Brett and I made it back to Denver on Friday, July 29^th. In Wisconsin, plans had changed and my visit to Kalaupapa had been pushed back, leaving an opening in my schedule for the following two weeks. Graciously, the Conlin’s and their ever-energetic dog Luc agreed to house me while we sorted things out in the meantime.

Brett reached out to a few parks and fortunately Crater Lake National Park (CRLA) had a monitoring project they could plug me into for that time. Only problem was that diving in Crater Lake necessitated the use of a dry suit, as water temperatures can get into the low 50’s/high 40’s. For my non-diver readers, a dry suit is different than a wet suit in that it maintains a pocket of air inside the suit with its tight wrist and neck seals, allowing the diver to remain dry and stay warm. However, this adds an additional pocket of air for a diver to worry about throughout the dive and thus requires additional training to use. Since I have never used a dry suit before, I spent two days with Dave learning about the intricacies of diving dry and practicing the new skills in the local pool. Dave said I picked it up quickly and looked great in the water, clearing me to dive dry at Crater Lake.

That Wednesday, I caught a flight out of Denver to Medford, Oregon. After figuring out my first-ever car rental and stopping at the grocery store to pick up some food for the upcoming week, I got on the road and made my way to CRLA. On both sides tall conifers towered overhead, intermittently opening up to spectacular views of neighbouring cliff faces and distant mountains. I had never been to the Pacific Northwest so I was reveling in the new eye-catching landscape surrounding me.

     

After pulling over at every lookout on the highway to stop and gawk at the majestic scenery, I finally made it to the Crater Lake Science and Learning Center. There I met up with David Morris who gave me a quick tour around the facilities and showed me the nearby residence where I would be staying for my time at CRLA. He also informed me about the Bybee Fire that was burning on the west side of the park, closing the West Rim Drive and a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail. While Park Headquarters had been placed under a Level 1 Fire Evacuation Notice, he told me that it merely meant “Be Ready” for a potential evacuation and that if an evacuation was necessary we would have plenty of notice. With that, I unpacked my bags and settled in.

The following day, I made my way down to the Ranger Station to find Aquatic Ecologists Scott Girdner and Mark Buktenica. As we were going over the plan for my time in the park, we realized that my gear had most recently been used in Lake Superior, another body of freshwater, and were thus worried about the potential for the introduction of invasive species. That being said, my dive gear had to be decontaminated to kill any little organisms trying to hitch a ride to Crater Lake. Unfortunately, that put me out of diving for the day, but that didn’t stop me from joining them out on the water. With my gear soaking in a salt bath, Mark, Scott, and I, along with seasonals Kristin Beam and Sarah Moffit, set out for a busy day on the lake.

The Lake crew has possibly one of the best commutes to work on the planet. Leaving from the office, we took a 40-minute drive along the East Rim. At the first bend in the road, I let out an audible gasp as the lake emerged from a gap in the trees. Tucked away at the base of the caldera, a large crater formed by the collapse of a volcano, sat a serenely smooth body of water. The lake was nothing like I could have imagined. It was so resplendent, so vast; yet in an instant it disappeared behind the rock face. In a wild game of hide-and-seek, the lake would come in and out of view as we made our way to the Cleetwood trailhead. This mile-long trail serves as the only route to access the shore of the lake. So with our bags in tow, we hiked down, each switchback more picturesque than the last, until we had descended 1,000 feet and reached the water. Then we all hopped aboard the Nueston, the park’s primary research vessel, and motored over to the boathouse on Wizard Island to gas up and grab the dive gear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out on the water, I could not stop marveling at the lake’s deep sapphire color. Soon the running joke of the trip became my dumbfounded response to “What do you think of the lake?” All I could mutter was “It’s just so blue.” The color comes in part due to the fact that there is very little particulate matter suspended in the water. Isolated from any surrounding rivers or streams, the lake’s primary input is precipitation. With no incoming streams to bring in sediments, organic materials, or chemical pollutants, Crater Lake is known for it’s exceptional clarity. With an average Secchi disk clarity reading of 30 meters or about 100 feet, it is by far the best visibility in any of the parks I have visited or will visit for my internship. In fact, the water is so clear and so clean that you can drink it. Anytime you wanted water, you would just dip your Nalgene into the lake and take a sip. It’s quite tasty too!

     

Even though my dive gear was being decontaminated back at the office, we stuck to the plan and began the benthic surveys to look for newts and crayfish in the lake. The surveys were 10-minute time-constrained surveys in which one would swim along, turn over rocks, and count the number of each species. Mark and Kristin were up first, diving in to do their surveys at 60 feet. Obviously feeling bummed by having to sit the day out and extremely eager to get in the water, I jumped in anyway with just my bathing suit to see what it was like. Though, initially quite shocking, it was tolerable for a few minutes. But after my toes starting going numb, I hopped out. While we waited for them to complete their dive, Scott and Sarah filled me in on the background on Crater Lake’s unique aquatic ecosystem.

Back in the early 1900’s, in order to bring greater recreation to the lake, six species of fish were stocked in the lake. However, the fish populations soon crashed due to a lack of prey. Thus, the signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) was introduced in 1914 as food for the stocked fish. Nowadays, almost 100 years later, crayfish populations are booming and they have drastically expanded their territory along the shoreline. Unfortunately for the native Mozama newt (Taricha granulosa mazamae), a subspecies of rough-skinned newt only found in Crater Lake, the crayfish have proven to be aggressive competitors for both habitat and food. In fact, in areas of the lake were crayfish are present, the densities of benthic invertebrates, like the aquatic insects that compose the majority of the newts’ diet, have been found to be reduced by as much 80%. Additionally, in a series of experiments performed by the Park Service, crayfish were observed directly preying on the newts.

     

     

So every year for the past ten years, the Lake crew has performed these surveys to monitor the distribution and relative population dynamics of these two species. In addition to the depth surveys Mark and Kristin completed that first day, the Lake crew also does surface snorkel surveys every half-mile along the shoreline and we would be starting that the following week.

With the weekend off, one of the first where I wasn’t either working or travelling, I decided to spend some time getting to know Oregon. I spent Saturday exploring the park, driving the rim, stopping at the overlooks, and going on a few hikes. On Sunday, I went on a leisurely three-hour drive through beautiful Oregon up to Eugene to visit my friend Pat Lyons, my professor from my semester abroad in the Caribbean where I studied tropical marine biology. It was amazing to get to catch up with him and hear about his next move to a college down in LA and tell him all about my internship and what I’ve been up to.

On Monday, Mark and Scott were stuck in the office doing paper work, but Kristin, Sarah, and I spent the day out on the lake. Up first we had to check the crayfish traps. Another component to the Lake crew’s crayfish monitoring efforts is a tagging program. Every week a trap full of crayfish is pulled up from a depth of 50 meters and each is tagged with a fluorescent tag. The crayfish are re-released at depth and at the end of the summer a multi-depth trapping effort will be made to see how the crayfish move along the lake bottom. When we pulled up the trap, we counted a season record of 63 crayfish! Two of them had previously been tagged earlier in the year, but the remaining crayfish were injected with the pink elastomer tag. I even got to inject a few dozen myself!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon, we began the surface snorkel surveys. Wearing a dry suit (and a thick onesie underneath) made the water much more tolerable. On the first site, maybe 20 rocks in, I saw my first one. A newt. With a few more newt sightings and zero crayfish, I was feeling happy after the first site. The second site was the same. Go newts! I thought. But by the third site, the handful of newts had disappeared completely, and dozens of crayfish took their place. The next five sites, each had more crayfish than the last. We were only eights sites in and I was beginning to see how severe and how dismal the outcome was looking for the newts.

The next day, we recruited the likes of Fish Biologist Dave Herring and his seasonal Bull Trout Crew, consisting of Ian Ralston, Kevin Howells, and Joe Lemanski, as well as Botanist Jesse Sikora. With a total of 10 people, we were able to split up into two boats and divide the sites up to get them done quicker. A majority of the sites were even worse in terms of crayfish than the day before. Numbers were often in the hundreds and newts were few and far between. Occasionally, there would be a site here and there that would have none of either, but while it did mean less counting, it was by no means a good sign. After dropping Dave and Jesse off at Cleetwood trail to head back home for the night, we met up with the other boat and learned they had had a similar experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That night, the Bull Trout and Lake crews joined up for a campout on Wizard Island. Scott, Mark, and Sarah prepared a delicious elk stir-fry for us to enjoy as we sat on the docks laughing in good company. As the sun began to set, some of us hiked up to the top to get a better view. All I can say is Crater Lake did not disappoint.

But perhaps the best view came after the sun went down and the moon came out. With barely any light pollution, the stars at CRLA were beyond breathtaking. Yet to add icing to the cake, it just so happened that the Perseid meteor shower was beginning to pick up. So as we lay in our sleeping bags on the dock listening to the quiet lapping of the water with hundreds of stars shining overhead, a few meteors streaked across the night sky. I watched for hours before finally falling asleep.

The following day, it only took us an hour to crank out the last seven sites of the surface snorkel surveys. After finishing them up, we decided, since we spent all that time decontaminating my gear, to do another set of diving surveys. So I joined Scott and Mark to document the surveying process and just enjoy my dive in Crater Lake. At the site, we saw both newts and crayfish. In fact, we saw a newt in the claws of a crayfish. We swooped in just in time to save the little guy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diving is always a whole other world for me, but I must say diving in Crater Lake was on a completely new indescribable level. Thank you to Mark and Scott for inviting me into your diving operations and giving me the diving experience of a lifetime. And thank you to the entire Lake crew team for sharing with me the magic of Crater Lake!

Until next time!

I landed in Denver the night of July 22^nd. Susanna Pershern, the SRC’s Audio/Visual Specialist, graciously picked me up after my late flight and offered to put me up for the night. The next morning, Brett, Susanna, and I packed up the Suburban and the trailer with tanks, dive gear, cameras galore, and enough snack food for a cross-country road trip and headed out on our 15-hour drive to Wisconsin.

We left the majestic Rocky Mountains of Colorado behind as they slowly turned into rolling hills before completely fading away to the flat plains of Nebraska. Since I hadn’t seen either of them in a month, the first few hours were full of conversation as we exchanged stories of our travels over the last few weeks. Somewhere along the freeway in Nebraska, we decided to listen to the book Wake of the Perdido Star by actor Gene Hackman and Dan Lenihan, the founding chief of the SRC. As the sun set, I drifted in and out of sleep to visions of sailing ships, fighting pirates, and a little old town in Massachusetts. We split the trip up by staying a night in Lincoln. But we started the second day of the trip right where we left off with cow pastures out our window and the discovery of treasure on a Caribbean island. The hours passed as the cornfields of Iowa transitioned into the wooded areas and lakes of Wisconsin. By nightfall we had made it to our hotel in Siren, Wisconsin.

The reason Brett, Susanna, and I drove to Wisconsin was to spend a few days working with the kids of Northwest Passage. Northwest Passage offers a variety of services including a comprehensive assessment center as well as intensive residential treatment for children and adolescents struggling with their mental health. Over the past 40 years, Northwest Passage has developed an innovative program that combines both traditional mental health treatments with multiple experiential therapies. One such experiential therapy program is In a New Light, a therapeutic nature photography program aimed at empowering marginalized youth by encouraging artistic expression in tandem with outdoor exploration.

For the past few years, the National Park Service and the SRC have helped fund In a New Light via small grants. However, until this year, no one from the SRC had made it out to visit the Northwest Passage kids. But when Brett first explained to me what it was, I knew I had to jump on the opportunity to see the program for myself, interact with the kids, and experience the transformation. Having grown up with many of my friends struggling with their own mental health issues, I found the goal and mission of Northwest Passage to be remarkable and one that was close to my heart. I fell asleep excited; I looking forward to being a part, however small, of the healing process of these kids.

On our first morning, we met up with Ben Thwaits, director of the program, at the In a New Light gallery. Created with the intention of providing a venue to proudly display the work produced by the kids, the public gallery is impressive to say the least. Inside, breathtaking work from Passage graduates adorned the walls in various collections from different trips they have taken over the years. I was shocked by the quality of work that was hanging on the walls. I found myself wishing I were as good of a photographer so that I could capture moments so perfectly.

 

Along the back wall hung an exhibition entitled “Under the Surface”. The stunning collection was comprised entirely of shots taken by the kids using underwater cameras in the local rivers and lakes. In fact, over the next two days, we would be joining both the boys’ and girls’ field trips to the local Saint Croix Riverway in order to explore the river and take some underwater pictures with them.

Later that morning, Ben took us to the Gordon dam on the St. Croix River where we met up with the Passage girls, their teachers Kelly and Ian, and Toben Lafrancois, a biologist and co-founder and director of the New Light Under the Surface program. After donning our gear, Ben and Toben gathered everyone around for introductions and a safety orientation. Due to recent heavy rains and flooding along parts of the St. Croix, the water was moving faster than usual over the dam and everyone was asked to be cautious and stick with their buddies.

As soon as Ben was done talking, they darted out into the river in pairs. Armed with only a camera and snorkel gear, the girls spent almost five hours in the water taking pictures of mussels, crawfish, freshwater sponges, snails, and the dam. It was amazing to watch the whole process. Some were constantly moving, flitting between subjects, exploring further downstream then back upstream, trying to take lots of pictures in a variety of habitats. Others girls were very patient and would stay in the same spot for a long time trying to get that perfect shot. They weren’t afraid to ask questions or help each other out by offering advice on how to shoot a certain subject.

  

The next day, we took the boys out on the river, about a half-mile downstream, just at the end of some exciting rapids. Initially it seemed as if there weren’t as many typical subjects to photograph, and I was worried that the boys wouldn’t enjoy it as much, but they spent just as long out on the water getting some wonderful shots of fish, grasses, an old dock, and the rapids. The boys even managed to find a plethora of discarded items on the hard bottom including a fishing rod and a tackle box.

Being out on the river with the kids was a blast. I loved working with them and watching them splash about and have fun with their friends while exploring the world, satisfying a curiosity, and building meaningful relationships, reminding me what it’s like to be a kid. And that was the beauty of it all. When they were in the water, they forgot about their issues; they were just kids. You couldn’t tell they were troubled at all. They were normal kids who just needed the time, tools, and encouragement to explore their world, develop relationships, and express themselves. And that is what Northwest Passage is doing for these kids.

On Wednesday, we took three of the Passage guys a few hours north, up to Apostle Islands National Lakeshore on the southwestern shore of Lake Superior for the day. Lake Superior is known for its shipwrecks so Ben and Brett were hoping to get the guys snorkeling in a new environment with new subjects, maybe a shipwreck or two, to photograph. We were on our way to a wreck, but the Coast Guard had other plans for us. They had gotten a call for distressed kayakers and they needed all NPS vessels to head to the location to try to get eyes on the kayakers. By the time we got there, another boat had already sighted them and had started guiding them into shore. As we started heading back out for our planned day on the water, the Coast Guard showed up to take control of the situation.

We spent the afternoon snorkeling in a bay next to some photogenic cliffs before heading over to two shipwrecks – the Ottawa and the H.D. Coffinberry. The guys really enjoyed exploring the two shipwrecks, so much so that we had to call them out of the water because it was getting late.

 

When we got back to dock, I went to grab something out of the car when I overheard the three Passage guys gawking about how awesome the day was and that absolutely made my day. It may not seem like a lot, but to hear three young teenage boys say that to each other without being asked by an adult means that they must’ve had a fantastic time out on the water. Ben told me later on that on the drive home the guys could not stop talking about it and that one of the guys seemed really serious about joining the Coast Guard. It’s amazing to think that the events of one day could change a person’s life course and give them a new goal, a new dream to work toward.

On our last day in town, Brett, Susanna, and I went out on Lake Superior with Toben and a Passage graduate to do some basic photographing of the park. David Cooper, our boat operator, brought us to the backside of Devil’s Island where wave action over time has carved out sea caves in the rock face on the north side. We all dove in so that we could take pictures of this magnificent natural façade.

However, about halfway through the planned dive I realized the waterproof battery cover on my camera had opened. Susanna and I immediately called our dive and headed back to the boat to dry my camera. I remember panicking thinking about how I lost all of my pictures and how Brett was going to kill me, but I did everything I could to dry the camera as quickly as possible, so all that was left to do was wait. Thankfully, the following morning, as we were packing up the car to head back to Denver, I put the battery pack back in after leaving it out all night to dry and the camera was working fine. I definitely learned my lesson to upload my pictures every night!

Thanks to Brett and Susanna for allowing me to come along on the road trip to Wisconsin and for taking me on my first cold water dive ever! Another thanks to Ben and Toben for doing what you do for the kids at Northwest Passage. You two are impacting the lives of these kids every day and helping them turn their lives around. It is just remarkable. Lastly, a special thanks goes out to the kids of Northwest Passage who impacted me in an indescribable way.

 

 

The morning of July 11^th, I met up with Mike Feeley and Jeff Mills in Miami. With the 26-foot Twin Vee Catamaran in tow, we began making our way down to Key West. The drive down Overseas Highway is one of my favourite drives – 120 miles of palm trees and clear blue water out both windows. In fact, I just made this drive at the end of May with my undergraduate research lab. Every summer, Dr. Malcolm Hill’s lab at the University of Richmond travels down to Summerland Key to spend a week or two doing fieldwork with marine sponges. So I’ve made this drive for the past three summers and it’s come to be quite familiar.

Mike and Jeff are two of the biologists working for the South Florida/Caribbean Network (SFCN) and this week I was joining their crew. SFCN is one of 32 NPS Inventory and Monitoring Networks across the country. These I&M Networks are in charge of collecting and analyzing natural resource data for parks and then providing them with information that can be integrated into park planning and management strategies. Specifically, on this trip to Dry Tortugas National Park (DRTO), we would be performing annual benthic surveys on sites that the SFCN has been monitoring for years.

I was surprised when we pulled up to the Naval Air Station in Key West, but this was where we were meeting the Motor Vessel Fort Jefferson. The MV Fort Jeff is a supply vessel for DRTO owned and operated by the National Park Service that would serve both as our transportation to and from the park, in addition to our housing for the next 10 days. When we pulled up to the bulkhead where the MV Fort Jeff was docked, my eyes widened with excitement. I’ve never even seen a full-scale research vessel before (aside from on TV specials on the Discovery channel) and I was so eager to be spending my week on board.

Shortly after we arrived, Rob Waara and Lee Richter, the other half of the SFCN staff, and interns Erin Nassif and Nicole Palma pulled up to the dock with a truck packed to the brim with supplies for the week. On their way down, they had gone grocery shopping to get food for the eight-person team for our 10-day voyage, a very important task. We spent the afternoon unloading the trucks, launching the Twin Vee, and double-checking we had everything we would need for the expedition before settling into our quarters.

The next morning, it was all hands on deck as we helped Captain Tim, Brian, and Mikey push off out of Key West at 0700. Located about 70 miles west of Key West, the Dry Tortugas can only be reached by boat or seaplane. Ever since their discovery by Ponce de Leon in the early 16^th century, the Dry Tortugas have had an incredibly rich history. The location at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico made them an incredibly important stop along shipping routes heading into or out of the Gulf. As such, a fort was commissioned to be built in the early 1800’s by the United States. During the Civil War it remained in Union hands as a naval base and later was used as a prison. Though it was never technically completed, the Fort Jefferson stands as the largest masonry structure in the Americas, with 16 million bricks making up the imposing three-story, hexagonal fortress. Today, its casemates house National Park Service staff and thousands ofvisitors flock to the park to walk the parade grounds of this historic structure.

After about 4 hours of cruising the open water, the Civil War fort appeared on the horizon. As we approached Garden Key and the bricks began to take on shape, I was taken aback. The fort, surrounded by a moat (which I discovered later had a crocodile living in it), looked like something out of a medieval fairytale. This and the 100-square miles of ocean surrounding the fort would be our stomping ground for the next 10 days.

That evening, we went over the game plan for the week. SFCN has been monitoring three sites at DRTO – Bird Key, Loggerhead Key, and Santa’s Village. Each site is comprised of multiple permanent 10-meter transects that are surveyed to monitor coral species, colony counts, and cases of disease. As the only things marking the permanent transects are metal pins fixed to the reef, the dive operations would be divided into two teams. The navigation team would dive first in order to locate the pins using compass bearings and distances and lay down the 10-meter transect tape between the two pins. The survey team would then drop, perform the survey, and collect the tapes.

The next day we loaded the Twin Vee with all our dive gear, a water jug, and a lunch cooler and set out on our first day of surveys. As my coral identification is not as practiced as that of Mike and Jeff (who have been doing this for years now), I joined the navigation team. Equipped with a compass, transect tapes, and a slate with pictures of the site, Lee, Nicole and I splashed in to lay down the transects for the survey team. What I thought would be an easy task, turned out to be an exciting challenge. Distances and bearings were not always enough to find the pins. Oftentimes they were covered with algae, hidden at the base of a sea fan, or overgrown by a sponge. Most of the time we relied on the pictures of the site to locate the pins, sort of like an underwater game of “I spy…”. When we came up for our surface interval, the survey team would go down to work on the transects we set out. We repeated this process again before it was time to head back in to the MV Fort Jeff for dinner.

 

Even though I was on the navigation team, it was hard not to stare in awe as DRTO reefs were teeming with life. I’ve been told that the reefs here were what the reefs of the Keys used to look like decades ago. Large groupers and snappers, which have been fished off the reefs in the Keys, thrive in the park’s remote and protected waters. Large boulder brain corals and great star corals populate the reef’s hard bottom with soft corals and gorgonians swaying in the current. Despite this, algal growth and coral disease, often indicators of unhealthy or declining reefs, were also very prevalent.

It wasn’t long before we fell into a comfortable and efficient rhythm. We spent every day on the water. We picked up wherever we left off the day before and would motor over to the next site when we wrapped up the one we were working on. Four transects per dive with two dives a day allowed us to wrap up each site in two or three days, depending on the weather. After returning from the field, Nicole, Erin, and I would spend the evenings exploring the fort or snorkeling along its perimeter.

On the second-to-last evening, I had the opportunity to join the United States Geological Survey (USGS) crew on their nightly East Key turtle nesting monitoring. We motored the short distance over to the 100 by 200 meter island where we would be spending the night and set up camp before it got dark. Every half hour someone walked the shoreline to look for a nesting female. Luckily enough on the 2200 walk three turtles had come up to nest. I had never seen a turtle nesting before. It was miraculous to watch these 300-pound beasts lug themselves up on shore and sometimes go hundreds of feet before finding the perfect spot to dig their nest. Some even dig multiple holes until they find the right one to lay their clutch in. The whole nesting process took an hour or two to from start to finish.

We monitored each turtle’s nesting progress and once they had finished, before they returned to the ocean, we corralled them on the beach in order to gather data on them. We noted the species, took various measurements on size, collected a blood sample, and tagged any turtle that hadn’t already been worked up this year. We had two returners. Esther was a Loggerhead who had nested and been worked up earlier that year and Maria was a Green who has nested in past years but hadn’t been seen in awhile. The third turtle was a new Loggerhead who I named Sydney. After finishing up with Sydney around 0100, the rest of the night was uneventful and I got some sleep under the light of the stars. We returned to the fort just in time to watch the sun rise.

On our last night in the Dry Tortugas, the rangers called together a potluck. Everyone gathered in the crew quarters at the Fort as we laughed and shared stories of the week around delicious food. We talked well into the evening and even got to witness a green flash as the sun set over the cloudless horizon.

In the end, my time in DRTO was more than I could’ve imagined. The SFCN crew was friendly and warm and I was delighted to have lived and worked with such a passionate team of NPS staff. I’d really like to thank the entire SFCN team as well as the MV Fort Jeff crew for putting up with me during those 10 days and allowing me to join in on your annual monitoring effort. It was an incredible learning experience!

“Always remember kids. Today is a great day for a day!” – Mikey Kent

Next stop…Wisconsin?