Sunday, August 30, 2009

Wow It has been a long time….

Sorry everyone who has been following. I realize that it has been a very long time since I last wrote anything, for that I am sorry. So a little about what has been going on, big broad strokes view.

Personally

– in the past three weeks Most of the people I came to call friends have left. Maddie was the first to leave, she headed back home and then on to school.

 Maddie's last day of work

Next to leave were the ‘twins’ Mo and Bernadette, These kids were truly blessed in their lives. everywhere they went they brought smiles to peoples faces. I got to meet their parents before they left which was a great pleasure.

Mo Bernnie

and finally Carrie, she was one of my roommates for a time, she is an interesting character this one. She left yesterday.

Carrie at the Dinner party

on Aug 19th I realized that i was starting to get sick. I actually had to take sick time on the 20th and 21st, which was fine since all I did was lay in bed and be sick. Saturday was a bit better I actually went out to Thunder Hole to see how hurricane bill was affecting it; pretty awesome.

pretty big wave

Hmm...not to shabby

Still coming....uhoh

UH OH!

They are still there...

They sure moved fast

just not fast enough...they got soaked.

Sunday, my birthday, was by far the worst day for wave action. at noon on the 23rd 20 people who were not listening to the ranger warnings to stay off the rocks were slammed by a rouge wave and seven of them were sucked out to sea. One seven year old lost her life to this tragedy and the father is not doing to well either. I don’t have any photos from Sunday but the waves were ENORMOUS!!! there is this one place called Otter Cliffs and the wave crash was doubling the height of the cliffs, which are about 40 feet tall.

 

Work

Wow where do I start, we have been busy for that last couple of weeks with a few projects. these are not in any particular order….except for maybe how much a pain in the ass they are.

 

Seal Cove Pond is a huge problem there is a dam at the south en of this pond that has been there for 50 years. the town of Tremont got a grant to put a fish ladder in to open up hundreds of acres of prime breeding habitat for Ale Wives, a type of halibut. This was great news! the problems started the day before the ground breaking began, apparently the build will be impacting some of the park lands. Well the people involved in this build failed to get park permission for impacting park property. The group came to David, my boss’s boss, and talked to him and told him what the project was and it all sounded great. A fish ladder would be installed and open up habitat yada yada yada…David asked the fateful question…when do you start the build…’tomorrow’ David was a little less then pleased with this. he ran around to everyone at HQ and got verbal acceptance of this proposal. the fish ladder group was a go! what a nightmare, the contractors that are on the job have never done anything like this before, they have put so much silt in to the stream with their construction plans it is ridiculous. They are also so far behind schedule that it will be impressive if they finish at all…they have had a ridiculous number set backs including coffer dams collapsing and excavators not reaching as far as they needed. After hurricane Bill both pools were full and it was like nothing had happened.  After the rain event it triggered a seaward migration of Ale Wives which were stuck upstream of the coffer dam. Bik and I went out to  Seal Cove and dip netted around 4000 fish and never made a dent in the population. There were no workers around for the hours that we were there and as we were getting ready to leave they all showed up. after some discussion it was finally decided to open the spill way up for the night and allow the water to flow and allow the most fish to migrate down stream.

We have a terrestrial amphibian study plot that is behind the local high school, during the school year between the local college and high school the data is collected. During the summer we collect the data and store it until school starts. We go out about twice a week and turn over these cover boards, there are five transects with ten stations and two cover boards each. It is interesting. On average we have seen about two salamanders each visit, not really sure if that is good or bad.

We are starting to have problems with beaver again but in a different location. There is a family that has moved into a location on duck brook road. Not a good area as far as humans go but really ideal if you are a beaver. We don’t have permission to trap yet and are not sure if we are going to receive permission. We are in a holding pattern as far as this project is concerned.

The next big project that we are working on is setting up a hawk watch on Isle au Haut. If you have been reading you all know were Isle au Haut is located and what it is. We have been discussing this possibility for a while. Last week we finally went out to Isle au Haut to scout out locations. We left the office around 8 in the morning and finally arrived at the island around 11am. We hiked from 11 to 3:30. We found a few places but one stood out above all others we called it out lunch break spot…because well we had lunch there. I will have my camera there when I go next and put some up of our location for watching. It is a pretty spectacular location and I can’t wait to go. I will not be going until the week of the 14th. Then I will go two weeks after that.

One last thing… A potential trip out to Petit Manan thislabor day weekend and go banding with fish and wildlife :) I will keep you up to date with this and take a ton of photos.

and so we go…

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