Volunteers Testing the Waters

  • Volunteers across the country gather samples and data for biologists who don't have the resources to get into the field. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:

Transcript

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:


Rochelle Breitenbach and Mary Bajcz are trudging through the snow,
winding their way through a thicket to find a small creek. It’s 14
degrees above zero. And they plan to go wading. They’re lugging in a
fine-mesh net, some hip boots, and an orange 5 gallon bucket of trays and
specimen jars.


Breitenbach says they’re headed for a pristine creek that eventually
becomes a river, the Huron River in southeast Michigan:


“One thing about this spot is that it’s really close to the headwaters
of the Huron River. So, it’s a really good indicator of what they’re
going to find downstream too. This has traditionally been one of the
best spots to collect in the entire watershed.”


They’re just one team of many that take samples up and down the river.
They’re looking for a certain kind of bug, stonefly larvae. Stoneflies
are good fish food and they are very susceptible to pollution. They’re
considered an indicator species. If stoneflies are there and healthy,
it’s a good indication the stream is healthy:


“Their food source is on decomposing leaves, so that’s
where you find them. And then, I will get some of the leaf packs in
the net and then I’ll dump it in the tray. And then we’ll add a little
warm water so they don’t freeze. And then we’ll sort through the leaf
packs and then look for stoneflies.”


Breitenbach cautiously makes her way down the bank, across the ice and
into the water.


She’s taking her first sample in this open water. Bajcz steps out onto
the ice, holding a plastic tray so Breitenbach can empty the net’s contents
into the plastic tray. But… the ice can’t take the weight.


Luckily Bajcz did not fall into the water. In these temperatures, that
would have been bad. They scramble up the snowy bank and start
sorting through the debris in the trays to find stonefly larvae.


Stoneflies have two tails. Mayflies have three tails. So, they’re
squinting to see what they’ve got:


Mary: “Oh, there’s one! Right there. Right, Rochelle? That one?”


Rochelle: “I left my glasses in the car.”


Mary: “Okay. I’m going to collect it. I think it is.”


Rochelle: Yes, go ahead and take it.”


Mary: “Oh look! That’s a mayfly. Three.”


Rochelle: “Yeah, see all the tails.”


Mary: “Look at that one! That’s two. That’s got two. See?”


Rochelle: “Yep.”


Mary: “Wow. (whisper) That’s gigantic.”


Rochelle: “That’s why we love this site (laughs).”


Once they find one, they drop the bug into a jar of alcohol. After the
thrill of finding the stoneflies, they hate to kill them, but they have
to preserve the samples for biologists.


Rochelle: “The whole jar goes back and Jo goes through and identifies
everything.”


Jo is Jo Latimore. She’s the Huron River Watershed Council’s
ecologist. She says without the volunteers’ efforts all along the
river, they’d never be able to monitor this river system as well, but
there are drawbacks to using volunteers.


“The first impression is that volunteer data may not be as trustworthy
as anyone else’s, any trained professional’s data. But, our volunteers
have been trained and then we also do quality control checks, just like
the government would do with their agencies where we’ll go out side-by-
side and send professionals out with the volunteers and compare their
results to make sure that they’re trustworthy.”


Latimore says the end result of volunteer surveys like this one is a
steady monitoring program that fills in the blanks left by government
agencies that can’t do the work.


“The agencies that do have the responsibility for checking the quality
of our waterbodies really have very limited budgets, very limited
staff. For example, in Michigan, the professional biologist from the
DEQ can only get to a particular watershed every five years. And to
really be able to stay on top of the conditions in a stream, you need
to monitor more often than that.”


Voluntary watershed organizations all across the nation assist government agencies in
monitoring the streams and lakes. But in many parts of the nation,
there are no volunteer agencies. The water quality is rarely checked,
and the only time anyone realizes there’s a problem is when there’s a
huge fish kill or other pollution problems that get the attention of
people who live nearby or people who fish the streams. And nearly
everyone agrees that’s not a very good way to keep water clean.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Volunteers Testing the Waters

  • Volunteers across the country gather samples and data for biologists who don't have the resources to get into the field. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:

Transcript

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:


Rochelle Breitenbach and Mary Bajcz are trudging through the snow,
winding their way through a thicket to find a small creek. It’s 14
degrees above zero. And they plan to go wading. They’re lugging in a
fine-mesh net, some hip boots, and an orange 5 gallon bucket of trays and
specimen jars.


Breitenbach says they’re headed for a pristine creek that eventually
becomes a river, the Huron River in southeast Michigan:


“One thing about this spot is that it’s really close to the headwaters
of the Huron River. So, it’s a really good indicator of what they’re
going to find downstream too. This has traditionally been one of the
best spots to collect in the entire watershed.”


They’re just one team of many that take samples up and down the river.
They’re looking for a certain kind of bug, stonefly larvae. Stoneflies
are good fish food and they are very susceptible to pollution. They’re
considered an indicator species. If stoneflies are there and healthy,
it’s a good indication the stream is healthy:


“Their food source is on decomposing leaves, so that’s
where you find them. And then, I will get some of the leaf packs in
the net and then I’ll dump it in the tray. And then we’ll add a little
warm water so they don’t freeze. And then we’ll sort through the leaf
packs and then look for stoneflies.”


Breitenbach cautiously makes her way down the bank, across the ice and
into the water.


She’s taking her first sample in this open water. Bajcz steps out onto
the ice, holding a plastic tray so Breitenbach can empty the net’s contents
into the plastic tray. But… the ice can’t take the weight.


Luckily Bajcz did not fall into the water. In these temperatures, that
would have been bad. They scramble up the snowy bank and start
sorting through the debris in the trays to find stonefly larvae.


Stoneflies have two tails. Mayflies have three tails. So, they’re
squinting to see what they’ve got:


Mary: “Oh, there’s one! Right there. Right, Rochelle? That one?”


Rochelle: “I left my glasses in the car.”


Mary: “Okay. I’m going to collect it. I think it is.”


Rochelle: Yes, go ahead and take it.”


Mary: “Oh look! That’s a mayfly. Three.”


Rochelle: “Yeah, see all the tails.”


Mary: “Look at that one! That’s two. That’s got two. See?”


Rochelle: “Yep.”


Mary: “Wow. (whisper) That’s gigantic.”


Rochelle: “That’s why we love this site (laughs).”


Once they find one, they drop the bug into a jar of alcohol. After the
thrill of finding the stoneflies, they hate to kill them, but they have
to preserve the samples for biologists.


Rochelle: “The whole jar goes back and Jo goes through and identifies
everything.”


Jo is Jo Latimore. She’s the Huron River Watershed Council’s
ecologist. She says without the volunteers’ efforts all along the
river, they’d never be able to monitor this river system as well, but
there are drawbacks to using volunteers.


“The first impression is that volunteer data may not be as trustworthy
as anyone else’s, any trained professional’s data. But, our volunteers
have been trained and then we also do quality control checks, just like
the government would do with their agencies where we’ll go out side-by-
side and send professionals out with the volunteers and compare their
results to make sure that they’re trustworthy.”


Latimore says the end result of volunteer surveys like this one is a
steady monitoring program that fills in the blanks left by government
agencies that can’t do the work.


“The agencies that do have the responsibility for checking the quality
of our waterbodies really have very limited budgets, very limited
staff. For example, in Michigan, the professional biologist from the
DEQ can only get to a particular watershed every five years. And to
really be able to stay on top of the conditions in a stream, you need
to monitor more often than that.”


Voluntary watershed organizations all across the nation assist government agencies in
monitoring the streams and lakes. But in many parts of the nation,
there are no volunteer agencies. The water quality is rarely checked,
and the only time anyone realizes there’s a problem is when there’s a
huge fish kill or other pollution problems that get the attention of
people who live nearby or people who fish the streams. And nearly
everyone agrees that’s not a very good way to keep water clean.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

A Fish Eye View of the Lakes

  • The "Benthic Explorer" now sits on the bottom of Lake Superior and provides live pictures of its underwater world. Photo by Chris Julin.

If you’ve ever been curious about what goes on at the bottom of the world’s largest lake, you can take a look for yourself – and you don’t even have to get wet. A device called the “fishcam” is sitting under 35 feet of water in Lake Superior and it’s now sending pictures to the Internet. Researchers say it’s the only permanently mounted underwater camera in the world sending live images back to shore. The pictures are fun to look at, but researchers say they’re also useful to biologists who study underwater life in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Julin has the story:

Transcript

If you’ve ever been curious about what goes on at the bottom of the world’s largest lake, you can take a look for yourself — and you don’t even have to get wet. A device called the “fish cam” is sitting under 35-feet of water in Lake Superior and it’s now sending pictures to the Internet. Researchers say it’s the only permanently mounted underwater camera in the world sending live images back to shore. The pictures are fun to look at, but researchers say they’re also useful to biologists who study underwater life in the Great Lakes.


The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Julin has the story.


A team of researchers put the camera underwater more than a year ago. It sits on the lake bottom, several miles from Duluth. The researchers have watched pictures from the “fish cam” for months, but now, anyone with a computer hooked to the Internet can get a scuba diver’s view of the bottom of Lake Superior. The research team recently gathered at the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth to unveil the “fish cam” website. Fish expert Greg Bambenek has had the fish cam hooked-up to the computer at his house, but at the aquarium, he watched the fish cam on the screen of a laptop.


“That’s streaming out on the web right now. It’s updated every ten seconds. The fish there are mullet. At night, we have a micro-cam that brings the zooplankton into close focus, and at times you’ll see the mullet eating the zooplankton.”


Those zooplanktons are tiny animals called “water fleas.” They’re fractions of an inch long –far too small to show up through the fish cam’s standard lens. But Bambanek says it’s a different story at night, when the fish cam switches to a magnifying lens, and the computer screen comes alive with little critters.


“Leptodora is the large one. Then you’ll see little copepods that kind of look like Pokemon creatures with the antennas coming off their head, and they’re smaller. They’re only a couple millimeters, so you wouldn’t be able to see them if you were diving in the water.”


The people gathered to see the fish cam’s first Internet images had to settle for a murky picture. A strong northeast wind was blowing in off the lake, kicking up big waves, and stirring up the bottom. The researchers say big waves make for blurry pictures. Even so, lots of fish were visible in the frame. The fish might be crowding in because researchers are releasing fish scent through a special tube attached t the camera. But photographer Doug Hajicek says it’s surprising how many fish swim past even without the fish scent. Hajicek designed and built the underwater camera, and he’s been watching a private feed from the fish cam for months.


“This lake is extremely alive. There is a food chain that is so delicate and tiny. Everybody thinks of Lake Superior as just a sterile body of water, and we’re hoping to change that.”


Some of the fish that swim into view are called ruffe, a non-native species that’s invading the Great Lakes. Researcher Greg Bambenek says it is surprising see so many ruffe here, six miles from Duluth. He says biologists believed ruffe stayed closer to harbors. Bambenek says that’s just one example of the valuable information about life in the Great Lakes that scientists can get from the fish cam.


“We can take freeze-frame, count the number of zooplankton, count the number of fish, and also look at it over time, and also see what does a northeaster do? What do the fish do? Do they leave? Do they come back? What does water temperature do? We have a temperature sensor down there. We also have a hydrophone so we can hear what’s going on underneath the water. So, it is a research tool.”


Bambenek says the research team learned a lot during the year it took to get the camera up and running on the Internet. He says the team is planning to put another camera in Lake Superior, farther from shore, and hopes to put a third camera somewhere on the floor of the ocean.


You can see images from the Lake Superior fish cam at Duluth.com/fishcam.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chris Julin in Duluth.

Related Links

Commentary – Cyber Patrol Blocks Activist Sites

Mattel’s money losing software division, Mattel Interactive, has
recently been put up for sale, in part because of the controversy
surrounding its internet blocking program, Cyber Patrol. Rather than
selling off the company, Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator
Suzanne Elston wonders if they’re missing a marketing opportunity: