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Zebra Mussels - Lakes

11K views 64 replies 24 participants last post by  travlin-easy 
#1 ·
Zebra mussels made it into the lake last year. Other than keeping the bottom paint fresh, is there anything we should do proactively to protect the Yanmar or head?

Thanks in Advance
Jurgy
S/V Lazy D II
 
#39 ·
{Count your lucky stars, Brad. At least you have water clean enough for swimming. It has been more than 4 decades since the upper Chesapeake's beaches were closed because of pollution. The only beaches still open for swimming are at Maryland state parks south of Baltimore - locations where water quality is still lousy, but the state would never admit to that because it may drive tourists away. Ironically, MD-DNR tried to blame the high fecal-coliform bacteria count in the bay's upper reaches on waterfowl. Yep, the water is polluted because of those damned ducks, geese and swans. :) Oh, it was one of their scientists that made that statement, too. Just makes you feel good all over, doesn't it? ;)}---------------------------------------------
Well it looks like nature has, as usual, found a way....

(add in the good old' http : / /)
nas.er.usgs.gov/taxgroup/mollusks/zebramussel/

Reference 1 Ref. Number: 24106
Author: Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Date: 2008
Title: Zebra Mussel Found on Susquehanna River at Conowingo Dam in Maryland.
Publisher: Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Comments Found alive inside a hydroelectric plant water intake.

Soon to be cleaning up MD and other waters near you!
Blake
 
#40 ·
Wonderful discussion sailors. Travlin appears to be somewhat passionate about the subject, and I like - though don't necessarily agree on - all his points save for "eels". Yech.

I am of two minds about the mussels. As a diver, I love 'em and hate 'em. I have seen days in the St Lawrence River near Brockville ON or Alexandria Bay NY where the viz has been in excess of 100 feet. Gin clear water that incidentally in late August is so warm you can do 100+ foot dives in a thin wetsuit. The irony of course is though you can see 100 feet, everything you see including the shipwreck you paid charter fees to dive, is absolutely covered in the things. You kind of have to train yourself to filter the mussels out of your vision and imagine the scene free of them. They make the puzzle of reassembling a busted up shipwreck in your mind even tougher.

They are absolutely everywhere in the Great Lakes and River areas I have dived. I can't remember at what depth they begin to fade away, but I think they are mostly gone by 160-180 feet.

As has been said, they are nasty to step on, and hell on either wetsuit or drysuit diving gloves. They do clean the water and make it nice for swimming. It's not long ago that I would not have considered swimming in Lake Ontario, now on calm days as I leave my harbour, you could read the date on a quarter at 30 feet. They have upset the ecological balance, and terrifically alters fish populations for good and bad. In the end I think nature sorts herself out. I don't think I am in favour of introducing them on purpose, because that has never worked out with any such introduction, but I can understand the frustration when a formerly beautiful body of water becomes a huge dead zone.

As for the original question, I've never had a problem with the little monsters clogging up the boat plumbing. Perhaps it's because I use my boat far too often for that to happen?
 
#42 · (Edited)
"I'm not sure why you feel the need to single out scientists as being uniquely sinister in their motives.

Probably because I'm old, cantankerous, and spent lots of time with them when I was a reporter. I got to see the results first hand, I watched Chesapeake Bay die one day at a time, I heard all the BS they perpetuated, and now my grandson will never have the chance to see what I saw more than a half-century ago.

About 20 years ago I took a good friend and his wife out for a day on the bay, a time when I had a 21-foot center console fishing boat rigged for offshore fishing. I launched the boat at Gunpowder State Park's Dundee Creek Marina. As we motored out of the creek, my friend of many years said he would like to see a home he used to rent near the mouth of Seneca Creek. No problem - it was just a short hop to the creek's mouth and as we entered the creek there were a couple youngsters jumping off the pier and swimming. The water, which was various shades of greenish brown and gray, was covered with globs of floating algae, and also interspersed with the corpses of dead and decaying catfish, carp, white perch, striped bass, yellow perch, menhaden and other species. My friend, Erick, looked at me and said, "don't those kids know how fouled the water is?" I responded, "No. As far as they're concerned the water is clean. They're only about 12 years old and have never seen this creek when the water was clean. In reality, they don't know it's filthy and polluted, and could pose a health hazard."

I've talked with lots of young people over the years who sincerely believe the bay is will soon be clean and clear because we're spending billions of dollars on it. They believe the Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Program is working, and they also believe that you can educate youngsters and they will not become polluters when they become adults. I sure wish that were the case.

Now, I don't know about the communities surrounding Lake Wallenpaupack, but in this part of the world, the mid-Atlantic region, every form of pollution is rampid and out of control. Think not? Take a good look along the roadsides, any roadside, and you'll discover the underbrush is covered with plastic bottles, beer cans, soda cans, fast food wrappers, plastic cups, plastic bags, you name it and it's there. It covers both sides of the roads, and it's hard to find a square foot of roadside that is not trash covered. Do you think old farts such as myself tossed that stuff out their car windows? Think about it.

Gary
 
#45 · (Edited)
...I got to see the results first hand, I watched Chesapeake Bay die one day at a time, I heard all the BS they perpetuated, and now my grandson will never have the chance to see what I saw more than a half-century ago...
So why do you blame the scientists for this?

One of the unfortunate things about ecology, economics, and other social sciences is that you can't run control experiments, and design experimental methodologies to the separate multiple variables on a grand scale. You can't tell what would have happened if the environmentalists had done nothing. You also can't tell what would have happened if they had spent 2x or 5x as much.

Maybe the scientists were right, and we just didn't do enough of what they were recommending. Did anyone anticipate the huge growth in the poultry industry on the eastern shore? Did anyone anticipate the explosive growth of ex-urban communities in Lancaster, Berks, York, and other counties in central PA? Those places have pretty much become bedroom communities for Baltimore, Frederick, Wilmington, and even Philadelphia, and the growth there has been huge.

Given this growth, it's possible that the Bay would be EVEN WORSE than it is now if nothing had been done. Maybe the scientists were right, but their more aggressive proposals were beaten down by politicians and skeptical reporters. ;)

I say there's plenty of blame to go around. Do you ever buy Perdue chicken? You're to blame. Did you ever fertilize your lawn? You're to blame. Did you buy Lancaster produce? You're to blame. Did you buy a McMansion on previously forested land that was clear-cut? You're to blame. Do you hire the lowest bidder to pick up and haul your trash? You know, the one who doesn't bother to put tarps over his truck when he drives to the landfill, so he spills plastic bottles and food wrappers all over the road? You're to blame.

You can direct all your ire at the scientific community if you want. I would estimate that scientists get it wrong 3 out of 4 times. But that's still a lot better record than the big corporations who grow the chicken, manufacture and dump the fertilizer, build the McMansions, and haul the trash. No thank you, I'll put my trust with the scientists.
 
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#44 ·
I'm back in the Chesapeake's upper reaches, arrived right on schedule, which was April 1st. While the last few days were a bit hectic with high winds, dense fog, towering waves, and at times, near zero visibility, both the boat, myself and my crew made it unscathed.

As I drove home, the car seemed to rock from side to side a bit, which I can only attribute to four rough days at sea, I had to cross Conowingo Dam at U.S. Route 1. Above the dam there was at least 10 acres of floating debris, everything from driftwood logs to 55-gallon plastic drums, 5-gallon plastic buckets, some building parts, a couple old, wooden doors, and an assortment of what appeared to be blocks of Styrofoam, chunks of pier floats, and a large picnic table with attached benches. My wife also spotted a kayak among the partly submerged logs. Three days later, when I returned to the boat, the majority of the debris had mysteriously vanished. The only debris was the usual pile which always seems to be situated in the lake at the southern end of the dam in a small cove.

The question that always comes to mind is: Where is all that debris now? It will ALL show up when the next heavy rainstorm hits southeastern Pennsylvania. It will flow down the river, enter the bay's upper reaches, and for the next few months, be part of a boater's worst nightmare.

All of this debris came from somewhere upriver, somewhere between Bingington, NY and Harrisburg, PA. No one knows for certain where it originates, but it surely didn't originate in Chesapeake Bay. How it managed to get over Conowingo Dam is anyone's guess, but it sure as Hell didn't wash over U.S. 1 and it surely didn't suddenly sink to the bottom of Conowingo Lake. Whoops!

The same holds true with the nutrients that wash into the Chesapeake. All came from various, tributary sources. The last time I researched the number of wastwater treatment plants along the Susquehanna, both large and small, there was about 130 of them. Nearly every one of them was running over capacity, and in some instances the only treatment of raw sewage was to rock it back and forth with paddle boards, then allow it to flow over a spillway so it would exposed to the sun's ultra-violet rays prior to discharging into a creek.

And, while agriculture was one considered the largest contributor of nutrients (poop) to the bay, sometime ago this theory was revised and municipal wastes were now considered the largest contributor. In response to this, Governor O'Mally decided to put a new tax in place, one that would penalize those who likely had the least impact - homes with septic tanks, people that do NOT send their wastes into a municipal wastewater treatment plant. The tax, which most residents refer to as the "Poop Tax" or "Flush Tax" is nothing more than another revenue grabber. Apparently O'Mally didn't get the funds he projected, so he doubled it from $30 to $60 per year.

That wasn't enough, though. He managed to railroad another tax through the Maryland legislature, $125 for every home that has impervious surfaces - a roof, driveway, sidewalk, and if you are a business, with the required parking spaces mandated by the state, you really get slammed. The tax could amount to thousands of dollars a year. Like the Poop Tax, the Impervious Surface Tax is supposed to be used to clean up Chesapeake Bay. Yeah! Right!

Here I go getting cynical again. Sorry for the rants, guys and gals, but every time I go out sailing on the world's largest estuary I become more and more depressed just looking at the water.

Good Luck,

Gary :cool:
 
#46 · (Edited)
First and foremost, the scientific community DID run controlled experiments of pollution effects on Chesapeake Bay, and after a couple decades, abandoned the program. The projects took place at a massive facility at Mattapeake, MD where a 5-acre model of Chesapeake Bay was constructed inside immense steel buildings. The cost to taxpayers was staggering. The model was highly detailed, scaled exactly, experienced the exact tidal changes, water flows, etc...,etc...etc.... This facility employed a large staff of scientist, and at the time was touted as the savior of Chesapeake Bay. Scientists from at least four other states were invited to utilize the facility as well, and if I recall correctly, there was no charge to them for their usage.

Well, tens of thousands of tidal changes later, the introduction of tons of simulated pollutants, and thousands upon thousands of controlled experiments later, the project was dumped. It wasn't dumped because it didn't work - it was dumped because funding sources dried up. The reason they dried up? According to the rumor mill in Washington, DC the funding ceased because everyone was jumping on the study bandwagon, but no one was aboard the fix the problem wagon. Guess what - they're still not on that wagon today.

Now, lets look at my place, my palatial estate. I'm on a well, septic tank and field, my manicured front lawn consists mainly of crabgrass, johnson grass and other weeds. What the Hell, those weeds are just as green as Kentucky blue grass, but not nearly as fragile. There has NEVER been any fertilizer applied to my weed patch in the 45 years I've lived here and there will never be as long as I'm still kicking.

Until about 12 years ago, my driveway was crusher run, and at the end of the driveway was a cofferdam to prevent any run-off. When I became too old to remove the snow by hand, I had the driveway paved with blacktop and purchased an 8 HP snow blower. Then I planted tall red fescue at the end of the driveway to absorb any runoff from the blacktop.

Most of my 5.5 acres is still woodland, but the deer have eaten all the understory plants away, which results in higher than normal erosion into the stream that runs through the back end of my property. The deer are just one more example of MD-DNR not getting it right.

Now, your estimate of scientists not being right 75 percent of the time may be right, at least in the environmental areas of science. Could be higher. Keep in mind their environmental track record nationwide has been pretty abysmal, especially in this part of the world.

Lets get the record straight. We have the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a massive bureaucracy that employs hundreds of thousands of people, many of them PHDs, and their only job is to safeguard our environment. Strike one!

In Maryland, we have the Maryland Department of Environment (MDE), which employs a huge number of staff and scientists. Their sole purpose is to protect and preserve the state's environment. Guess they need more money. The rivers, streams, creeks, and in some locations, groundwater supplies are all polluted. The bay, well, we've already discussed that. Air pollution in Maryland is ranked among the highest in the nation, and lots of "Code Red" days, which mean you shouldn't allow the kids to go outdoors and play because the air pollution is at dangerous levels. Same holds true for seniors, people with heart and lung problems, etc... So much for going outside for a breath of fresh air. Yep, they're doing a real, bang-up job at MDE.

We have the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, a massive bureaucracy that employs thousands of people, many of them scientists. Their sole purpose is to protect, preserve and enhance the natural resources of Maryland for all the state's citizens. They refer to this now as resource management. To date they've managed to wipe out: Oysters, soft shell clams, hard shell clams, striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, white perch, yellow perch, speckled trout, Atlantic menhaden, Atlantic croaker, blue crab, puffer-fish, American eel, American shad, hickory shad, blueback herring, and many, many more piscatorial species. They did this with the approval of scientists from the EPA, Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, National Marine Fisheries Service, and a dozen lesser known state and federal agencies. Do you think they just might have done a little better? These are individuals that have degrees from major universities throughout the nation, degrees in fisheries and wildlife management, highly educated, some with PHDs. Hell, we even subsidized their educations with our tax dollars. Turns out they're real good at studying things, but they just need to work on fixin' things.

If you want to rely on the scientific community to fix the planet's environment, that's up to you. Me, I don't have 200 years to see if the 25 percent or less that get it right and finally manage to fix things. I just did a controlled experiment, looked at their past record, came to the conclusion that the chances of a group of scientist solving the bay's woes were slim to none. I put my money on the zebra mussels. And, if they arrive next year, and I manage to live another decade, I just may get to see the bay as clean and clear as it was in 1962, a time when I SCUBA dived for oysters at the old span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Back then, we had 20-foot underwater visibility in late September, when the oyster season opened.

Better hope your doctors and surgeons are right more than 25 percent of the time - yeah, they're scientists as well. ;)

Gary :cool:
 
#47 ·
I still don't understand why you blame scientists for ecological problems that they didn't cause. They've been unable to solve a problem that may be unsolvable (until disease and famine reduce the overpopulation back to historical levels). And you haven't provided any evidence that their efforts had no effect. It's possible that without their work, things might be even worse than they are now.

Scientists are not as dumb as you suggest, and they do their best to anticipate unintended consequences of any actions. It's a much better methodology than the simpleminded, "obvious" solutions proposed by the non-scientific community, like intentionally introducing zebra mussels, which could lead to an ecological disaster.

Your doctor example is irrelevant. The doctors that you visit in an office are not experimental scientists. They are clinicians and practitioners, implementing medical techniques that have been tested and refined by research physicians. As you suggest, the practitioners could never get away with a 25% success rate. However, the research physicians probably are around 25% like the rest of the true scientists during the early stages of their research (this phase is way prior to introducing their practices to the human population). It's only after much experimentation that they get their success rate high enough to put their treatments into routine practice. Such trial and error is part of good science, but unfortunately it is not possible for ecological research where the time scales are decades and length scales are hundreds of miles.
 
#48 ·
it's all a very good point TakeFive. From what I gather (I don;t live on the bay) most of the chesapeake's issues stem from runoff.. and having been all through PA.. I know the watershed for the bay is HUGE!

No doubt those scientists working hard on the bay's problems are running hard just to keep up. One thing you forget about scientists.. they all want that "name"., They want to become that "dr. So&so who fixed the chesapeake bay" or whatever it is they study and work on.
 
#49 ·
TakeFive, If the problem is unsolvable, then why should we continue to fund their studies? Most of the solutions to the bay's ills are just common sense, but as my dear departed father used to say "Common sense just ain't very common these days." Hey, it's the scientific community that says there is a solution, and if you give us money, we'll fix the bay. They've been saying that for more than a half-century, and the politicians believed them. We gave them money, lots and lots of money. They didn't fix anything.

And, if you do your homework, which I'm fairly confident most people will not take the time to do, they'll quickly discover that there were lots and lots of studies performed by scientists employed by state and federal agencies that allowed the polluters to dump their particular pollutants into the bay in the first place. Then there were studies that validated the original studies, and more studies to verify the secondary studies that were used. All these studies were done by the scientific community.

Ever hear of Federal Allowable Limits? There's an entire book of them and they address just about every substance on the planet. The feds tell the states how much of a particular toxin you can absorb without it being harmful. The book tends to be revised every now and then. The book is published every year, and there are additions every year. Until recent years, there was a federal allowable limit for asbestos. Yep, asbestos. There was a doctor in South Africa by the name of Selikoff who did an extensive study related to asbestos exposure. He very quickly came to the conclusion that there is no safe level of exposure. He was right, but many of the U.S. scientists tried to say more studies were needed to prove his theory. I had a single, week-long exposure while in the U.S. Navy in 1959, a time when the Navy figured if you wore a surgical mask you would be safe. I currently suffer from asbestosis, which is a fatal disease where you slowly, but surely, suffocate to death. You may want to read Selikoff's paper on this at http://www.epidemiology.ch/history/...mond 1964 asbestos exposure and neoplasia.pdf

I'll take my chances with the zebra mussells,

Gary :cool:
 
#51 ·
"I guess the good thing about the zebra mussels is that the water is clear enough to see my feet bleed out when I cut them on the mussels."

And, the zebras probably made the water clean enough so you didn't get a horrendous infection that would have resulted in having your foot amputated. Other than that Mrs Lincoln, how did you like the play? ;)

Gary :cool:
 
#52 ·
Gary,

I read your posts about the condition of the Chessy with sadness. When I was a child we would drive down from NY, spend a couple of weeks on Hatteras, chasing blues and camping on the beach. Only a ferry got you across Oregon Inlet, way before they moved the lighthouse. A chicken neck on a string and a dip net easily caught crabs for dinner on the bay side. Swimming was taken for granted. Dad was a college proff. For 10 years we spent about 50 days each summer car camping around these beautiful United States. Spending a lot of that time on the coasts catching fish and living like Gypsys. A weekly budget of one $20.00 travelers check. No credit. Happy times and great training for the cruising life. Getting older has its down side but having been able to see and experience this beautiful country, before the collective effects you lament, is priceless. I too feel sorry for the young folks who will never have those experiences. Lucky us. ;)

Down
 
#53 ·
Down,

that really is the problem. People today forget how good and how bad a lot of the quality was back then. The water was relatively good in many places and the air was really really bad in others..

It's like the complaints about holding tanks.. I can remember when marina's smelled like sewers:puke
 
#55 ·
exactly. I am willing to bet that part of the Bay's problems is the lack of oysters. While do not filter as much as the zebra, they more than take in their bodyweight in nutrients and other things a day. As we overfished them, the bay became murkier and murkier.

It is not just pollution.. if it were, the bay would look better than it does.. it's that will killed off the bay's natural method of cleansing itself
 
#56 · (Edited)
The decline in oysters is more likely a symptom, not a cause. Silt and excess nutrient runoff, and decline of wetlands are probably more at the root of the problem. I have a spring on my property, high on a hill in the Fingerlakes area of NY that turns into a stream. It eventually, makes it's way to the Chesapeake. When you realize just how large the Chesapeake watershed is, you realize that fixing the problem down there is a huge undertaking that has to include even where I live. It can't be fixed by introducing an invasive like the zebra mussel. Everything we do up here, with regards to agriculture, road ditches, industrial activity (like gas exploration and fracking...a hot topic right now in NY state), directly effects the Chesapeake Bay.
 
#57 ·
Actually, the decline of oysters began back in the early 1840s, a time when most folks thought they were quite abundant, but that was actually the turning point for the bay's oyster population. Prior to the U.S. Civil War the bay supplied nearly 75-percent of all the world's oysters. "After the Civil War, the oyster harvesting industry exploded. In the 1880s, the Chesapeake Bay supplied almost half of the world's supply of oysters. New England fishermen encroached on the Bay after their local oyster beds had been exhausted, which prompted violent clashes with competitors from Maryland and Virginia. Watermen from different counties likewise clashed."

When the oyster population crashed in Chesapeake Bay, commercial watermen switched to catching other species of shellfish, mainly softshell and hardshell clams. It didn't take much to wipe them out as well.

Looking for new ways to make a living on the bay's natural resources, commercial watermen switched to striped bass, a species that until the early 1900s was used for fertilizer on waterside farms. It took a lot of years to wipe them out, but by the late 1950s the entire east coast population of striped bass was doomed and headed toward extinction. However, it took nearly 30 years before scientists decided the striper population was in trouble. By that time it was almost too late and a complete moratorium was enacted in 1985 in Maryland's portion of Chesapeake Bay, while northern states put stringent catch restrictions in place for recreational anglers.

Atlantic menhaden, one of the bay's most important filter feeders, came under attack as the striped bass population rapidly declined. Menhaden feed exclusively on various forms of plankton, with phytoplankton being at the top of their dietary preference. The largest commercial fishing industry in the nation targets Atlantic menhaden and is based out of Reedville, VA. The schools of fish are encircled with large, purse nets, and then sucked up large tubes into a hold. They are then transported to the menhaden reduction plant where the fish are essentially cooked down, the oils extracted and used for paints and omega3 fish oil tablets, and the carcass is used for poultry and hog feed.

In 2006 the Atlantic menhaden commercial harvest fell to under 110,000 metric tons. This was a far cry from harvest levels of just a decade earlier, a reduction of more than 90 percent. There was no reduction, however, in harvest effort, which actually increased over the same period. Spotting a school of migrating menhaden in Chesapeake Bay and the nearshore Atlantic waters is almost unheard of these days. Three decades ago, schools measuring up to 40 miles long and 10 miles wide were a common occurrence.

Other filter feeders on the bay include barnacles, which until recent years were probably as common as zebra mussels in the great lakes. When I was a youngster every piling in Baltimore's Inner Harbor was totally encrusted with them. In some locations they were an inch or more thick, and they covered the pilings from the high tide line to the muddy bottom.

Sure, you can still find barnacles in the bay, but they no longer live in depths below 10 feet - mainly because they need oxygen in order to survive. The same holds true for all bay species, most of which that are still alive can only survive during mid summer in depths less than 15 feet, and that includes those that can tolerate relatively low oxygen levels.

With the exception of barnacles, all the other bay's filter feeders have been wiped out by commercial exploitation. And, until recent years, there was essentially no catch restrictions, at least anything meaningful. Ironically, Maryland's commercial watermen have essentially been putting themselves out of business for the past two centuries, mainly by depleting one bay resources after another. Additionally, they are among the only self employed businessmen that are able to collect unemployment compensation with a particular fishery closes because that fishery's population crashed.

There's a lot more to this story than meets the eye, and I didn't just pull this information out of the air and post it here. As an investigative reporter, I wrote about the Chesapeake Bay and it's fisheries for more than two-dozen publications for more than 35 years. I've spent thousands upon thousands of hours both on the bay, and SCUBA diving beneath it's surface. I also fished nearly every state in the nation, and fished several countries, often fishing with the area's top fishing guides, interviewing leading state and federal fisheries scientists, and managed to collect tens of thousands of photos in the process.

One of the things I learned from more than three decades as an investigative reporter was you're not going to change some things, human nature being at the top of the list. People began using the world's waterways as a waste disposal system long before we were born, and this will likely never change. The out of sight out of mind scenario. We continue to dump human and animal poop into the streams, rivers, bays and oceans as if it will just go away. It never has. We bury our disposables in landfills, cover it with dirt, then cover it with plastic, and finally another layer of dirt, thinking it just went away. It's biodegradable, isn't it? Not in anyone's lifetime! There was an old saying by a long since deceased U.S. Senator "The solution to pollution is dilution." a rationale that still exists to this day.

I sincerely wish I were dead wrong on this issue, but I'm very confident I'm right on the money. Everything on the planet is now considered disposable. At one time it was pretty much limited to diapers, which at the time took up more than 66 percent of most U.S. landfills. Now, in 2013, telephones, TVs, computers, cars, homes, everything - we just toss them into a landfill, or into the water. Then we find some scientists to investigate why the water is polluted and you cannot safely eat anything that comes out of it. We have another team of investigators that are studying the worlds groundwater supplies, trying to figure out how they became so polluted. We have people investigating why springheads and groundwater supplies are drying up at an alarming rate throughout the nation, while agriculture and municipal users continue to drill deeper and deeper to obtain more and more water. They do this instead of creating reservoirs.

Then, here in Chesapeake Bay, we have Governor Owe-Mally, (O'Mally), who has presidential aspirations for when O'Bamma leaves office. Owe-Mally just enacted a stormwater management tax on everyone in the state, $125 per year for homeowners, more for business, claiming that all those impervious surfaces are why Chesapeake Bay is fouled. He figures that if we pay a lot more money, the bay can be cleansed of its impurities. Yeah, right! He says the money will not be dumped into the state's general fund. Of course, he has a track record of lying about these things.

Yeah, I'm still cynical!

Gary :cool:
 
#59 ·
Yeah, I'm still cynical
Cynical is good. We need more cynical :)

The only thing that gives me hope is knowing some (many) things were worse when I was a kid. More and more of the toxic waste sites are getting cleaned up. Air quality is better in many places. These days, it's not uncommon to see a bald eagle and occasionally a perigrine falcon, both basically doomed species around here when I was a kid. I put out more recyclables than I do garbage, these days. Change just seems too slow, and too political.

We need cynical people need to keep the pressure on.
 
#58 ·
Gary,

Ugh! Your stories are familiar. It isn't going to get better, soon! Catching all the "common" species here in Maine used to be a given. We would watch Ospreys catching flounder on the flood tide and join them when a feed sounded good. Pollack were so thick at times the schools would push fish onto the shore and they could just be picked up. Fresh haddock. No problem. I caught my last Atlantic Salmon in 1981. The only sustainable fishery I know of is lobsters. There was a day when they were almost wiped out, too.

Maine is still hanging on by a thread and I choose to escape here.

Thanks for all the advocacy your career represents. It made a difference.

Down
 
#60 ·
that is what I thought, Gary. Can't clean up the bay when there is nothing to clean it up. While I do not advocate bringing in an invasive species, have to wonder what the zebras would do
 
#62 ·
I guess I'm fortunate in that there are lots of bald/American eagles residing at the head of Chesapeake Bay. One of the reasons behind this is a forage species known as gizzard shad, which swarm at the base of Conowingo Dam, located about 6 miles upstream of the Susquehanna River's mouth. When the hydroelectric dam opens the gates and water rushes through the turbines, huge quantities of gizzard are drawn through the system and ejected at the base of the dam. I've seen up to a dozen eagles show up when the dam's warning siren sounds, which is a signal that the water below the dam will be rising. The eagles are joined by gulls, herons and ospreys who circle above the rushing water awaiting stunned and disoriented shad to rise to the surface. Striped bass, smallmouth bass, walleye, channel catfish and perch join in on the feast just beneath the water's surface. It's a sight to behold, particularly during early spring when various spawning runs are taking place.

Cheers,

Gary :cool:
 
#64 ·
Ironic?:confused:

Here in Maine we fight to remove dams and celebrate their demise. Two big ones are being removed from the Penobscott River now. There are lots of eagles. We paddle the Susquehanna River every Memorial Day and enjoy the river valley's upper end. I do understand Maine is a bit more remote than the Susquehanna's watershed. Our concern with the effect of dam releases is the impact on the anadramous fish. Providing a feeding station for other species is better than not. I guess? We have to salvage what we can from our impact on this planet. Here is hoping that fracking doesn't eliminate the runs of fish. Eagles won't be the biggest losers. They can come to Maine.

Down
 
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