Field Diary: Summer 2008
The following is a semi-daily account of my experiences conducting field research in the Broad River watershed in northeastern Georgia. To see a summary of the project for which I am conducting field research look here. I will try to share my thoughts and adventures after every day spent kayaking. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I will enjoy my time on the river.
Before beginning my research diary, I want to briefly explain some experiments that David Leigh, UGA Geography, and I conducted the first week I arrived in Athens. These experiments examine the terminal fall velocity and bedload transport velocity of the dense seeds of Hymenocallis coronaria. These experiments build on the modeling analysis of our soon to be published Freshwater Biology paper, an abstract for that paper can be found here. We collected seeds and then video taped them falling through approximately 1.5 meters of water. The videos were later analyzed to measure the terminal fall velocity of each seed. We also ran the seeds through a flume, with and without gravel, to determine the velocity needed to move each seed along the channel bed. Sample videos of each experiment are found below (double click each movie to begin playing). We will compare these experimental results with our equation/modeling based analysis to determine if the equations and models accurately explain how seeds of H. coronaria are affected by velocity. These methods are applicable to other species, flora and fauna, and will help managers when determining ecological flows.
Day 1: Solo Excursion
June 30th, 6.84 miles: This morning was beautiful, clear skies, low humidity and comfortable temperatures. A good day to get started.
Georgia is in the middle of one of the deepest, longest, dryest droughts in decades. I knew this before coming up here from Florida, and knew the rivers would be low, but what can you do? The research must go on.
The river was low, real low, but passable. A lot of mid-channel bars that would normally be a foot or more underwater were just a couple of inches below the surface, and others were a few inches above the surface. These new islands are already being colonized by vegetation.
Most people who don't spend much time on rivers probably think that the middle of the channel is the deepest, but actually the deepest areas are often adjacent to the banks. I spent most of the day hugging the banks and looking for openings to shoot across the channel to the opposite bank before the bar closed off my way ahead. Dragging bottom was a problem that I think we will be living with the whole time.
Field research provides the occasional fringe benefits, like wildlife spotting. After about 100 yards from first putting in this morning I spotted a doe on the edge of the bank drinking from the river. She was amazing. Her entire bottom half was white. Not spotted like a fawn, but solid white from high on her back, around her belly, and down her legs. I have never seen a whitetail with so much white. I am hoping it is a sign for my research project, good hunting lies ahead.
Unfortunately the hunting wasn't so good for my initially planned prey species, Justicia americana, American water willow. I didn't find a single population today, not even a single plant. This is a common species and I'm not sure why I didn't see any, but it was disconcerting. Failure to collect samples, even on the first day, gets me worried. What if I don't find any in the streams I plan to kayak? That would be disaster, but I don't think it will happen. Going back to some of the existing literature reminded me that maybe I was too far down the watershed today. Tomorrow Emilie will be helping, and we will hit one of the smaller tributaries in an attempt to improve our luck.
Day 2: Looking Upstream
July 1st, 7.12 miles: Another perfect day for paddling, but alas, no Justicia. This common, occasionally nuisance plant, is being quite elusive. We found some great habitat today, one series of sandy/gravel bars containing every emergent, submerged, amphibious, aquatic plant in the watershed, but Justicia will not be so easily sampled.
The beginning 2 or 3 miles of the journey was a bit of a slog. Low water, of course, over a regular set of rock-step type rapids. The kayaks couldn't make it through most of them, but the pools in between were fine. Regardless of the repeated portaging, the scenery was nice. Trees overhung most of the channel through this section, so it was cool and shadowy and a bad day on the river always beats a good day in the lab.
The middle section of today's reach was perfect. No obstacles to speak of, and no evidence of humans to be seen. At one point I heard a loud deep snort to my right on the bank. I looked over and saw a flash of white tail and brown back racing through the brush. The hoof beats sounded like a horse, but it could only have been a big buck.
The middle section ended at a dam. It isn't on my map, but it's there, about 10 feet high. We couldn't portage the kayaks over land because they had piled large chunks of broken concrete on either side of the dam and the footing was scary. So, I lowered the boats over the edge and Emilie caught them before they got away.
The last third of the river presented us with a potential "Deliverance" type moment. We came around a bend and I thought someone was fishing from the bank. As we got closer I realized it wasn't a pole, but a rifle. He waded into the water, showing off his abundant tattoos on his chest, back, and arms, and told us he was hunting for snakes. Gotta protect his daughters he said. He was a nice guy, but I could do without a day when shirtless rifle toting locals meet me on a Georgia river.
So, no samples again. I am gathering some useful data on the locations of river features that might affect seed trapping, but that doesn't really matter if I don't find a study species. A plan is being formulated though. I'm not so dedicated to Justicia americana that it can't be replaced, and I may have identified a candidate today. Will let you know if I make any drastic decisions.
Day 3: Running the Rapids
July 2nd, 5.7 miles: Anyone familiar with the Broad River knows about the Broad River Outpost canoe/kayak rental business, and the reach of river their customers usually run. I haven't kayaked this stretch in maybe 8 years, and I had forgotten how fun it is to paddle. There are stretches of this reach that are almost continuous rapids for over a mile at a time. For the most part we kicked the rapid's backsides, but the water isn't getting any deeper and a number of good falls and drops were tough or impossible to navigate. I capsized and swamped my kayak on one, I'm insisting it was because the water was low and I would have taken it at any other time. My notebook got soaked and my GPS took on a little water, but nothing terminal. Emilie, on the other hand, is starting to master the river, rapids, and kayak.
One of the best aspects of this trip is watching the river change from upstream to downstream. Most of the time people, including myself, only see one stretch of a river, or maybe only one spot, but this research project gives us the opportunity to observe about 100 miles of river in a matter of weeks. Obviously the river widens as more tributaries combine, which was definitely noticeable over the last couple of days. Yesterday the stream was about 20 meters wide, today it was at least 2-3 times as wide. Also the morphology of pools and riffles/rapids and bars changes, and so does the flora. Just yesterday I felt like I was in an Appalachian valley, with a steep high valley, mountain laurel and White Pine hugging the slopes. But today we were definitely on a Georgia Piedmont stream, with a wide sunny channel and River Birch, Water Oak and red oaks on the floodplain and slopes.
Lots of wildlife again today. We saw two confederate flag bikini wearing locals within half a mile of each other enjoying the river. Also, had another deer encounter. This time we came around a bend and a doe was standing about 1/3 of the way out into the stream, maybe 20 meters from the bank. When it saw us it made its way back to the bank, but it must have been eating some aquatic plants. Deer are known to wade out into shoals for aquatic plants, including a species I have previously researched, Hymenocallis coronaria. We also saw a much larger number of turtles basking on rocks, maybe Painted and River Cooter turtles, but I also thought I saw a softshell. Because of the drought there is practically no erosion, so even after the turtles jumped off the rocks and logs I could see them swimming around the kayak along with some pretty big fish.
The prize of the day was the two Bald Eagles we stumbled across. First we rounded a bend and surprised a mature adult eagle, so we got pretty close to it before it flew off. Big white head and tail, brown body; your prototypical Bald Eagle. The second eagle we saw was likely an immature second year Bald Eagle. Based on the beak, body, and wings it was a Bald Eagle, but the coloration was not well defined. I looked it up later in a field guide and the coloration was very much like an immature second year eagle. The weirdest thing was the call it made when we surprised it. As it took off to fly away it made a call that sounded just like a Canada Goose. I was looking right at it and thought that it didn't look like any goose I had ever seen, and when it circled back around over our heads I saw it was an eagle.
That old quote attributed to Albert Einstein is appropriate, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." If it is true anywhere, this statement is true of field research. I came into today recognizing that after about 14 river miles there was no evidence of Justicia americana. So, a savvy researcher must know when to hedge his/her bets if he/she doesn't want a bunch of research time and money to go to waste. Even the best laid research plans can go wrong, or need tweaking, and flexibility is necessary. Be willing to take what nature gives you without compromising the rigor, validity, or reliability of your research. I started hedging my bets today and began collecting samples of a second species. I'm still looking for J. americana, but if I really don't find any in the study reaches I will have samples of a species that I am pretty certain can still be used for a very similar project of importance, if not the exact same project. We collected from 5 populations, maybe 80 leaf samples in all. This trip will be fruitful one way or another.
Day 4: The Beaten Path
July 6th, 6.84 miles: We took a few days off for the July 4th holiday weekend, hoping to avoid too much river traffic, drunks, and to rest and have a good time ourselves after three straight days of paddling. It's not easy to go from your typical daily life, even if you do try to stay in shape, and jump right into continuous kayaking and fighting the shallow rapids. Today was a Sunday though, and there were still a number of joy riders out. One group of apparent sorority and fraternity kids numbered somewhere around 30 and they threatened to turn the rapids into a traffic jam, but we were able to stay pretty clear of them.
There were actually people around curious about our strange behavior. "My kid thinks you are stopping too soon after the last break, what are you doing?" "Hey, you catch anything yet?" I replied that I had caught some plants so far. And my favorite was, "You seen any game wardens 'round here?" I hadn't, and to be honest I don't think they ever patrol the rivers, maybe the lakes. He had a pole, but "forgot" his license.
One of my conversations was with a guy who was cleaning up lawn chairs, a table, and a large umbrella that had been strategically placed on a shallow bar in the middle of the stream. They obviously weren't expecting a flood, and I assume had been sitting in the water all weekend tying one on. He seemed a bit worse for wear, but was well informed about aquatic plants. He told me he owned the kayak rental place just upstream from my put-in point, which is never open as far as I can tell. He recognized the plant I was sampling as arrowhead, said he had transplanted some into a water garden at his house and he knew it grew by runners, like cattail. He also told me that he had never seen arrowhead growing in the place I was sampling; it was a new population this year.
Sagittaria latifolia, broadleaf arrowhead, is the plant that I am sampling instead of Justicia americana. Like Justicia americana, it is diploid (2 copies of each chromosome), aquatic/amphibious, emergent, found in rivers, common (although Justicia is fighting that reputation), clonally and sexually reproductive, and grows in discontinuous clumps of individuals (which makes defining population or sub-population boundaries easier). Unlike Justicia, arrowhead already has microsallite markers designed, with appropriate variability within populations. I was going to design markers for J. americana, but with S. latifolia I don't have to waste my time, I can jump right into genotyping. Also, unlike J. americana, S. latifolia has a mixed reproductive system. It has both monoecious (hermaphrodite individuals) and dioecious (male and female flowers on different individuals) populations. There are genetic differences between the two systems of course. Fortunately, they seem to favor different ecosystems, with monoecious populations found in disturbed sites, including streams, and dioecious plants found in more environmentally consistent sites, such as wetlands. So, hopefully I will only find monoecious plants in the Broad River, and so far the plants that I have seen in flower have all been monoecious. I think my initial misfortune with J. americana will actually turn into a happy accident, and I will be able to conduct the same research with S. latifolia and without the hassle of marker development.
Pictures of broadleaf arrowhead are found below, so is a picture of some rocks in the stream. The configuration of these rocks is a 'V' shape, pointing downstream, and it is obviously man-made. People mess around in these rivers all the time with rocks, but this formation is quite large, and so are the rocks. I would guess the river is about 40-50 meters wide at this point and the weir is maybe 2-3 meters wide all the way across. These rocks, that people float over all the time at two breaks in the 'V', are probably the remnants of a fishing weir. Native Americans across the Southeast used weirs to help trap and catch fish. If my conclusion is right, there must have also been a fairly substantial and permanent settlement within close proximity. I wish I could see what their home looked like 400 years ago.
Day 5: Reach Again
July 8th, 6.84 miles: This was the second trip in a row on the same river reach, and the third time I have floated this reach all together. I love this river, but I'm glad I don't have to see this reach again. The first time I was looking for Justicia. The second time I was collecting Sagittaria, but ran out of desiccant half way down and it started raining. This time we finished sampling this reach and we aren't coming back.
To this point we have collected plants from 17 (sub)populations of S. latifolia. This species is quite common here and the populations are occurring on average about every kilometer, and populations contain on average ~30 ramets. They seem to like to grow right at the toe of the channel banks on little sandy bars. Most of the plants are rooted ~2-6 inches above the water level right now, which means in a typical year they would probably be right at the water surface or just below. The frequency of occurrence is greater than I expected to sample, and I think I will need to scale back the area over which I make collections. I have already decided to cut off two of the downstream reaches because I think we have sampled enough in the main stem of the Broad River already. We still need samples from more tributaries, but I will probably cut off some of the upstream sampling also because we will not need to go so far upstream to get representative samples out of the tribs. This will all depend on how the sampling progresses further upstream of course.
The river has gone down a few inches over the last week, no rain, but rain is promised for the next couple of days. The tapestry of colors and patterns created by the sand and gravel bars and shallow and deep water, and ripples and shadows on both, are quite beautiful though. Below is a picture of one bar I found particularly attractive next to the bank where we ate lunch. The water over this bar was just a couple of inches deep.
I have been neglecting to report on the Great Blue Herons. They are graceful birds, and I think we are chasing the same pair of herons all over this river. They see us round a bend, jump up and fly downstream, then we catch up to them half a kilometer later, and they jump up and fly downstream. Sometimes this happens 5 or 6 times in a row. Ducks tend to follow this pattern also, and so did a flock of vultures. Sometimes I just want to yell up to them, "Fly perpendicular!"
Caught a rare glimpse of a Kingfisher fishing. It sat on a dead limb overhanging the channel and before we came up parallel it dove into the water for its prey. Also, there are plenty of fish for the Kingfisher. This is not the most dense fish assemblage I have seen kayaking a river, the Little Cahaba gets that accolade, but I do see some pretty good size specimen from time to time. I have seen gar before, and this time I heard someone else on the river call to his friend about a gar next to his boat. I have seen plenty of fish that appear to be sucker type fish, no definitive identification though. Perhaps the most well known local sucker is the nearly endangered Robust Redhorse. This species has been negatively affected by damming, exotic species, and sedimentation, and is quite rare. Populations have been reintroduced into the Broad River, and I wonder if some of these suckers are Robust Redhorse.
Of interest to me, and maybe no one else, was the accidental observation of hickory nuts falling directly into the river and sinking to the bottom. If you read my introductory statements above, you will know about my experiments with fall velocities and bedload movement of the sinking seeds of H. coronaria. Seeing Hickory nuts sink reminds me of how many riparian plants, herbaceous and woody, rely on rivers to transport their seeds, either floating or on the channel beds. We are just starting to understand these interactions between fluvial processes and patterns and floral processes and patterns. We must understand these relationships if we are to understand how our impacts in these environments, i.e. damming, affect stream and riparian ecosystems.
Day 6: Big Log
July 10th, 3.93 miles: So day 5's theme song was "Big Log" by Robert Plant. Why? The first thing Emilie said as we put-in was, "There's a big log". If you don't remember that song, well I can't blame you, but look it up. It's worth a listen. Today's theme was "Islands in the Stream", the duet by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. This one is not worth giving a second listen, but every trip needs a theme song no matter how annoying, right? The reason is that we re-floated half of the reach that we paddled on day 2, and once again reached the two large sand and bedrock islands where I first decided Sagittaria latifolia would be a good alternative to Justicia. We sampled that population, and 5 others today.
The water was up today, and looking at the USGS gauge information indicates that it's still rising, over half a foot in 24 hrs. It's also raining tonight in the Broad River basin, so the level should be higher tomorrow. The stream discharge is greater right now than the entire time I have been in Athens. We must take advantage while the boating is good.
With the rise in water level the turbidity of the river was greater today. Visibility had been as good as I had seen a Georgia Piedmont river, ever, but today it was back to its usual brown murkiness. This is probably mainly due to remobilization of sediment already in the stream, but could be new erosion across the watershed. There is plenty of sediment sitting on the channel beds and in the banks to be remobilized. During the 19th and early 20th centuries' period of intense cotton agriculture and poor farming practices erosion was devastating, causing people to abandon their land for new productive land farther west and eventually the introduction of Kudzu to try and stop the erosion. It's hard to imagine what the streams of northern Georgia must have looked like prior to European settlement, but they were certainly more clear and maybe more gravel bed than sand bed.
When passing a confluence one can often tell which stream received the most precipitation, and erosion, by just looking at the color of the waters from each tributary as they coalesce. Today the Middle Fork was turbid, but was visibly more clear than the very turbid and redish brown North Fork. After they converged it was murky the rest of the way, and seeing underwater hazards and bars was more difficult than past days. However, we could float over many of these hidden barriers much more easily today.
Day 7: Enough Backtracking
July 12th, 3.19 miles: Today's reach was the last in the series of backtracking trips for sampling from river miles that were paddled when Justicia americana was still the objective. This reach was wonderful once again, and quick, just over 3 miles. Only 3 populations were found, and stopping to count ramets, collect leaves, bag them in desiccant, GPS the location, and take notes slows us considerably. So, there is this constant tension between wanting to collect a representative sample, enjoy the river, get the work part finished, and get past this backtracking. They're all new reaches from here.
The deer along these rivers are thicker than fleas. I've mentioned them a number of times, I know, but I had another fun encounter today. I was sitting on a log next to the bank, filling bags with samples, and heard a crash across the bank. A big doe leapt off the opposite bank and into the river, and proceeded to leap across the shallows and up the bank not 10 meters downstream from my position. Some of these animals are not very shy, and I can only guess what that means for their future once hunting season opens again.
The crawling and buzzing creatures haven't gained much recognition in my narrative thus far, and that's because I prefer to ignore them. Most bugs don't really bother me, mosquitoes and other flying insects don't bite me often, but fire ants are bad in Georgia and Emilie and I both have been attacked a few times. I'm not phobic, but my worst reactions have been to spiders. A large black and yellow garden argiope spider was waiting right above a sample location today, pretty spiders and harmless. Not all spiders are harmless though. A couple of weeks ago I was bitten by something while out on the river, and I think it was a spider. The side of my leg swelled up in a silver dollar sized volcano. The swelling is gone, but now I have a dime sized crater in the side of my leg. It's healing, but slowly, and I wonder if the 3 day migraine I had after I noticed the bite was related.
About 6 years ago I was bitten on the foot when I was walking in the grass at night behind my apartment. It hurt like heck and I got a big welt on the top of my foot. I never saw the culprit. The next day I was cooking some soup on the stove and suddenly I felt light headed, so I sat down quickly against the refrigerator and passed out. Don't know how long I was out, but my soup was bubbling when woke up. I turned off the burner, and staggered to my couch, where I passed out again in a cold sweat. Ultimately I was fine, a few more waking and sleeping periods for the next half hour or so, but I lived to tell the tale. Was it a black widow?
The take-out point today was at that unmapped dam I mentioned previously. Some high school kids showed up as I was loading the car, they were there to jump off the dam for fun. Put-ins and take-outs when kayaking or canoeing are always troublesome. My strategy has been to put in at the bridges, which usually provide descent access. However, a couple of bridges in this area are being replaced and the access has been bulldozed or otherwise destroyed, so we have scrambled a bit. The take-out at the dam is nice because there is no bank, you just jump out onto concrete, but the gate to the driveway was locked, so I carried my kayak on my shoulder about 150 meters to the gate. Not so nice.
Day 8: Large Woody Debris
July 14th, 5.69 miles: We finished all the sampling on the Middle Fork of the Broad River today. When we started the stream was perhaps 15-20 meters wide and the canopy was almost completely closed overhead. Because the river was so narrow, there were log jams spanning the entire width of the stream almost every 100 meters for the first 2 kilometers. Below is a picture of Emilie trying to drag her kayak over a log. Yes, I helped her as much as I could (with the exception of this candid photo), but she was pretty tired by the time we got past that stretch.
Sagittaria latifolia likes plenty of light, and that first stretch of river with closed canopy didn't support any populations. However, as soon as the canopy opened, and the log jamming eased, S. latifolia found a foothold immediately. So, we collected samples from 5 populations today, making that 7 total for this one tributary. I think we actually were able to collect from the most upstream population in the Middle Fork, which is very consequential for understanding how genetic patterns develop in streams. Hypothetically, the most upstream populations should be the least genetically diverse because they receive seeds from no other populations via hydrochory, i.e. seed movement by water. My next target tributary is the North Fork, from which I've already sampled 3 populations.
Large woody debris can be a pain in the neck for kayakers or canoers when it blocks the channel, but it plays important morphological and ecological roles. In rivers the size of the Middle Fork, logs can change local velocity and flow direction. Thus, logs can influence sediment erosion and deposition patterns. Wood also acts as a refuge from high velocities for fish and other aquatic organisms. Woody debris becomes a concentrated location of living biomass, and helps support the stream food chain. Still, I'd rather not be hefting my kayak over obstacles half the day, but to get to these "important" most upstream populations we must accept the temporary difficulty of these "important" morphological and ecological features of streams.
Day 8.5: Days In Between
July 15th, 0 miles: Anyone reading this field diary will notice that we have mainly been going to the river every other day. Do we seem lazy? Well, we're just a little, but those days in between are actually pretty busy also. I thought I would write one entry to cover those "off days", so you get an idea of what goes on behind the scenes to support all the action and drama of sampling.
This job is pretty much like any other in that the days you go to work, in this case we go to the river, nothing else in your life gets accomplished. So, of course we take care of the daily necessary things like grocery shopping, dishes, and laundry. However, there are a few other post-sampling daily jobs. As I mentioned before, my field notebook got wet early in our field sampling. All of my notes were salvaged, but after that I made a point of entering all my notes into my laptop after every paddling trip. I also download my GPS points, just in case.
We're using Drierite, a desiccant, to dry the leaf samples. DNA degrades once plant cells are removed from the plant, but dehydrating the cells quickly and completely stops the degradation process. We take 150-200 sealed sandwich bags containing 40 grams of Drierite with us on every trip. Sometimes we use every bag for collecting samples; covering each leaf with desiccant. The leaves dry pretty quickly, sometimes the first samples of the day are dry by the time we get home in the late afternoon. But, to insure complete drying we lay out all the bags once we get home, see picture below, and leave them overnight. The next day most of the Drierite is removed from the bags, but <5 grams is left in the bags so we can make sure the leaves don't start to rehydrate. This process seems to be working well, the leaves are dehydrated, but I'll only be able to verify that the DNA is intact once I get back to my lab. This is a proven procedure, but what if it fails? I've never tried to preserve samples this way before. When working with Hymenocallis I used dry ice to quick freeze and preserve leaves. That method worked for day trips that returned directly back to the lab, but would be impossible over the two month period we are away from the lab for this project.
Once all the bags are emptied of excess desiccant we need to start filling new bags again. Below is a picture of me weighing Drierite, both white and blue. The white is regular Drierite, and the blue is indicating Drierite. The indicating type changes color after it has absorbed all the moisture it can hold. The desiccant can be used three or four times before it cannot absorb any more. Fortunately the Drierite can be regenerated by baking. Cooking the desiccant at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour evaporates the absorbed moisture so it can be used again.
Do you think we'll get thrown in the clink if we get pulled over on the way back to Florida? Sometimes I wonder if the police will think we're running illicit product.
Day 9: Another Tributary
July 16th, 3.66 miles: Have you ever seen a river dead end? Maybe in karst regions with disappearing streams, or arid regions where evaporation overtakes stream flow. For a few seconds today I thought the North Fork of the Broad River just stopped. Apparently a recent storm caused a rather large blowdown, stretching across the entire channel, and the mass of leaves, vines, and wood looked like a vegetated bank from a distance. Below is a picture of Emilie doing the limbo trying to squeeze through a kayak sized opening in the tangled mass.
That was the worst of the very few log jams today. Again, as with the Middle Fork the first half of our paddle was under total canopy cover, and only where a couple of rare openings occurred did we find populations to sample. One of the openings was located at a powerline cut. So as with the Middle Fork, I think we have reached our upper limit on the North Fork. We may have sampled the most upstream population, or there may be a rare population or two farther up at a bridge crossing or powerline, but we only found two populations in 3.66 miles today and that tells me we have reached a point of diminishing returns. Another tributary down, one or two more to go.
We are working in a very rural area. Chicken houses, pastures, and forest land dominate. To this point the livestock have been heard but not seen. Today we found one farmer who lets his cows go swimming in the North Fork. You can see the effects of cattle on the river banks. These animals need to be fenced out of the river in order to cut down erosion, input of nutrients, and bacteria. Intermittent streams within a rancher's property boundaries are often heavily eroded by cattle because fencing is rarely used, but perennial streams such as this are almost always fenced adjacent to pasture.
Day 10: Rescue Mission
July 17th, 6.93 miles: Spend enough time doing any one thing and you're bound to see something memorable. After reading all my entries people should get the idea that there is plenty to remember from our experiences in the Broad River watershed. We got one more of those experiences on this day.
Any regular kayaker/canoer or fisherman probably knows what I mean by "limb lining". For the uninitiated, limb lining is a fishing technique where the fisherman ties a hook and weight to a line, then ties the line to a limb hanging over the water. With this technique fishermen can set many hooks along a stretch of river, at different depths to sample the entire water column, and the fisherman doesn't even need to be around to actively fish. That's right, the fisherman can go home, or work, or whatever, and just wait until the fish and limb lines do the work for him/her. Very efficient.
As a disclaimer: I've got no problem with fishing. I actually fished a fair amount as a younger person, surf casting while on vacation or freshwater fishing near my house in high school. It's not cruel, when done properly, and people need to eat. What I do have a problem with is causing unnecessary suffering to animals of any species. I have seen many limb lines, but I can say that I have never seen one being checked for a catch. Maybe the frequency is once a week at best, on the weekends, leaving whatever is caught to sit on the end of a line for days, maybe spoiling before the line is checked, and maybe killing an animal that wasn't even the intended catch.
So, Emilie and I were kayaking the Hudson River when I rounded a curve and saw splashing up ahead near the left bank. That's not so unusual, animals get spooked when we round curves in the river, but this splashing stayed in the same spot. I could tell that the animal was obviously trapped after a few seconds, but couldn't tell that it was a turtle caught on a limb line until I was just a few meters away. The pictures are below. The first picture is what I saw when I arrived. The soft shell turtle was hooked by his front right foot. It's obvious that it was hooked when the water was higher because the hook was above water level. He was dangling from the limb above, and thrashing to get free. How long had he been hooked? I can't say for sure, but it hadn't rained since the weekend, and this was Thursday. So, maybe a few days.
When Emilie caught up she snapped the second picture of me holding the turtle. After the photo opportunity, Emilie held the turtle and I pulled the hook out of its foot. Pulling the hook out wasn't easy. The turtle wasn't happy, it kicked and snapped at us, and the hook was in the foot deep and is obviously designed for keeping something hooked. There was no blood, the wound was old. We released the turtle, it swam away quickly, but I really can't say if we saved it or just freed it so it can die of infection in peace. I hope it has plenty of years of basking on rocks left. As for limb lines, if you ever see one cut it down.
As for sampling, we collected from 5 populations. We're nearing the end of field work. I'll let you know when it's over. We are going to take a few days off though. The water level is dropping again and no rain till next week. Also, a real heat wave is expected over the next 5 days, I mean pushing 100. We could use a real break anyway, and I have some other things that I need to finish related to my day job.
Day 11: The Worst For Last
July 24th, 6.05 miles: With joy and much celebration, but a twinge of nostalgia in our hearts, we have finished field sampling for this project! Ok, forget the nostalgia, after today I'm just glad we're done and the entire trip wasn't like this. I'll come back to the ugliest stretch of river I've ever paddled later, but here are the statistics. We sampled 3 more populations today, that brings our grand total to 41 populations, and 899 leaf samples. Our total river miles paddled was 62.79 miles in 11 days on the river; of course about 20 of those miles were due to backtracking. We paddled parts of the Broad River itself, and its tributaries the North and Middle Forks of the Broad River, and the Hudson River. Through it all the kayaks did their job, although in these dry conditions I wish they had a shallower draft and were a little shorter. There will be plenty of other statistics to write about in the future, but before that I need to do the lab work, collaborate with Zhixiao on the modeling, and then do the analysis and write-up. Check back in the coming months and years to find out where you can read the results.
We obviously took a few days off from sampling. It got pretty hot here, and the afternoon thunder showers ceased and the river started dropping. My plan was to beat the heat and let the showers that were predicted raise the water level. Well, we successfully avoided the upper 90s temperatures, but the rain never came. In the meantime, I took a couple of side trips. The first side trip was to Blood Mountain Wilderness, the site of my Master's research and a cool escape up on the Blue Ridge from the summer heat. I hiked to the top of Blood Mountain, the highest peak on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia. Pictures from that trip are posted under my 'Personal Photos' link on the sidebar. My other side trip was to Anthony Shoals on the Broad River. Anthony Shoals is quite far downstream from my study reaches, but is the location of a very nice population of Hymenocallis coronaria that I am familiar with from my dissertation research. I made quite a few trips to Anthony Shoals for that research, and I remember those trips as the reason I thought Justicia americana would be a good focal species for the current project in this watershed. My motive for going back was to prove to myself that I wasn't slipping mentally, that J. americana is found in this watershed. The first picture below this entry is from Anthony Shoals and shows a population of Sagittaria surrounded by Justicia americana. So, I did remember correctly, it occurs in this watershed, but not until close to the mouth of the river. Anyway, some really great pictures of Anthony Shoals are also posted with my 'Personal Photos'. By the way, Anthony Shoals is one of my favorite places on the planet, something new and beautiful every time.
I've finally gotten to the point where I can vent about the stretch of the Hudson River between State Routes 326 and 106, the crummiest river reach ever. I warn everyone not to paddle this reach, especially in a drought. The upper 2 miles of this reach are completely choked with sediment, and because the water is low I just gave up and started walking my kayak downstream. On top of that, many of the banks are being heavily eroded by the livestock of negligent cattle ranchers, and the smell of hot cow paddies permeated the air. Lucky for us paddlers, but probably not the stream ecosystem, we ran into a big sand dredge beached in the middle of the river (see photo below). Dredging sand out of streams in Georgia is a relatively common economic exercise, but fortunately not ubiquitous. About 100 meters downstream from this dredge the sand bars just dropped off and disappeared. We paddled free and clear in 1 meter deep water for close to a mile, it was great after being subjected to that first stretch. However, conditions deteriorated pretty quickly. The river got shallower and concurrently got woodier, really woody. It was a bone-yard of old large woody debris for a couple of miles. The fourth picture gives a feel for that stretch. Muck, sand, wood, and tires. In and out of the kayak, and up and over the log jams. When the wood finally cleared, the paddling was ok for the last mile or so, but we had one last horror for the day. Ahead I could see a large collection of vultures; I'm talking 20-30 big, black as night, carion eating vultures. As we approached, each one in turn would let out a squawk and fly up to a branch above the river. Emilie was impressed by the sound of their wings, heavy flapping of feathers of 30 vultures together, like canvas in the wind. The final picture below shows our grisly discovery, a dead calf right on the bank of the river. Maybe it fell off the bank and drown when the water was higher, I don't know, but the smell was strong and the flies thick. Life and death on the river.
Whenever I get close to finishing field research for a project I reach a point when I want it to be over. I probably reached that point by the end of day 10, and today sealed the deal, I'm glad we're done. I don't intend to give the impression that I dislike field research, hopefully if you read this entire field diary you understand that I love that part of my job. But, there is something about knowing the end is coming, and my mind and body start to yearn for completion, for another change, or maybe my normal life again. I could work in the field all the time, but I would need some variation in projects, locations, and objectives, and it would be nice to see my home more frequently. I have enjoyed my time getting to know the Broad River watershed in depth, down and dirty. I wonder where my research will take me next...probably South Florida.
