Student Entry Week 5

Type: All
Region:
Location: Coastal Bays

During my fifth week at DNR, I participated in a survey of spawning horseshoe crabs at the Coastal Bays near the Ocean City Inlet with Linda Barker, Steve Doctor, and Carol Cain of the Maryland Coastal Bays Program. The survey took us to Skimmer Island, a small sand spit where hoards of horseshoe crabs come to spawn. We had tried a small beach filled with people earlier but had seen no horseshoe crabs at all. Linda said that it must have been the people and kids that kept them away, to which Steve remarked that if dinosaurs didn't scare them off, people surely wouldn't. At Skimmer Island, primarily black skimmers, among lots of other birds, circled the small island. Linda explained to me that horseshoe crab eggs are vital as a food source for these birds as well as a part of the food web of the region. The shore where we pulled up was lined with spawning horseshoe crabs and when we turned the corner, we had to tip-toe around the dense mass of crabs because there was barely room for us to walk. Linda and I scanned the clusters of crabs for round, plastic tags attached to their shells and counted 12 total on the island. When we would spot a tag, I would read off it's number and Linda would record it as part of a plan to trace the crabs' locations each year during their spawning period, from May-July. Carol and Steve worked on randomly sampling different, same-sized plots for data concerning abundance and male-to-female ratio. All of this is part of a survey working to understand horseshoe crab populations and striving to determine and preserve critical habitat.

Later that week, I joined Mark Lewandowski on a canoe trip to the Bird River in Baltimore County to remove water chestnuts, an invasive plant species. Water chestnuts create thick mats of floating leaves, with long roots growing deep into the mud. These mats of leaves impair navigation of waterways and inhibit growth of native aquatic plant species. The tough, sharp seeds also pose a risk to swimmers. Additionally, the decomposition of water chestnuts can lower oxygen levels in the water, which harms aquatic life in the area. We sent out four canoes and two jet skis to remove these plants and filled each canoe to the gunnels with the flowery leaves and long, thick roots. At one point, we had all four boats working on one particularly thick patch. We each leaned over the sides and reached deep into the water, pulling the long roots from out of the mud to prevent new leaves from springing back up. Despite all the sunburns and sore shoulders, we accomplished a good deal and I was happy to be able to contribute to a project creating more healthy waterways in Maryland.