Golden Glimmer of Hope

It started to rain 30 minutes ago, and already this small stream is recognizing the effects. It’s flowing a little more powerfully, there’s more stuff in the water from the forest canopy, leave bits and seed coverings, and there’s more silt. There’s still a fine covering of silt over almost everything from the last rain. Erosion is a natural process that causes siltation. But we have increased the eroding power of water by increasing hard surfaces that don’t allow water to percolate through. Water runs off roof tops and driveways hard and fast and scours soil into the local stream. The soil, now silt, covers everything, chokes the gills of fish and aquatic insects, and homogenizes habitat.
One of the predicted scenarios associated with global warming induced climate destabilization is that rains in the mid-Atlantic will become heavier and more sporadic which means heavier, more scouring flows of water.
In spite of the grayish covering, there were still stone flies present. Stone flies are like aquatic canaries and they typically can’t survive in waters too impacted by sediments or nutrients. Their presence is usually interpreted to mean relatively healthy water. One golden stonefly in particular, served especially as a beacon of hope. All is not lost, and if anything these grey silts and golden stoneflies are calls to action: calls to install rain barrels and rain gardens to contain the runoff coming from our roof tops and driveways.

Cycle of Life

Blueback herring are holed up in pools of the Principio falls, spawning, oblivious to me, the intruder. Masses of metallic blue and silver shoot past upstream and swirl back downstream in pulsating eddies of fish. This is one of the incredible rites of spring, and I am grateful to be here with my head underwater to witness the drama.
A dead half-eaten herring lies on the bottom, on a bed of eggs. Eggs cover part of the carcass. The entire bottom is covered in eggs, and they occasionally swirl up past my face mask when an eddy whirls them back into the water column. Nothing goes to waste, and I’m sure the rest of this herring will be eaten by someone in the next few hours, giving sustenance to a heron, or otter, crayfish or catfish. Just as I’m sure most of these millions of eggs will become someone else’s dinner rather than become new bluebacked herring. It’s hard to tell whose eggs are whose and who fertilized which ones. It’s just one procreative soup, and each fish contributes with the hope and expectation that their young will make it. An assumption that they achieved a form of immortality by passing their genetic information to the next generation. The remains of the dead herring are a reminder that I will be there too someday, and the eggs are a reminder that my kids will be here to carry on. This amazing annual feat of migration, life and death models the shortness of our journeys and the spiraling cycle of life.

That's Not a Shad

Hundreds of hickory shad pushed their way upstream to spawn. I hovered on the edge of the current in a large eddy and stretched out into the stream to get as close to the school as possible without interrupting the procession.
The fish got used to me and allowed me to stay without leaving until I coughed, or cleared my leaky snorkel. They would swim from the hole when they heard the noise only to timidly return a few minutes later. I just hung out with the fish, a part of this eons old ritual of upstream migration, and enjoyed the privilege of witnessing this feat. There was an intensity of purpose with these fish. There wasn’t much that was going to keep them from their destination, and I absorbed as much of the view of their journey as I could.
The fish scattered and the pool became eerily still. There weren’t silver tubes struggling upstream in the hazy distance. There weren’t over bitten lower jaws characteristic of hickory shad, wiggling side to side in the current. There was an unexplained quiet in the pool and I thought I saw a large shadow pass just barely out of sight. If I were in the ocean I would have been thinking predator, the way the fish disappeared, as a shadow arrived. But this was a freshwater stream, and I figured my imagination was at work. The shad returned and I set back to experiencing this timeless journey.
Then it came up through the center of the pool against the current like the shad: a large Asian carp. The 2 foot long fish was twice as long and three times as wide as the shad. Asian carp were brought to North America to control algae and aquatic plant growth in aquaculture operations. They escaped captivity and are now considered an invasive species in most freshwater systems. They can alter habitats that results in the reduction of other species. They are herbivores and effectively out eat other fish. Billions of dollars are being spent on trying to keep them from entering the great lakes, and sometimes I wonder if it’s all folly. Once the genies out of the bottle, it’s pretty hard to put it back, especially when the genie is wet and slippery. Carp are considered invasive in the Chesapeake region and they root up submerged vegetation beds as they feed and reproduce. But still they are amazing fish to swim with. Shad spend their lives at sea and move into rivers and streams in spring to spawn. They are built with compact bodies and powerful caudal fins to make such a journey. Carp are more tubular and rotund, better built for lakes and slow moving water than this rapid. But this carp was able to move against the current with as much grace as the migrants, even though its body type is obviously not well suited for this environment, and I wonder what it was doing here, moving upstream with the sleek lined shad.

The Power of Water

I clawed along the bottom to pull my way upstream in 2 feet of smooth but quickly flowing water. When I let go of a stone or boulder, I was swept down river, until I was able to dig my toes into the cobbles. I drifted into an eddy slowed by the rooty shoreline and came nose to nose with a tessellated darter who excavated a home from the sand underneath a small cobble, well out of the flow. I swam back towards the middle of the river and allowed the current to carry me down stream. I peeked above the surface every few minutes to gauge how far I had before the river shallows. It will take some time and effort to stop short of the boulders that form a downstream set of rapids.
I cautiously entered the short rapid and held onto a boulder with one hand, which allowed my body to trail behind in the strong current. Ameletid mayfly nymphs clung to the lee side of rocks. Their black and white banded frilly tails waved in the turbulent water. The darter and mayflies have all devised graceful ways to sustain themselves against the flow that I clumsily struggled against. The bedrock below was scoured smooth, and a submerged whirlpool twirled a stone in a circle that wore a small cup in the rock. Water shaped the course of this river and set its depth. It placed, moved and restructured the rocks that form this rapid. Water is a dynamic force. It’s not done working and the river shifts and changes before my eyes. This will be a different place tomorrow, and almost unrecognizable next year. The holes I knew six months ago are either deeper or gone. One rapid is now a short falls. Nothing is static. Water is a powerful force on our planet. It shapes bedrock, landscapes, ecosystems and lives. It launches wars. Tessellated darters need clean water. Ameletid mayflies need clean water. We need clean water. Life is not possible without it and yet we treat water as if it held no authority. As if our lives didn’t depend on it. We treat water as some kind of throw away commodity rather than giving it the respect and honor it deserves. Many native peoples felt that water was spirit, and I can feel the spirit of this river while I watch the effect it has on the darters, mayflies, bedrock and me.

New Meets Old

The Pine Grove covered bridge is immediately downstream from the Chester County water plant and sets the tone for this place where old and new seem to meet and blend. But even part of the old is a facade. The covered bridge was rebuilt atop steel beams. I slid into the water at the downstream end of a large pool just around the first bend downstream from the bridge.
Corixids, which are flying insects with the ability to swim, feed off the bacterial algal ooze that accumulates on the bottom of the slow moving backwater. I have never seen these animals in the wild, only in swimming pools, and their mottled tan wing covers are much more attractive here.
The rocks in the main flow are all covered in sponges infused with sand and sediment so they aren’t so obvious until they are touched. I was transfixed by the concept of freshwater sponges since I studied streams in high school. My teachers told me about a patch of them in a local stream, but I was never able to locate them. When I think of sponges I think of marine systems, and this was part of my amazement. Now, 30 years later, I finally find some freshwater sponges, but they are nothing like the animal I had pictured: upright typical sponge form. Instead, they are encrusting and dirty with silt and sand. Ancient organisms covered by the new problems of sedimentation and increased scouring flows.
A young eel hunted between rocks on the bottom unaware of my presence and a small northern water snake swam over my left shoulder and under my right arm as I tried to snap a picture of the eel.
A Chinese mystery snail lay upside down and was encrusted into the bottom by sponges. These invasive snails have the ability to filter feed, and I wonder if that is what this one was doing. It found a safe place in the stream bed, was protected by encrusting sponge and filter fed for food. New biology, in the form of a recent addition to our aquatic systems, the Chinese mystery snail, and old biology in the form of freshwater sponge meet and become intimately associated here, like the covered bridge and water treatment plant.

Nuclear Shadow

Three Mile Island scared the crap out of me when I was 12. It came close to melting down and I remember being very concerned for my aunt, who lived in a nearby town that would have been eliminated had the ultimate disaster happened. I went to see the movie the China Syndrome not long after and that cemented my hate for nuclear power that lasted through young adulthood. I have mellowed a bit with age, and now recognize that the culprits in all energy related calamities are us. We are the ones that create the demand, and demand cheap energy. Not the oil, coal or nuclear power companies. I have learned that when I’m wagging my finger at someone else, three are pointing back at me.
So today I slid into the water upstream of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant at the canal lock recreation area. The lock haven dam is just down stream from that, and backs up the Susquehanna to supply cooling water to Three Mile Island, and potential energy to the York Haven dam and powerhouse. Just about anywhere I have snorkeled on this river is affected by energy production in some way, and the water from the lower river is used by hydro, nuclear and coal fired plants to give us the energy we need to maintain our lifestyles.
The river here is typical Susquehanna, big expansive shallow water, with numerous rock outcrops. An assortment of invasive shells, an invasive jambalaya of sorts; mystery snails, corbicula, and rusty crayfish carapaces, were piled in a dry eddy.
I slipped into the water and 5 crayfish rocketed in different directions. They are everywhere, and I can’t make any move without causing one to shoot off out of sight. I am fairly certain these are the invasive rusty crayfish, with large claws and rust colored patches on the sides of their carapaces. They are so abundant, they must surely have an affect on the ecology here, especially on the benthos, but benthic fish, like tessellated darters, don’t seem to be affected as they appear to be almost as abundant. Virginia river snails are also common and they leave grazed patches and trails where they have eaten the slick biofilm on the smoothed slabs of bedrock, but they may be affected. Maybe Virginia river snails are less abundant here than other places like the mouth of the Octoraro because of the crayfish. There are lots of dead shells of another invasive, Chinese mystery snail, but where are the live animals? Are they hunkered down in the substrate?
This is used water, used by power companies and industry, farmers, city dwellers and suburbanites. But then any river in North America is heavily used. Invasives, like many of these crayfish, Chinese mystery snails, and now for the Susquehanna, zebra mussels, are one of the leading causes of globally declining freshwater biodiversity. And I wonder what the biggest danger is, or will all these threats work in synergy to finally destroy whatever is left of our freshwater ecosystems? I’m sure that the system I observed in a few feet of water today little resembles the ecosystem that was here pre European settlement. So while it may not be pristine, it is still amazing.

Muddy Eddies Are Beautiful Too

I used to avoid the larger eddies, those areas of sluggish water behind rocks and shoreline aberrations. The slower moving water created by the upstream obstruction allows the finest silt particles to settle to the bottom and expanses of barren mud-covered flats extend downstream. I always thought of muddy eddies as lifeless, and I usually created chocolate milk water conditions by accidentally stirring the fine bottom before I could really see who was living in these areas.
I skimmed over one of these eddies on my way to what I thought was the more interesting habitat of a cobbly riffle when I came upon a line in the mud that led 5 feet or so to a Virginia river snail slowly but surely making its way upstream. In the moment I paused to admire the snail, other life became apparent. Tiny squiggles of new fish schooled in a small hazy cloud. Black smudges of other kinds of fry swam towards me to investigate. Comma mark toad poles squiggled along the bottom. The importance of this perceived lifeless barren became apparent: this is a nursery for the stream, and suddenly, this barren wasn’t so barren.
Sedimentation results in the loss of habitat and is one of the leading causes of stream degradation. The inputs of soil we send to our streams through ground disturbing activities like farming and construction, and scouring runoff that comes from hard surfaces like driveways and roads needs to be controlled. But small amounts of erosion and resulting sedimentation are natural processes, and the fine muds that form the bottom of these eddies are important in the continuum of stream habitats, from quiet muddy eddies, to violent bouldery rapids. Life has evolved and developed to nestle in a particular spot on the spectrum, and all habitats are essential. Even the muddy ones.