Fish lecture at the Landing

I just wanted to throw out another reminder that Brad Chase of MA Division of Marine Fisheries will be speaking at the Landing on Thursday 7/10/08. Brad has done years of study throughout the state, and has focused quite a bit on the Jones. He'll be giving an update on how anadromous fish are doing throughout the region and how we compare to those trends.

Along those lines...the Kingston Reporter was nice enough to interview me a for a piece they ran last week covering the issue of river herring declines http://www.wickedlocal.com/kingston/news/x1470896934/Where-are-they

Hope to see you all tomorrow night.

Love these summer days

I love these long hot summer days. The water temps have really soared in the past week or so. Along with the warm temperatures comes a lot of activity – animals, plants, and people.

The bay is packed with pogies (menhaden) and the stripers and other bigger fish are actively hunting them down. The last few years we’ve had big menhaden runs and I suspect that has contributed to the Sand Tiger Sharks that have turned up in the bay and the river. On the other hand, it appears that the total count for our Elm St herring count was pretty low. We haven’t quite finalized the numbers, but it doesn’t look good. There has been a lot of concern about river herring stocks in the past few years, as a result of both degraded spawning habitat and offshore takes (http://www.herringalliance.org/). Brad Chase will be doing a talk about the status of Jones River fish on July 10th. I’m sure he’ll have some valuable insights.

Like the animals, the JRWA groups have been revved up by the summer weather. We’ve kicked into gear with our water quality monitoring. In mid May Bill G. and I paddled from the Elm St dam to the Wapping Rd dam to have a look at this somewhat hidden stretch of river. With the Wapping Rd dam feasibility study getting under way this summer we wanted to look for any obstructions or other issues that might impact the flow assessments. Things seemed to be in good shape, although we probably caught the last window of opportunity before things became too overgrown to make it up the river. Later in May we initiated our nutrient sampling program for the river and Silver Lake. We’ve been able to piggyback this sampling onto to the Division of Marine Fisheries rapid assessment program for the lake. By conducting these programs in concert we gain much more information for each assessment. These sampling programs will continue through the summer and I expect that we’ll add a few more elements as we go along.

Have to start somewhere....

WOW we've had a lot going on in the past year or so! Things having been moving extremely fast (mostly in a forward direction). I know people are interested in keeping pace with all of this, and we certainly want to spread the word. The website has been fantastic and Petra, Iris, and others have done a great job keeping it current. We constantly get positive feedback and it is always exciting to hear people say that they check it out on a regular basis. Heck, my mom would rather get the details about upcoming events from the website than straight from me. (hi mom!)

Activities at Jones River Landing are pretty diverse: Boatbuilding, recreation, ecology, restoration, the River Store, lectures, fundraisers, potlucks, and a whole bunch of other stuff that's just good fun. I love the diversity at the Landing and as a board member it’s very exciting to see movement on all fronts. However, in the role of Ecology Program Director I have a specific focus…the health, ecology, and restoration of the river.

So that’s what this blog is all about – my own focused attention on river ecology issues. My hope is to keep this updated regularly with notes from the river. I expect to have quite a wide range of posts, from casual observations to detailed program notes. I hope it will be a place where people can find some interesting details that encourage them to seek me out at the Landing. I hope to get feedback that helps broaden my understanding and awareness of the watershed. There are so many well trained and thoughtful eyes in this community that continually enlighten me. I hope to spark even more of that through this little journal.

This is literally my first ever blog post. I can’t promise anything about the frequency or quality of my posts. But I will definitely try to keep it up. Although the plan is to focus on the ecology component, everything at the Landing is so interconnected (isn’t that ecology?) that I’m sure I’ll often touch on other pieces. So here we go….