TheBanyanTree: Flower Moon -2016 - The Ivory Bill

[Kitty Park]

Your description of the outing put a smile on my face.  What an opportunity
for the students to learn in a hands- (and eyes) on experience.  What the
kids learned in that day will stay with them while sitting at a desk and
listening to a lecture, probably not.

Thanks for sharing the day with us.  I had a good time reading about it.

Kitty
<mzzkitty at gmail.com>kcp-parkplace.blogspot.com
<http://parkplaceohio.com>


On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 12:52 AM, Dale Parish <dale.m.parish at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Flower Moon – 2016
>
>
>
> The Neches River’s still too high.  The additional rains we had last week
> have the river at the very top of its normal bank—low areas are flooded.
> When we take the Ivory Bill—our floating classroom—out for class field
> trips, we have to reverse the ramp because the deck is higher than the
> dock.  The extra swift current makes docking a little more trying, but so
> far, our captains have all been up to it, which, as a deck hand (they call
> us 1st mate, but in the true merchant marine, that requires a license that
> I’m not seeking), I can appreciate the extra care that has to be taken to
> keep the vessel straight in the current parallel to the docks.
>
> As we left the Neches River for Ten Mile Bayou, where we conduct benthic
> studies and ecology field exercises, we put out the plankton net.  Our
> conservation interpreter—Kathy—had brought Mike, her husband, as mate
> because they are making some curriculum changes and training a new
> interpreter, and Mike knows just how she wants the equipment set up.  It
> was my first voyage with her, so I got to handle docking and utility jobs
> while he supervised.  The plankton net, which is like a small sea anchor
> with a collector bottle on the end, has only a five meter rope with which
> to drag it, and care must be taken to keep it away from the propellers.  I
> didn’t like the arrangement, so go a boat hook and secured the end of the
> trap line to the end of the boat hook.  There was nothing to brace on,
> though, and the drag of the trap out on the end of the boat hook was too
> much to hold comfortably, so we used the stern tag line to make a loop and
> I propped up against it in the rear bench and dipped it down so that the
> plankton trap was under water a safe distance from the props.  In Ten Mile
> Bayou, we only idle along, so the drag was tolerable.  About half way to
> our destination, we pulled it in and emptied the bottle into a half-dozen
> hand microscopes—each viewer was loaded with both phytoplankton and
> zooplankton.  Mike was very pleased.
>
>
> We were lucky this morning. Our 09:30 class was the first one up Ten Mile
> Bayou, and we saw a lot of wildlife.  If the fishermen get up the bayou
> ahead of us, the chances of seeing much are slim.  This morning, there were
> plenty of water foul and turtles and two alligators—one sunning on a log,
> and the other, a larger bull—came out to check us out for intruding into
> his territory.  We let us get within a few meters of him before he decided
> to ease out of the channel.  The kids were impressed, although this class
> was from Bridge City High School, and alligators in front yards are a
> frequent problem there, and several of the students were much less excited
> by the gators.
>
>
> We set up the microscope and flat-screen monitor up on a table amidships
> and got it all working together.  Sometimes, the microscope doesn’t
> transmit to the flat-screen until selected swear words are offered to it in
> a low tone that can’t be heard by the students.  Only one such offering was
> needed this morning.
>
> After tying up at our usual destination, Mike and I retrieved the benthic
> net and the specimen trays.  We had gone off and left one of the lab bags
> that contained the lot of suction pipettes for pulling the small organisms
> from the catch trays into the microscope sample trays, but we found one in
> another lab bag.  We made several drags on the bottom pulling up mud and
> organics and washing the samples out to leave tiny, barely visible
> organisms, but try as we did, we found no post-larval shrimp, although we
> did find two tiny crawfish, one about two millimeters long and the other
> about five millimeters long—almost long enough to climb out of the
> hemispherical microscope liquid trays.
>
> Kathy had been lecturing about the benthic health of the bayou, and while
> Mike and I were preparing the samples, she conducted water sample testing
> with the class, showing them how to test for pH and conducting the infamous
> salt-water intrusion experiment.  First, a four liter jug with a million
> yellow plastic beads about a quarter-millimeter in diameter and one black
> bead is given to a student, and the group is assigned to roll the jug until
> they find the black bead to get an idea of what one part per million is
> like.  Then, she produces the bifurcated test tank with a separation
> between each side and two valves between the two sides—one top and one
> bottom.  A saline solution of 30 parts per million is mixed and food dye is
> added to the saline solution, and both valves are closed.  Then clear fresh
> water brought from shore is poured into one side of the tank and the
> colored saline solution into the other.  The students are asked why the two
> solutions don’t mix.  Then the bottom valve is opened slowly and a little
> colored solution can be seen easing into the bottom of the clear side.
> When the top valve is opened, the salt water begins to displace the fresh
> water from the bottom up until the top of both sides of the tank is clear
> and the bottom of both sides are colored.
>
>
>  This lesson then becomes an explanation of why we have a salt water
> barrier in the Neches River just upstream from the mouth of Ten Mile
> Bayou.  The students were told while we were in the river that the river
> depth was 20-40 feet, varying on the cut bank side and the bar side.  They
> are then told that the elevation where we are is only about five or six
> feet above sea level, and then they are asked what they think would happen
> if the drinking water for the City of Beaumont is taken out of the Neches
> River (about 60% is), and the reason for the salt water barrier becomes
> clear, and the brackish water is explained.  The brackish water of the
> bayous and marshes off the Neches are the brood grounds for many species,
> as they will see.
>
>
>  The students are then broken into two groups—the port group is given the
> sample trays to dig through and note the various benthic—or bottom
> dwelling—organisms that they can find, and these are displayed on the
> microscope’s flat-panel monitor so they can all see the details of each
> species as the environmental interpreter points them out.  The starboard
> group is given the hand-microscopes with the plankton samples mounted, and
> are shown the difference between phytoplankton and zooplankton—locomotion.
> The groups are switched and each gets the lesson the other group just
> received.
>
>
> By now, it’s time to head back and exchange students.  Land-based
> activities were conducted at River Front Park, where the Ivory Bill
> departs, and the waterborne students are exchanged for the landlubbers.
>
>
>  It is surprising to me how many of these students have never been on a
> boat, much less up a bayou.  The students from Bridge City were well
> behaved and have much more exposure to boats, alligators and wildlife than
> some of the intercity school students we’ve taken on these trips.  Some of
> the intercity students have been terrified that snakes might drop out of
> the trees onto the boat—don’t know who feeds those rumors, but it didn’t
> help that one trip recently saw from fairly close up a very long water
> snake coiled around a dead cypress tree examining a woodpecker hole for
> babies.
>
>
> Two more classes tomorrow, two more Friday, and I’ll be done for the
> week.  Sure hope the water goes down by next week.
>
>
> Hugs,
>
> Dale
>
> —
>
> Dale M. Parish
>
> 628 Parish RD
>
> Orange TX 77632-0264
>
>