The Water Pod has arrived at Concrete Plant Park helping to mark the return of public access to

this incredible site. It quickly has become a normal feature of the area, harkening back the original function of the site that gives the park its name.  But while the pod  might spark memories for past employees, the monarch butterflies that are migrating through the Bronx River Corridor have quickly decided that the plants aboard the pod  are a good choice of nourishment. several pupae have also attached themselves to plants on board.

Did I mention the parrots?  Yes, several pairs are nesting at CCP in what I believe is a choke cherry  bush.  I first heard there call a couple of weeks ago, and then my daugther and I were greeted by them this morning as we left CCP.

Rocking the Boat and Pete Seeger…

After a quick seining  brought up dozens of silver sides ( thousands escaped), another fish caught my eye.  It was a little harder to corral than the silversides, but  a concerted effort landed a juvenile flounder (summer flounder?). On the bottom of the shore, the camoflague helped the fish absolutely disappear, but in my hand it looks quite alien.

These silversides (maybe Rough Silversides?), also known as sand smelt, are one of the most abundant fishes in our coastal waters. As Tarleton Hoffman Bean in his 1903 work Catalogue of the fishes of New York writes, these fish are not of great importance as a human food source, but they are a food source for the larger fish that inhabit local waters, as well as the wading birds that are regular visitors.
Silversides begin to spawn in May and, after a gestation period of just eight days, their young begin feeding on zooplankton before graduating to detritus, algae and even small fish and insects. The schools follow the tides up the river to feed in the salt marshes or  other protected river banks, swimming in tight shoals that serve as a form of protection against predators. Over the summer the populations swell, creating a migrating energy source that will move out to deeper water in the fall, sharing the productivity of the estuary and the salt marsh with the greater oceans.
Unfortunately the picture below did not turn out as planned, but the jellyfish shown, most likely a comb jelly, also came up in my net.   One of 90 species in phylum Ctenophora, some are able to glow with a slight phosphorescence as this example shows. The color that appears in the photo was not visible to my eye at the park, but appeared when I cropped the shot. Comb jellies are all carnivores and, though they have no tentacles, have tremendous mouths under their bell and can even eat prey larger than themselves.

On Wednesday morning, Josue, Cici and I introduced a group of students involved in the creation of a school mural to the Bronx River Forest and the Bronx River. On our reconnaissance of the area just prior to the walk, we came across an egret foraging while standing on a pile of recently accumulated detritus. The newly expanded island in the stream caused eddies and small ponds that offered great hunting grounds for the egret. As we watched, the egret moved its long, muscular neck almost imperceptibly before jabbing it into the water and coming up with a slender fish about 3 inches long ( a tessellated darter?) Egrets and herons differ from storks and flamingos in that their necks are hunting tools. The powerful muscles allow them to thrust down into the water in search of prey. You can best note the difference when in flight as the birds with the stronger muscles coil their necks back while those that just use their necks to reach down and filter the water fly with their necks stretched out straight. We kept as quit as possible and left the egret to finish its fishing somewhat in private.

But what kind of an egret was it? A Snowy Egret? A Great White Egret? The answer is in the beak and the feet. While the Great White Egret is larger than the Snowy Egret, size sometimes depends on perspective. This is a Great White Egret due to the fact the beak is yellow and the legs and feet are black (not the best view of the feet here), while the Snow Egret has a black beak, black leg and yellow feet. They can also be distinguished by hunting style. The Great White is patient, waiting for prey to come into range while the Snowy will actively kick up the bottom in an effort to stir up game. Makes you wonder if there is some connection between the Snowy’s style and the natural selection that gives it its yellow feet.

DG

Thinking about beavers does not conjure up images of urban areas. Quite to the contrary, as a matter of fact, and people do not often associate the Bronx with beavers, but we do have one: at least one.

Since the first bite marks were noticed over two years ago, the now named Jose the Beaver has been little seen but his presence has been noticed. In the section of the Bronx River that stretches between the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo, trees ave been gnawed and felled, and two lodges and a burrow have been identified has beaver housing. Being largely nocturnal, Jose works while the two establishments are closed and he (she?) is out of sight of the casual passersby. Photographs were taken with trip cameras by WCS, and a writer for Outdoor Magazine claims to have infrared photos but nobody has seen them. A staffer at the Bronx Zoo did see Jose one morning and placed Jose among the biggest beavers he had ever seen. Running between 30 and 70 lbs, the guesstimate weighs him in around 50 lbs.

If you put yourself on the list of those who have not seen Jose The Bronx River Beaver, you may now remove yourself from that list. On the morning of June 12, 2009 Jose put in an appearance at Drew Gardens as the participants in Bronx River Crossing made preparations to launch their watershed representation. Chris Kannon was able to take a series of shots as Jose swam leisurely upstream before lumbering out of the water to walk under East Tremont Ave. Some of us noted that he seemed sluggish or even disoriented. Of course, having never seen a beaver, maybe they always look that way. On more than one occasion the same has been said about me. Maybe it was the salty water where he was swimming? Drew gardens is at the top of the estuary and has been found to have levels of salinity up to 8 parts per thousand (oceans are 30-35 ppt and freshwater is usually < 0.5 ppt) When the dying beaver was found last year in the East River on the day of the pope’s visit, it was reported that, while that beaver had already been sick, it was probably the brackish waters of the East River that finally did him in. Could Jose be on his way to a similar fate? Could the stresses of life in the zoo and the garden be such that he is being chased down stream and into a perilous situation?

Jose came up again in a discussion that our Executive Director had with a local fisherman on Saturday in River Park, just south of the last dam on the river and the zoo. When she mentioned the beaver having been seen just to the south, the fisherman nonchalantly replied, “Oh yeah, I see that beaver all the time down here.” Could it be that Jose is putting himself in danger on a regular basis? Why would he chance forays into brackish water unless he has a death wish or is suffering from dementia?

In May of this year, W. Gregory Hood, Ph.D. of the Skagit System Cooperative published a research paper entitled The Overlooked Ecosystem. Dr. Hood had set out to study the distribution of Sweetgale (myrica gale) in the estuarine section of the Skagit River in Seattle. While he did find the sweetgale, he also found that the estuary was frequented by beaver from the fresh water section of the river. Dr. Hood explains that beavers are known to make use of estuarine areas with salinity levels as high as 10 ppt. Being true vegetarians, they are in search of those trees that will fulfill their appetite while providing the needed nutrients. If the trees in question are along the banks of brackish water, the beaver is prepared to go there. Beavers rarely forage more than 100 yards from the stream they call home which makes upstream and downstream travelling the normal event. Jose is probably in search of food and a quiet place. In most land conflict events, beaver will look for new foraging areas. This explains Jose’s “bizarre” behavior. It was our lack of understanding of normal behavior that made his acts seem bizarre.

But Dr. Hood also raises some questions that are pertinent to our river. Hood makes the connection between the salmon that use the river for spawning and the beaver that rework the habitat in the estuary and beyond. Being tidal, some estuary sections can become quite shallow at low tide. While the beaver may be in the area to forage, an effort may also be made to dam up small areas, causing tidal pools that will provide safe harbor when the tide runs out. Perhaps coincidentally, these tidal pools also provide a safe zone for salmonids in the area. Being that the beavers prefer somewhat deeper water, the pools are deeper than the areas where wading birds generally will hunt. By providing for personal needs, the beaver helps a multitude of other organisms. While we do not have salmon on the Bronx River, the return of the alewife herring and the catadromous eels fill a similar niche. Both would benefit from a tidal hideout at low tide.

And just what is Jose feeding on in the estuary? It will mean some kicking about in the area, but while beavers preference is for aspen and poplar, they will go for whatever is available when necessary. In that area there are willow trees which are always a part of the diet, but perhaps this new understanding of the range of the beaver and its possible utility can become a part of th present converstation about the soon-to-begin construction in Starlight Park, just south of the Cross Bronx Expressway. From drew Gardens south, the river is armored on both sides with rip rap, leaving the banks barren and lifeless. Dr. Hoods research found that trees growing along the banks of the river did so above the tidal zone, though they did not grow in soil. Instead the trees were able to take root in the woody debris that washed down from upstream and became lodged on the bank at high tide. Perhaps a consideration in the lower Bronx River would be to provide such woody debris. At the present time most woody debris cannot make it down stream due to the dams that block the river at certain point. In some upstream areas, logs have been cabled to the banks as a form of bank stabilization. The Section of the river between Drew Gardens and the south end of Starlight Park needs little bank stabilization due to the rip rap, but taking the same simple idea may provide a landing zone for seeds that can then provide a food source for beaver and create habitats for other unexpected guests.

DG

Cool links:

http://books.google.com/books?id=-xQalfqP7BcC&pg=PA295&lpg=PA295&dq=beaver+favored+diet&source=bl&ots=XOlaFu5796&sig=kBq_s3ePD5K2dJ2eg1exkObBNUE&h
l=es&ei=IdRKSufeIofCNu7v4KoB&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

http://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/Wildlife/Wildlife_PDFs/Beaver_control.pdf

http://www.skagitwatershed.org/rpapers_overlooked.html

On July 18, 2008, the Bronx River Alliance placed more than 350 stormdrain markers (above) in Bronx River sewersheds, HP-007, HP-004, HP-009 and HP-008. Support, in the form of funding and ten energetic volunteers, for this project was provided by Goldman Sachs. Thank you to all of the staff from both the Alliance and Goldman Sachs who braved the extreme heat in the name of stormwater education! The Alliance aims to have a total of 500 markers placed by the end of August. Please visit the Storm Water Infrastructure Matters Discussion Forum to discuss stormdrain marking in more detail.

When my father would tell me that I was dense, I did not take it as a compliment, but I did not quite understand the insult either. It did not occur to me that what he meant to tell me was that I was incapable of learning, stupid, even, because I knew that for my father, to be dense was to be a jackass: stubborn. But density is oh so much more. There is a certain power in density, mass divided by volume, in certain circumstances that my father may have, in some askew manner, been actually keying me in on.

In the world of our river, density comes mostly in to play in the interplay between salt water and fresh. If you just consider the comparison between a glass of fresh water, and a glass of water of the same volume into which a table spoon of salt has been added, it is plain that the added salt would make the water weigh more and, therefore, be more dense than the glass of fresh water. But water is water right? So when salt water meets fresh, they should mix and find some medium between the two, right? This is true, but the mixing is not instantaneous. The variables of density, temperature and flow affect the time that it takes for the solution to find this medium point.

There is a fun way to test this effect. You will need four glasses, two of which are filled with water, blue and yellow food coloring and ½ cup of salt. One glass of water will remain as is, but into the other you should add the ½ cup of salt. Should the salt not dissolve entirely upon stirring, you can heat the water slightly in a microwave, stirring occasionally until dissolved. Add 4 drops of yellow food coloring to the fresh water, and 4 drops of blue to the salty water. Pour half of each color into one of the empty glasses so that you know have a two half glasses of yellow (fresh) water and two half glasses of blue (salty) water at approximately the same temperature. Slowly add the salty water to the fresh and ved versa and compare how the two mix and become another color or find where you can see where the two remain separate. If you have tries the experiment, or perhaps if you have not, you will note that the salty water tends to stay towards the bottom of the glass. The same happens in a tidal estuary such as in the Soundview area and farther upstream, only instead of water being added from above, you have two walls of water moving towards one another. The salt water is carried upstream by the tides and the fresh water is carried downstream by gravity. There is a point where these two meet and it is called the salt wedge. The Denser salt water pushes under the fresh water, settling towards the bottom, as the lighter fresh water floats over the top.

This wedge can stretch for miles as it does in the Hudson, or it can be much more vertical if the flow of the river is equally matched by the rise of the tide. In the case of the Hudson, the salt wedge is carefully watched since Poughkeepsie gets much of its drinking water directly from the Hudson. If the salt wedge runs too far north, the flow is increased to push it back down south. Sampling the water at different depths will show the differing salinities.

Fresh water means less than .5 parts per thousand (ppt) of salt, while brackish water is between .5 ppt and 17ppt, and oceans average 35 ppt. Most estuaries, like the Bronx River Estuary, are brackish. At our last monitoring of Drew Gardens miles above the mouth, Sally found2-3 ppt salinity from a surface sample. As a I walked upstream to get a few pictures of The Phipps Youth Employment Program students that were being introduced to water quality monitoring, I saw a nice size blue crab crawling across the bottom of the river in an area were the flow was quite slow.

I thought that the water would be dangerously low in salt for this creature which thrives 10ppt-25ppt but there could be mitigating factors. One is that the test we had done was surface which means that towards the bottom it could have been a little more salty. There is also an interesting study from 2005(POSEY Martin H. ⁽¹⁾ ; ALPHIN Troy D. ⁽¹⁾ ; HARWELL Heather ⁽¹⁾ ; ALLEN Bryan ⁽¹⁾ ) that discusses the tendency for juvenile blue crabs to seek areas of lower salinity(3ppt) in the summer and the fall. The theory put forward by the authors is that they are actually looking for waters safer from predators since salinity and predators were positively related. In any case, it shows the river’s improvement and, should this crab not be atypical, demonstrates the importance of this part of the estuary to all waters down river.

Dad may have been right about my being dense, but now I know that density can also have its advantages.

DG

Last week I spent a day in Washington DC “grading” teachers’ papers with two others. Unfortunately there could be only four correct papers out of the fifty that I had to go over, and no matter what the perspective, that was all that could be right. We were one of eight panels choosing the next 30 teachers that will travel to the Galapagos Islands this November as a part of the Toyota International Teacher Program. There were a record 900 applications from all over the US from classroom teachers from 6^th to 12^th grade, and teachers of all subjects. It was our charge to decide who would “pass” on to the trip of a lifetime, and who would not. While I felt privileged to be asked to participate in the process, I did not relish the idea of giving what would turn out to be a failing grade to those who would not be visiting Las Islas Encantadas.

The process starts with the staff at iie perusing the entire application for completeness. Not following the basic rules of requirements and word counts, and submitting all the requested information. To be fair to all, the rules must be followed strictly. They then take a slightly closer look to see if anything is just outrageous such as “ I will bring back a Galapagos Tortoise and a Marine Iguana to use in a travelling presentation to bring to the fore the importance of conservation.” But the reviewers at this stage are fairly lenient, leaving most decisions of merit to panelists like myself.

At the panel stage, three people, usually including one teacher, somebody in an environmental field, and somebody from an international organization, are given 50 applications to read and rate. For this particular application, the four sections were: personal statement (why you should go), Impact statement( how you will use what you learn), a lesson plan( how you present environmental issues in a hands on manner in your classroom), and reference letters. The most heavily weighted parts were impact statements and lesson plans, but the personal narrative would often inform how you reviewed the other sections. It was not the writing itself that would make a story compelling, but the heart and relevance that the teacher portrayed. Impact statements had to cover students, school and community and be feasible. Lesson plans had to be hands-on, innovative, even if you admit getting the idea from somewhere else, and extendable into various disciplines. It also helped to write in the future perfect, leaving out the maybe’s and might’s.

Strange as it sounds for a trip to what people consider a science teacher’s dreamland, being a science teacher did not work in your favor. Toyota wants environmental education to be interdisciplinary and requires a diversity in subject matter taught by the teachers that are chosen. Almost sixty percent of the applicants taught science. When you consider that a high estimate would be fifteen science teachers, that means that the science teachers are vying for, at best, a one in forty spot. Teachers in any other discipline are up against the odds of one in twenty. I don’t gamble, not even on a one dollar lottery ticket, but my money would be on the teachers of other disciplines.

What it finally came down to was a fight for somebody that a panelist took on as cause. You said to yourself, “This person not only deserves this trip (All really did), but would be an asset to the other US teachers, the galapagueño teachers, the Toyota program, and their school and community.” Then we had to duke it out, give in a little and hope that others believed your arguments.

When all was said and done, we chose a stellar group to take advantage of the program, but had to let go an equal number that were on a par with them. Bittersweet is one way to describe it but the biggest discussion on the way out the door was the applications were all amazing. There were twenty people that I wanted to contact immediately to share ideas and use as resources. For privacy, however, all materials that I was given were destroyed on site, and I have to hope to find those people by happenstance at a later date.

So I got my wish: To grade teachers papers. Unfortunately I could not listen to the explanations as I could with Krishad. But, for those that were not chosen, there will be another round soon enough, and all that can, should apply.

DG