough menhaden for the rockfish to eat, they switched to shad. Of course this isn’t the definite cause of the more recent shad decline, but to me it seems the most plausible.

As John Muir said, when we look at any one thing in universe, we find it hitched to everything else, and that certainly applies to the fish world. Our actions matter. As I swim with this wall of fish, I certainly feel that connection.

Resurrection

It is easy to get discouraged. It seems our country can’t do anything because of politics, at a time when we need to do a lot. I get tired of all the finger pointing rhetoric. I get tired of the head in the sand attitude about how climate change isn’t happening. I am tired of our government giving huge subsidies to oil companies who continue to show record profits. I just get tired of all the negativity, and all the things that just don’t make any sense, that we should be able to change easily, but just don’t seem able to. There doesn’t seem to be very much positive out there. But seeing shad return gives me hope.

The first school of the year, maybe 50 fish strong, made it to the swimming hole in Susquehanna State Park. There were a few yellow perch there too. The spring spawning migration of shad returning into our streams is a fraction of what it once was. And there are some species, like American Shad, that are still struggling. But their numbers are generally increasing. Yellow perch, also recently declining in number seemed to have reversed too. I celebrate these ecological victories as I float in this pool above my favorite rapid and watch each individual struggle against the current to reach its clean gravel spawning ground. We recognized shad were declining and decided to do something about it, so their return is a testament to what we can accomplish when we want to accomplish something. When we put our will behind action. It is a testament to the tenacity and resilience of ecological systems. There are definitely limits, and we can easily exceed them. At the same time there is elasticity, and if we recognize those limits early enough, and act, the system can recover. All is not lost. Not yet. But we need to act.

It is fitting that shad returned on Easter weekend. It is a time of hope, resurrection, and rebirth, and their presence in this creek signals the continuation of their species, the hope that more will return next year, more proof that maybe their species has been resurrected. It is one of the most hopeful events we can experience in our streams. Seeing these first migrants is the rebirth of my optimism that we will recognize the limits we are fast approaching, drop the rhetoric, and get busy. Seeing these fish renews my commitment to show people the incredible life just beneath the surface of our local streams.

Busy Day at Deer Creek

The water in Deer Creek seemed like it was up and a little less clear than last week. I figured it rained upstream somewhere. But based on the hydrograph, the water level has dropped since my last visit. Guess I just got used to the clear waters of Florida springs.

The water definitely warmed while I was gone, and I barely noticed the cold when I stuck my face in the rapid. I ferried across the swift current into the lee of the large rock that last week sheltered adult caddis flies heading back into the water. I expected to see more of this phenomenon, but things change fast in a stream. There were no caddis to be found. Instead the entire back of the rock was covered in bulbous sculpin eggs. At least that’s what I think they are. Sculpin are primarily nocturnal predators, and I would love to watch this egg laying process in the wild. Now I know when to look…the week before St Patrick’s day.

I drifted out from the protection of the rock into the main flow. A slab of grey wriggling into a gap between rocks on the bottom caught my eye. I stopped, turned and crawled upstream against the stiff current. Two of the largest eels I have ever seen were going after something under one of the large cobbles in the rapid. Were they hunting together? Or was each one out for itself? It sure seemed like they were working in tandem.

I continued to crawl upstream against the heavy current into the large pool above the rapid. Even the flow here was strong. Much of the eddy in this pool has been embedded by sand moved from upstream during some of the heavy flows this winter and late fall. The only thing certain about streams is that they change. I am attached to this pool. Joyce and I raised our family here. It’s the local swimming hole. I had my daughter in this pool when she was 6 months old. I taught my sons how to fish and snorkel here. Gracie will help me lead a snorkeling trip here for the first time this summer. And each time I come back it is different with more memories, different life, life doing things I can’t explain and don’t expect, different structure. I head out into the main flow and let the current carry me. I scare a huge carp as much as it scares me and it shoots upstream. I drift over a small advanced school of a dozen shad and they peel off to the right. Thousands will soon follow.

The current quickens as the stream bed comes up. Water is forced over rocks and I am painlessly drug with it, like a leaf in the current. I can correct my course here and there, but I am largely at the mercy of the river. Good reminder for life. I eventually reach an eddy which spins me into still water. I leave Deer Creek elated and feeling very much alive.

Hope on Deer Creek

I needed a trip like this. It hasn’t been a hopeful week. An expert panel of marine scientists convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean determined that marine life is at significant risk for extinctions never before seen in human history due to over fishing, pollution and climate change. I’m not much for alarmist environmentalism, but there is some good science behind this report.
It’s also been a little depressing to snorkel in my region lately. I haven’t seen clear water for a month, since leaving Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee. We have had a flashy weather pattern this spring where localized storm bursts flush sediments into the streams, because of the poor choices we make on land. Forests and marsh can absorb these downpours without much mud entering our streams. Farm field, lawn, rooftop and driveway cant, so our streams turn to chocolate milk instantly after a rain, and drive visibilities to inches for days. I still snorkel, and am still amazed at what I see when I go, but it’s nowhere near as good as it can be.
Yesterday was the clincher when I witnessed a family stoning a northern water snake to death on Deer Creek. It was too late before I realized what they were doing. People can be ignorant. I really questioned the value of time spent doing environmental education in rivers and streams.
But today I took a group of Baltimore City high school students snorkeling in the Susquehanna River and Deer Creek, and I have hope because of them. They are interns at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, and they are the next wave of environmentalists working to protect the environment which by default protects our health. In the short time I spent with these students today, it was obvious that Kathy Fuller who heads up the program and other staff members of the aquarium are preparing them well. They are versed in concepts such as watershed, and the issues killing our streams and Chesapeake: sediments, nutrients, and invasive species, and they are acting to educate on these topics. While each of them didn’t feel comfortable in the water today, they all at least tried to snorkel, and they were all engaged in being in the river. Thank you National Aquarium in Baltimore interns for braving cloudier than usual water today, and for restoring my faith in the future.