Field trip to my new garden!

Our view

Wow, I realized it's been a year since my last post. What have I been up to? Well, mostly chasing around a very energetic 22-month old and a three-and-a-half-year-old. But on top of that we sold our old house with my beloved garden, bought a new house right on the Ipswich River and have taken on the task of completely relandscaping it with native plants and shrubs. Plus, adding a veggie garden, of course.

One completed section of woodland border

Two yards of loam: BEST TOY EVER!

So come on over to my new blog: A Riverside Garden Makeover: from nothing to native paradise in one summer.  Our landscaping project is also partially funded by a Federal grant from the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, which means our yard will become a demonstration garden for the grant program (the pressure is on!)  It's going to be quite the journey for me and my whole family, and we're really excited about it. You can never have too much playing in the dirt!

Petition to protect the Ipswich River is ready for signing

As promised, I'm posting the link to a very important petition to protect Massachusetts' rivers and streams. As I mentioned in a (bit angry) previous post our Governor, Deval Patrick, has allowed the Mass. Department of Environmental Protection to roll back critical "safe yield" water withdrawal levels.

What is "safe yield"? Simply put, that's the maximum amount of water that can be pumped out of a river system without damaging the river: i.e. pumping it dry. In previous summers when my local river, the Ipswich River, ran dry withdrawals were at 28 to 32 million gallons a day. The DEP was sued and levels were dropped. The past three summers the river has flowed, wildlife has flourished and the herring are starting to return to spawn.

Just when I was starting to relax and jumping for joy over this recovery the DEP has decided that the new "safe yield" for the Ipswich River will be 55.5 million gallons a day. YES: 55.5 MILLION gallons a day. That's almost twice the levels that pumped the river dry.

What will happen? All the fish will die and the river will look like this. I'm fairly sure those are dead fish in that puddle in the foreground. So no fishing, no kayaking, no working beaver dams, and most definitely no herring fry getting out of the river to grow up in the ocean.

Please visit the Conservation Law Foundation's website to sign a petition to rescind this action. I signed it yesterday and immediately received the following reply from the governor's office:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with Governor Patrick. The Governor values your opinions and enjoys hearing from people across the Commonwealth. Please know that your views are always welcome in this administration.

The Governor and his staff strive to review every piece of correspondence in a timely manner. If appropriate, we will forward your message to the appropriate staff member, department or the state agency that can best address your concerns.

If you need an immediate response, please call the Governor's Office at 617-725-4005 to speak with a Constituent Services Aide. Again, thank you for taking the time to share your ideas with Governor Patrick. Stay involved and engaged...this is your government!

I'd like to think this is positive, but I'm not very hopeful. Thank you everyone for caring about the little ecosystem at the end of my road. The Ipswich River was listed as one of the country's top ten most endangered rivers, how is it ever going to recover if this policy goes into action?

Sea Lamprey circus! Video of lamprey heading up the Ipswich River to spawn

I recorded this minute long video of sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) trying to get over the last hurdle of the Ipswich River fish ladder and into the Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries trap:




To watch the video in high quality click here and click on the HQ button on YouTube.

Sea lamprey are anadromous, much like a salmon. The young hatch out in rivers and live in the mud filter-feeding, blind and toothless for 3 to 17 years.

Then they metamorphose into their parasitic form with that lovely mouth right out of a sci-fi film.















After about 12 to 20 months they metamorphose again in to their adult form at which point they migrate back into their native river to spawn and die. But don't worry! The lamprey writhing around in fishway traps all over the east coast aren't eating precious herring trying to be reintroduced. They're aestivating, or not eating.

Last year the DMF trap caught 1021 sea lamprey. They have a habit of all rushing up the river at once when the water hits about 20 degrees C. A few days ago there were only a few and this morning there were at least 15 lamprey all trying to get in the trap at once. It was the slimiest log jam I've ever seen.

As of yesterday DMF had caught a mere 37, I can't wait for the numbers from this week. I'm betting that will shoot up to at least 400 if not more!

Awaiting the herring

I am still awaiting the spring peepers. The north shore of Massachusetts has been hit with some unseasonably cold nights, last night bottomed out in the upper 20s. I still have hope that tomorrow's rain and forecast of near 50 F might bring the little frogs out. I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime my focus has turned away from blogs about motherhood, diapers and frogs and towards fish. Yes, fish. More specifically river herring, or alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and bluebacks (Alosa aestivalis), which return to our rivers here on the east coast starting in March. They swim upstream, spawn and then return to the ocean until, if they're lucky, next year when they do it all over again. Early sightings began weeks ago on the south coast and Cape Cod. The first herring ever seen in my local Ipswich River was on March 31st. So any day now. As soon as that water hits 10 degrees Celsius (50 F) it really gets going. I checked the other day: 6 C. We have a little bit to go.



Historically the Ipswich River had a herring run in the millions. These fish supported a food chain from herons to river otters to humans. There's evidence of seasonal Native American fish camps along the river and documentation of fish so thick you could net hundreds out in one swipe. Last year the river saw 130 fish migrate through the fish ladder to spawn upstream. One hundred and thirty.



Check out this graph from the Massachusetts Division of Fish and Wildlife:


So what happened? River herring have many enemies. Their decline started in the 1600s when colonists began installing dams along New England's waterways to run grist mills and eventually factories. These dams blocked the herring's spawning migration and the noticeable decline prompted a law passed way back in 1786 which required dam owners to install fish ladders allowing the fish to pass an otherwise impassable obstruction. These ladders help, but it's only part of the battle.

Off shore fisherman targeting Atlantic herring, a cousin of the river herring, also catch river herring as by-catch. River herring are tossed back, but the chances of surviving being hauled up in a net from a hundred feet down are pretty slim. Most of them become gull snacks.

If a river herring survives a fisherman's net, and can make it past a dam they also commonly face water shortages. Many towns draw their water supply out of local rivers but don't put it back in after the sewage is treated. Believe it or not rivers that should be running at 100 cubic feet per second in the summer actually run dry. This photo (http://www.crwa.org/projects/sustwater.html) is of our beautiful Ipswich River minus the "river". Even if the adult herring make it out before the river dries up there's no way the newly hatched fry can get out since they don't go back downstream until September. Fortunately some savvy folks at the IRWA have battled to stop this practice and we've had water year-round for the past two years, at least in our river....

So this year I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a number at least over 130. Why should I care? Well, river herring are an indication of a healthy river. And having a healthy river for my child to grow up next to, canoe on and hopefully even swim in someday sounds like a pretty good thing to me. Keep an eye out for me at the fish ladder waiting for the herring. If you stop by you might be lucky and see a herring or even one of the two thousand sea lamprey that flopped their way up it last year. That sight alone is worth the wait.