Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Narragansett Bay Isn’t What It Used To Be

By Chip Young

What it is like five years after the 2003 Greenwich Bay fish kill

August 20th will mark the fifth anniversary of the calamitous Greenwich Bay fish kill.  This catastrophic ecological event left the shores of beaches and coves surrounding Greenwich Bay covered in dead fish and shellfish, all primarily suffocated by the lack of oxygen in the local waters.

The fish kill was the result of a “perfect storm” of factors, which scientists were not oblivious to, but were in no position to do anything to halt.  In fact, researchers from the Bay Window Monitoring Program, of which I am a member, predicted its occurrence right down to the very day.  Their prescience was based on the data they were collecting, which showed the growing lack of dissolved oxygen, warmer temperatures and the coming neap tide, which is when there is the least tidal fluctuation, which minimizes the mixing of the saltwater of Narragansett Bay with freshwater from rain, and the natural river and stream flows.

The public outcry over the visual and visceral shock of seeing that much marine life washing up dead led to an immediate response from state government.  A Governor’s Narragansett Bay and Watershed Planning Commission was formed to look into the matter and take action, with hundreds of local experts involved from government, private and public sectors.  Attacks were launched on the nutrient loadings into Narragansett Bay from wastewater treatment plants and stormwater runoff.  These nutrients, from human sources and the use of nitrogen-rich fertilizers, were seen by many as an oxygen-depleting powder keg, the fuse of which was lit by the accumulated factors of weather, temperatures and other small but important variables.

There has been progress in trying to assure that we don’t experience another fish kill of that magnitude.  (Some fish kills occur naturally every summer, and should’t be a cause of panic.)  But Bay Window researchers and scientists are now keeping a close eye on the entire Bay as the warm weather and rains of August approach, especially during the neap tides scheduled for August 8 and 23.  You’ll be able to read more about what is happening underneath the waves as regards the possibility of another fish kill in this space we near those dates.  For now, below is a take on how Narragansett Bay has been gradually changing through the years, and what that evolution means to Rhode Islanders, written by my highly respected Bay Window colleagues Mark Gibson and Candace Oviatt.  These two scientists have been studying the Bay for years, know it inside out, and what they see and say is well worth your while.

NARRAGANSETT BAY: CH-CH-CHANGES
By Mark Gibson and Candace Oviatt

In late June, Department of Environmental Management scientists from the Bay Window monitoring partnership observed through aerial flyovers and purse seine sampling an estimated 24 million menhaden with an average weight of one pound apiece, in Narragansett Bay. The fish were predominantly located in the Upper Bay and Providence River.

That is a lot of fish, an amount not seen since the 1970s.

The massive influx of this keystone species that lures fishermen and predatory fish such as striped bass and bluefish is nearly double that of the noteworthy 2007 bumper crop of menhaden that attracted media and public attention.  But there are other major changes going on in Narragansett Bay that are not as visible as churning schools of fish on the surface.

Narragansett Bay itself has noticeably warmed in the recent past.  Yes, that is global climate change manifesting itself right here in our backyard. The Bay is gradually taking on the characteristics of a mid-Atlantic estuary such as what you would experience in Maryland and the Carolinas.  Over the past 30 years, the average mean temperature of the Bay has gone up two degrees Fahrenheit; the average mean winter temperature has increased four degrees.  For temperature-sensitive marine creatures, that is a huge change.

Due in part to the warming of the Bay, traditional natural cycles of Bay organisms are either taking place earlier, or not at all.  The system has changed.  The winter/spring “bloom” of plankton, which used to be the starting point for a cascade of ecological processes up the food chain, has become a fragment of itself.

It all begins with the plankton. Phytoplankton, the microscopic plant life in the Bay, once thrived in enormous amounts in February and March, during that winter/spring bloom. Once, the small plants would bloom extensively and virtually free from zooplankton predators (think small, shrimp-like creatures), and sink naturally to the bottom. This occurred because the zooplankton were inactive in the cold winter water and not able to feed on the abundant phytoplankton. The phytoplankton sinking to the floor of the Bay would become welcome meals for bottom mud dwellers such worms and shellfish.  Now, with warmer winter water in the Bay, the zooplankton do not go dormant. They remain active in their newly warmer surroundings, and graze the phytoplankton well in advance, limiting their blooming in the traditional way of the Bay.

In addition, the tiny, clear, barrel-shaped jellyfish you see throughout the Bay, known as “ctenophores” (TEEN-oh-phores), have also benefited from the balmier temperatures.  They are arriving in the Bay early than usual, in June rather than September, where they feed on the small marine life (for example, small fish larvae).  Some scientists believe that the changes that we are seeing in the kinds of fish occurring in these waters are related to this jellyfish predation on fish larvae. Yet more changes for Narragansett Bay.

The rise in water temperature is causing major changes in the organisms that live in the Bay and how the whole ecosystem works.  It is also switching the balance of power in fisheries from species that live on the bottom like flounders and hakes, to those that live in the water column such as butterfish and scup.  That already has measurable economic impacts locally; as winter flounder are worth up $2.00 per pound to commercial fishermen, while menhaden and scup only yield $0.10 to $0.75 per pound.

This shift in types of fishes over the past 30 years of warming waters is interesting because the total biomass of fish has remained about the same. That biomass just consists of different species. Little known year-round resident bottom fish such as hogchokers and oyster toadfish are declining, as they are replaced on a much more seasonal basis by visitors such as stripers and summer flounder.  Warm water may be the primary cause, think Bay Window researchers, but they are also concerned that a lack of oxygen along the bottom of the Bay—a condition called “hypoxia,” which was the main factor in the notorious 2003 Greenwich Bay fish kill—may also play a significant role.

Other factors are contributing to changes in the Bay as well. The water quality is getting better as we reduce pollutants from wastewater treatment facilities and we eliminate old cesspools.  Shell disease—an emerging new disease—is affecting the iconic animal of Narragansett Bay, the lobster.  Newly arrived invasive species of crabs and other organisms are out-competing our native Bay creatures for existence.  At the same time, the overall productivity of Narragansett Bay seems steady. 

Global climate change may be here to stay and Narragansett Bay is changing. How? That is what Bay Window scientists are focusing on; examining the information they accumulate day in and day out.  We need to find those answers because the health of this incredible, dynamic system is critical to the future economic and environmental well being of each and every one of us.

-  Mark Gibson, deputy chief of Fish and Wildlife for the R.I. Department of Environmental Management, and Candace Oviatt, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography, are both members of the Bay Window Monitoring Program Steering Committee.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Birdies and Birdmen

By Chip Young

Anything can happen when you get out of the house

Here’s what can happen if you tear yourself away from HD digital cable (and your ‘utes from their Facebook and video games) and all get out into the wonderful world of nature and open spaces and blue skies.  (Reminded me of the Mickey Mouse Club’s “Anything Can Happen Day,” for those of you approaching a certain age.)  This is a true story.  Honest.

We were just minding our own business, playing a golf match in the Wednesday night Twilight League at Jamestown Golf Course. Me along with two fellow Jamestowners, my partner Kevin Welch and opponent Dale Buckey, and his Newport teammate, Ed Schene.  There was a perfectly clear blue sky, you could see the planes and going to and from T.F. Green Airport, and we were laughing about our golf balls nailing them when we hit our shots and followed them as they looked like they were flying right past the aircraft in the sky. That little pretend game got chuckles all round long.

Little did we know. 

On the ninth and final green, about 6:30 p.m., three of us were standing with the Newport Bridge at our backs gazing down past the hole at Dale, who was putting up the hill towards us.  He was sizing up his putt, and then suddenly stood up and pointed over our heads, and shouted “Look!”  We figured something had happened on the bridge, or there was another big cargo plane from Quonset going by worth our attention.  We turned, and about 150 yards behind us and 80 feet up, a guy in an ultralight solo glider (not a parasail, where you hang down, but one where you are lying flat out in a sort of sheath that encloses your body and legs) with about a 50-foot wing span was coming down right towards us.  He flew just over the treetops, sneaked over the telephone wires, and went about 20 feet directly over our heads—you could have said “Hi” and chatted and he would have heard you, but we were just gawking with our mouths open and arms outspread like welcoming the Messiah as we followed his flight.

He landed just past the sand traps in front of the green in the fairway on what was essentially his stomach, and then rolled on the landing wheels under his body to a stop halfway down the heart, like a perfect tee shot in reverse.  We were screaming at our friend Doc Barrett, another local boy, who was standing in the adjacent parking lot, only 20 yards away from getting run over, with his back turned, filling out his scorecard, totally oblivious, thinking the hubbub was because Dale had sunk his long putt for an eagle. 

When Doc finally responded and turned towards us, we all furiously pointed behind him where Birdman had come to a rest. Doc spun another 90 degrees, saw the glider, jumped about a foot in the air, and then raced over to the mysterious flyer to see if he was all right. (We had to putt out and finish the match, of course. First things first, and we do have priorities.) 

Our foursome went back in to the clubhouse, shaking our heads in amazement, leaving the mystery pilot to caddy his own glider off the course.  Doc eventually brought Birdman in and bought him a beer. When I asked him from across the room where he had started out his journey, figuring possibly a high spot in the state, like the Johnston Landfill, he announced he took off that morning in the Catskills (!?!?!?!).  This was met by a slight indication of disbelief (expressed by a roaring cascade of “Bull-___t!“), but it was true, and he had the GPS tracking to prove it.

It turned out that Birdman (since identified as one Stan Roberts, who is a professional drummer as well as hang glider pilot) took off six and a half hours earlier from upstate New York off a 1,300-foot cliff with two other gliders who he left in his slipstream 40 or 50 miles back. Riding the thermals in his cocoon-like little body suit and harness, with steel rods to support his legs and keep them outstretched behind him, he got up to 7,000 feet at one point as he headed east, before he landed at the Jamestown golf course because he knew it was here, having pulled the same stunt to little fanfare 10 days before.  (One of the witnesses to that appearance said Roberts’ first words were, “Where am I?”)

The point-to-point trip was 157 miles, which he claimed was a record for his hang glide club.  Birdman said he knew when he soared down over Narragansett Bay he was too low to reach his goal of a 200-mile flight, which would have been White Crescent Beach on Cape Cod, so he put down at the now familiar and wide-open links.

It was all fairly unbelievable.  Our awe-inspiring Birdman of a half hour earlier was standing there in the clubhouse with a Heineken, having doffed his flying duds, wearing a polo shirt, shorts and sneakers like some schlub who wandered in off the street for a beer and a burger.  He was awaiting one of a glider team network from Narragansett to pick him and his wings up, like he took just a quick stroll downtown and now needed a ride home.  Just a day in the life.

Oh, and that’s my excuse for three-putting the ninth.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Partnerships in Preservation Work

By Chip Young

Looking at the big picture reaps dividends

If there is one generalization I would make regarding most environmental initiatives, it is that partnerships do indeed work.  (I would also argue that all “environmental” efforts are also economic endeavors, so please read it that way every time one evokes an environmental cause.)  Sure, there are instances of groups having a falling out with one another, but nothing along the lines of restaurant partners chasing each other through the kitchen with butcher knives (which I have personally observed), brothers Adi and Rudi Dassler breaking up to form the archrival Adidas and Puma athletic shoe companies, or the Beatles breaking up.  That damned Yoko.

Despite the fact the environmental community has a reputation for standing for peace, love and Kumbaya, people and organizations can get very protective of their little corner of the world, state or neighborhood.  Dare we say “turf”?  As cynics remind us, if we all ever worked as a single unit, there could only be one executive director. Oops.

But things are looking up.  It is getting to the point in Rhode Island and nearby Massachusetts where not only do groups talk the economic talk, when they walk the environmental walk they aren’t out for a stroll on their own.  There is still a ways to go to reach nirvana in my mind, but slowly the folks who deal with land are addressing water issues with a little more interest and knowledge, and vice versa for the watery sorts and their soil-oriented colleagues.  Add to that the economic seasoning, throw in a healthy dose of alternative energy and global climate change, and, voila!—we have a full course meal.

A group I am associated with recently formed the Sakonnet Conservation Coalition.  It is comprised of the five leading open space and farmland preservation organizations in Tiverton and Little Compton who have been working alongside each other for decades, saving fairly amazing parcels of land in their very special little place.  Realizing that when they pulled back and looked at what they had accomplished, they have decided to promote the bigger picture of what all their individual efforts have achieved, while continuing to maintain a focus on their own organization’s site-specific priorities.

It is a first step in partnering and collaboration, but a very good and important one.  Their past successes and future goals are spelled out in this recent opinion piece by the group, of which it is worth taking note.  This from The Sakonnet Conservation Coalition, a partnership among the Little Compton Agricultural Conservancy Trust, Sakonnet Preservation Association, The Nature Conservancy, Tiverton Land Trust and the Tiverton Open Space and Land Preservation Commission:

CONCERTED CONSERVATION SERVES THE COMMUNITY
By The Sakonnet Conservation Coalition

Preserving land and open space is a shared responsibility.  No more so than in the region on Newport’s quiet side, east of the Sakonnet River in Tiverton and Little Compton.

Over the past decade, land and farm conservation groups in this area—the Little Compton Agricultural Conservancy Trust, Sakonnet Preservation Association, The Nature Conservancy, Tiverton Land Trust and the Tiverton Open Space and Land Preservation Commission—have been working shoulder-to-shoulder to protect and preserve open space in the region.  Thanks to this cooperative effort, which frequently involves partnering with the R.I. Departments of Environmental Management and Transportation, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, local municipalities, and the Champlin Foundations, the individual benefits provided by each of the groups are significantly enhanced.

The fruits of those collaborative efforts are readily evident just by taking a drive south down Route 77 through the two communities that make up the Sakonnet landscape through the communities that line the eastern shore of the Sakonnet River. 

You first pass Pardon Gray Preserve on the left, a huge expanse of meandering meadow set against a wooded ridge, the largest forest in the East Bay, known as Weetamoo Woods.  This area is a major touchdown spot for forest birds that migrate and disperse over the entire region.  Further south, also on the left near the Little Compton town line, is the Eight Rod Way Management Area, where farming continues to serve local needs and provide an economic boost on land now open for visitors. 

More roadside farms continue on both sides of Main Road, from Hathaways’ farmland across from Pardon Gray Preserve to the area surrounding Sakonnet Vineyards, past Peckham Road and to Walker’s Farm Stand and The Last Stand, where customers literally eat up the local corn, fish and produce. Many of these have been preserved for continued family farming by the Youngs, Peckhams, Samsons, Richmonds, Lebreuxs and others.  Some of the colonial era stone walls here have even been restored by conservation efforts. 

Just past The Last Stand, on the right, is historic Treaty Rock Farm, still and forever destined to be another vibrant, contributing working farm, as well as a cultural and educational icon.  And beyond the turnoff to Little Compton at Meeting House Lane, the iris meadows at Taylor’s Lane have all been preserved as has the Middendorf farm, which from Main Road provides the first view of Sakonnet light and harbor, long a commercial lobstering landing point.

All along the way, you will have passed innumerable smaller tracts of forest, shrub, orchard, meadow or pasture, each protected in their own right along with these larger properties for nature, farming, or public benefit.
If you veer off the beeline of successful projects displayed on Route 77, there are similar efforts taking place throughout the neighboring area.  They include Middle Acres Farm, with 238 acres of farmland, wetlands and forest along Crandall Road heading from Tiverton to Adamsville that have been conserved by a similar joint effort.  This area preserves the wetlands area of Adamsville Brook which feeds the west branch of the Westport River and also protects the cranberry bogs and other farming activities on this land for the future.

As the summer of 2008 arrives, the Sakonnet landscape partners have their eyes set on more preservation and conservation efforts for farms and open spaces through separate projects and as a supportive team.  The Ferolbink farm is looking to join in being preserved with its neighboring working agricultural lands. Across the road from the Sakonnet Vineyard, efforts are going on to preserve 55 acres of Peckham family farmland.  Protecting the Watson Reservoir watershed and buffer and the Nonquit Pond reservoir and greenway are high on the list of priorities.  Preserving land in Pocasset Ridge, the forestland north of Weetamoo Woods and Pardon Gray Preserve, is also a key ongoing effort to the challenge of preserving the largest, and last remaining, unfragmented forest in the East Bay.  The initiatives are moving forward with full backing of all the area organizations.

The value added being brought to the region through this collaborative effort is immeasurable, and the diversity of interests and the backing of hundreds of local residents continues to be considerable.  The return on these strategic, mutually supportive initiatives is appreciated just by taking a “windshield survey” of the accomplishments as one moves through the Sakonnet landscape.  Hopefully this cooperative work can serve as a model for other ongoing conservation efforts of Rhode Island’s farms and open spaces while they can still be preserved for generations that follow, as the opportunity to do so was handed down before.