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Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Chuck Epes (communications coordinator for the Virginia office) and Bill Portlock (educator and photographer) gather water data on the river.
These homes are situated along Marlboro Point on Aquia Creek near the confluence of the Potomac River.
Wild celery, coontail and hydrilla grow in the water.
Canada geese fly over a duck blind that sits in underwater river grasses that appear to extend the reach of a point of land off Aquia Creek. |
ON THE Potomac River
Get close enough to see down through the light chop and there's an underwater forest, towers and tangles of wild celery, coontail, hydrilla and water star grass, strands of grasses moving lazily
The water outside the grass beds is brownish-green and murky, full of sediment.
Inside it, the water is clearer, calmer and--if the grasses could be parted for a look--full of aquatic life making use of the predator-evading cover.
It's a different story some 70 miles down the Potomac, off of Bonum Creek in Westmoreland County.
There, a wide plume of mahogany-colored water extends a mile or two into the river in the shape of a fat turkey leg.
Its well-defined edges and bright color indicate it may be an algal bloom, a rapid increase in the growth of algae often associated with an excess of nutrients, like phosphorus.
These blooms can lead to a rapid decrease of dissolved oxygen in the water, and have been linked in recent summers to dead zones around the bay.
This possible bloom is spotted just upriver from a spot where, three days earlier, Bay Foundation water testing detected a serious "dead zone" some 26 feet below the surface where no aquatic life could survive.
The two very different spots are indicative of the health of the river: thriving by some measures in some spots, hurting and nearly dead by different measures at others.
Earlier this week, I joined two staffers from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, traveling nearly 90 miles in the river and various creeks from Hope Springs Marina on Aquia Creek to Kinsale on the Yeocomico River in Westmoreland County.
The purpose of the trip--to get some measure of the river's overall health, through everything from water testing to chats with watermen along the way.
The first of those exchanges happened when we passed crabbers Hugh Newton Sr. and Hugh Newton Jr. as they worked their pots on Stafford's Potomac Creek.
Their measure of the season so far? Not too good.
"We're really just getting started," said the elder Newton, noting that although crabbers out in the bay may have had a great year, "We didn't see much. Lots of small crabs so far."
The up-and-down nature of the trip continued a few miles down river, off of Fairview Beach, where Garland Baugher of Elkton, Va., was hauling in big blue catfish on his pontoon fishing boat.
It's the fifth time down this summer, and each time, he says he and his crew's bait of choice--chicken and rabbit livers--has brought in big, fat cats by the dozens.
Just up from the Harry Nice Bridge where U.S. 301 crosses the river, a quick stop for water testing found oxygen levels starting to drop fairly substantially from the high levels in the morning's grass beds.
But on rocks by a big channel marker, there was
Behind a royal tern and lines of herring and laughing gulls was a collection of the dark black cormorants.
Bill Portlock, a senior educator with the Bay Foundation and captain for this trip, noted that the diving birds have joined pelicans and other species increasing in numbers on Virginia waters.
At the likely algal bloom, Foundation spokesman Chuck Epes snapped pictures of the odd-colored water for future use and lamented finding it.
Many hours and several miles later, near Horn Point on the Yeocomico River just a ways up from Kinsale, we encountered a different type of waterman, Cornelious Ashton.
He was piloting a blocky, barge-like craft where a crew was busy pulling up metal cages filled with oysters planted and grown by the nearby Bevans Oyster Company.
In a time when disease and predators have made it tougher to grow oysters in traditional beds around the bay, Bevans and a few others have turned to growing oysters in cages on marked ground.
Yanking up the floats attached to each metal, yard-long cage, the crew used a crane and a pressure washer to lift the cages up and knock off years of marine growth.
"They're looking pretty good," said Ashton, noting that some traditional oyster grounds were producing in the river as well.
Heading up beyond Kinsale, we moved by spots where development had replaced grass-lined shore with wooden and rock sea walls.
But on Hampton Hall Creek, as far as our 16-foot craft could take us, there were few signs of people.
This spot, with its collection of eagles and osprey riding thermals above, a shoreline below dotted with wild rice and bull rushes and an egret ignoring us as it waded through the shallows, seemed a world away from the problems threatening the bay.
For at least a few moments.
Rob Hedelt: 540/374-5415
Email: rhedelt@freelancestar.com
