The Wrack

As summer ends, a friend's question leads to a Cl-ear answer

On Tuesday, six of us traveled to Augusta for the 2015 Maine Sustainability and Water Conference. This conference was established by UMaine in 1994 to bring together water resource professionals, researchers, consultants, citizens, students, regulators, and planners to discuss the future of Maine’s water resources. This year's conference included presentations, panel discussions, and poster displays. Session topics ranged from Ocean Acidification to Municipal Water Resources Management to Urban Sustainability & Climate Change, to Sustainable Engagement with the Food System, as well as many more!

Four reserve staff had the privilege of sharing recent and ongoing projects:

Our study of water temperature in the Mousam River during summer 2013 found conditions that do not support native coldwater fish species during the most critical time of the year.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 12/28/2014.

I sat in the tire shop the day before Christmas, waiting for the technician to switch my summer tires for winter ones, and scrutinized my fingers. I’d recently read an article about new biological research that pointed to a possible explanation for one of the great mysteries that has bedeviled mankind for millennia: why DO our fingers get wrinkly in the bath?

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 11/23/2014.

The most important thing I can say about this year’s midterm election is simply: thank you for voting.

Maine had the highest voter turnout in the entire 50 states, with 59.3% of us going to the polls, well above the national average of 36%. If it was the “gu-bear-natorial” nature of our election, so be it: each vote tallied was an expression of individual preference. Some races were decided by single digits; others, by lopsided majorities. In each race, and on each ballot question, we now know what a majority of our fellow Mainers decisively think. That’s valuable information and worth thinking about.

Volunteers measure river conditions at 20 monitoring sites as part of a statewide program.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 11/2/2014.

From reports, it sounds like this year’s midterm election is a doozy, money-wise: across the country, campaigns are spending record sums marketing their candidates and causes.  So I read, anyway: I do not watch broadcast TV, I have an ad blocker on my computer, and I only listen to satellite radio and MPBN. Voluntarily [and gratefully] deaf to the din from most of the marketing wars, I rarely hear about the latest advances in breakfast cereal, let alone the biannual election season onslaught.

About the only political advertising I do see are ads in newspapers (bless you, candidates, for feeding our starving print publishers), and outdoor campaign signs.

We saw a cold and wet start to the month of June here in Southern Maine. I thought I would share some SWMP data from a few of our stations to illustrate how weather can significantly impact the water quality of our estuaries

Aboard the EPA Ocean Survey Vessel BOLD to do ichthyoplankton monitoring at sea to supplement the nearly weekly ichthyoplankton tows at Wells Harbor.

Forty-one Gorham Middle School sixth grade students traveled to the Reserve today to take part in water quality monitoring with their teachers and five Reserve docents. The students divided into groups then participated in hands-on activities to learn about fecal coliform, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, pH, and salinity in the water.