People Behind a Stronger Coast: Julie Devers

These three corrugated metal culverts outside of Centreville, MD, at a road-stream crossing are a severe barrier to fish migration, says Julie Devers, fish biologist. Water flows through the crushed and rusted pipes to drop into a shallow pool at the outlet. If fish were trying to swim upstream to their spawning grounds, they would be forced to jump, an impossible task for migrating fish species found in this watershed. Credit: Steve Droter

Communities are safer if culverts are correctly designed and installed. During storms and flash flooding events, such as Hurricanes Irene or Sandy, Devers says “the water flow [was] so high that it was going up and over the culverts and was wiping out the roads… So we’re trying to set states up to have the data [they need] so in the event we are replacing culverts for routine maintenance or if there’s a fish barrier, we’re putting the right size in.” Credit: Steve Droter

The North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative (NAACC) is a network of individuals from universities, conservation organizations, state and federal natural resource and transportation agencies focused on improving aquatic connectivity in 13 states from Maine to West Virginia. The funding they received after Hurricane Sandy from the Department of the Interior created common protocols for measuring road stream–crossings to identify high priority bridges and culverts for upgrades and replacement to improve coastal resiliency and fish passages. Credit: Steve Droter

“Even if they are not what we have historically considered migratory species, all fish need to be able to move freely within a given stream,” says Phil Herzig, a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “The goal” explains Devers “is to maintain connectivity for species like brook trout so that we don’t cut a population off so that it doesn’t have genetic mixing with other downstream populations.” Credit: Stever Droter

Out of the more than 30,000 road-stream crossings in Maryland, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and partners have assessed approximately 1,000. With an average of one road-stream crossing every 1.3 miles in the Northeast, the ability to prioritize which crossings are the most severe inhibitors to safety and fish passage allows for the best distribution of resources. Credit: Steve Droter

At the base of this road-stream crossing is a scour pool. When culverts are undersized for high flow events, water comes through like a firehouse. This can widen and/or deepen the downstream area as it cuts through the banks. These scour pools destabilize stream banks and lead to an increase of sediment sloughed off into the stream. Credit: Steve Droter

“There’s a brook trout stream near my house,” says Devers, “A culvert in the stream has been replaced twice and the road repaired because of flooding and if they would just put it back the right size, there could be an opportunity for brook trout passage. I wish the public knew that some of these resources that they care about could be helped if we got the engineers to make the culverts the right size” to handle these high flow events. Credit: Steve Droter

Just outside of Centreville, Maryland, you can find Julie Devers waist deep in water on the side of the road. With measuring tape in hand, she is assessing one of more than 30,000 road-stream crossings in the state.  The particular culverts she is examining are known to be a severe barrier to fish passage. Safety for people and connectivity for fish and wildlife can be enhanced by simply repairing and redesigning these crossings.

Devers is a fish biologist with the Maryland Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office. By partnering with the Maryland State Highway Administration, NOAA Fisheries and Maryland Department of Natural Resources, they have been assessing road-stream crossings to develop recommendations of which culverts and crossings should be prioritized for repair. “Highways have a maintenance schedule,” says Devers, and through their recommendations, “the SHA could replace [the culverts] when they redo the highway.”

Entire roads can be wiped out if they are undersized or poorly designed.  “What we saw in the Northeast during Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee is that undersized culverts really caused a lot of damage,” says Devers. Flooding from storm surges are not able to pass through these barriers and can cause thousands of dollars of damage to roads and property. As we mark the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation of the Atlantic Coast, it is important to keep in mind the impact that these climate events can have on our communities.

For species of river herrings like alewife, blueback herring and American shad the difference between a fish-friendly passageway and a severe barrier is more than a safety concern; it’s about life or death. These species are vital to the food web. Alewife have been known to be eaten by nearly anything throughout their transition in habitat; ranging from cod, halibut, fox, and eagles.

These migratory species travel from saltwater to freshwater to lay their eggs. If there are blockages along the way, they won’t be able to complete their journey. Even for nonmigratory species, such as brook trout, the inability to travel upstream could leave entire populations separated causing a genetic bottleneck. The brook trout stream near her home, one of the last in Anne Arundel County, says Devers, is considered a “relic” to the locals.

Across the whole Northeast, there are an estimated 210,000 bridges, culverts, and dams spanning 280,000 miles of river. Many of them, you are passing on your morning commute and are throughout your community. While many of these dams and bridges serve important purposes, old and inadequate designs make them a risk.

After Hurricane Sandy, funding through the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013 has supported dozens of projects to restore rivers and streams and remove barriers to connectivity. With this funding, projects throughout Maryland have been able to better protect their communities and coastline through increases resiliency. Groups like the North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative were able to utilize this funding to create a map and database for biologists like Devers and for the public to use. These tools provide information about the assessed barriers in a region and rates how bad they are for fish passage or safety.

Through the work of biologists like Devers, we are able to make our communities more resilient. By working to identify the features in our communities that could pose a risk to people and wildlife, she is giving stakeholders the tools to create the change needed to make us #StrongerAfterSandy.

This is the second in a five part series of photo slideshows highlighting the people who have been working to defend their coastal ecosystems against storms in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Last week, we looked at Matt Whitbeck and Miles Simmons in Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. You can view the continuation of this series and other news regarding our restoration and recovery projects on our website.

Invasion of the body fluid snatchers

Every spring, small worm-like larvae emerge from eggs in shallow riffle areas of brooks and rivers, where they are carried downstream by the current until they reach a point of repose on the bottom, and all but disappear. For four years, they are concealed in the mud, blindly feeding on microscopic plants and animals, sightless and unseen.

Then in just a matter of weeks, a horrifying metamorphosis takes place. The larvae develop eyes and a suction-cup like mouth, lined with concentric rings of jagged teeth, encircling a file-like tongue. If you’ve seen Return of the Jedi, the Great Pit of Carkoon may come to mind. If you haven’t, Google “sarlacc”. Also, really? Drop everything and watch Return of the Jedi. Now.

What lies beneath: After four years living on stream bottoms, sea lamprey transform into blood-sucking parasites in search of aquatic hosts like salmon. But what scares fish biologists working in the Lake Champlain basin is the scale of the sea-lamprey population in the system, not the creature’s gruesome face. Credit: FWS.

It’s the stuff of science fiction, but the vile mouth described above doesn’t belong to an imaginary creature from the fictional planet of Tatooine. It belongs to sea lamprey — parasitic, eel-like fishes that at this moment are emigrating from natal streams in Vermont and New York into Lake Champlain (on planet Earth) in search of an aquatic host. Anything with gills and a heartbeat will do.

When sea lamprey zero in on a target like salmon, “They use that suction-cup mouth to stick to its body, and scrape a hole through its flesh with their tongue,” explained Steve Smith, a Fish Biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Lake Champlain Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office.

“Then, they start sucking out its body fluids,” he said. “Whatever they can get.” Blood, bile, serum, pericardial fluid, you name it.

“In the time they spend in the lake as parasites — which is only about 12 to 18 months — a single lamprey can kill what amounts to 40 lbs of fish.”

The loss of fluids essential for temperature regulation, nutrient transport, digestion, and more, can mean death for a relatively small fish like a walleye or a juvenile salmon. But even a fish with enough heft to withstand multiple lamprey hits may eventually succumb to infection from a resulting wound.

Even if a sea-lamprey hit doesn’t kill a fish immediately, the open wound left behind can become infected, leading to secondary mortality. Credit: FWS

For anyone who sleeps with the lights on after watching a scary movie, it’s a nightmare-inducing scenario. But for a fish biologist, it’s not the parasitism that’s scary; it’s the proportion.

While there is debate as to whether sea lamprey are native to Lake Champlain, or were introduced when the Champlain Canal was built in the 1800s, “Whether they have been here for 10,000 years or not, they are out-scaled for this system,” said Smith.

In some systems, they not only fit the scale, but play an important role in keeping a balance, said Fish Passage Coordinator Madeleine Lyttle. In the Connecticut River basin, adult sea lamprey swim upriver from the Atlantic Ocean to spawn, juveniles head out into the ocean in search of hosts after their metamorphosis, and both forms make valuable ecological contributions by enriching the sediment on the river bottom and providing food for other organisms.

The difference? The sea. “Here, they are landlocked, so Lake Champlain is their ocean,” she explained. “It’s just not a very large area to be feeding from.”

In other words, the other fish that inhabit Lake Champlain have no place to hide. So when efforts to restore native fisheries through coordinated restocking efforts got underway in the 1970s, the young fish became fodder for a sea-lamprey population explosion.

In 1990, the Lake Champlain Fish and Wildlife Collaborative struck back, launching a pilot program to see if they could control the sea lamprey population with temporary barriers designed to keep adults from migrating upstream to spawn, and pesticides designed to kill larval lamprey in natal streams before the dreaded metamorphosis occurred. The results were promising. The wounding rate for lake trout dropped from about 100 wounds for every 100 fish to about 30.

But when the experimental program ended in 1998, lamprey numbers skyrocketed, as did salmon and lake trout mortality. “We saw wounding rates on lake trout back at 100 percent,” said Smith.

Fresh wound from a sea lamprey

It wasn’t just that the lampricide treatments were suspended while the Service completed an in-depth Environmental Impact Statement for the program in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), it was that the problem had been more extensive than they realized all along. It turns out that unlike salmon, which return to the streams from whence they came to spawn, sea lamprey don’t have a so-called natal bias. When it’s time to spawn, they make their way to the closest stream that smells like larval lamprey.

“For years, the control efforts had targeted areas where lamprey were known to spawn,” said Lyttle. “We thought we were getting a handle on them, but they just went somewhere else.”

So the sea-lamprey team took stock, and laid out a strategic plan for an extensive, integrated, science-based, long-term control program for the Lake Champlain basin.

“They really upped the game,” said Lyttle. Today the Lake Champlain Sea Lamprey Control Program involves a five-step process designed to evaluate and manage sea lamprey from natal stream to grave. Wounding rates are down from about 100 wounds per 100 fish to about 30 for lake trout, and 20 for salmon.

With numbers approaching a level that is proportional to the rest of the system, the sea lamprey problem is starting to seem manageable, and the creatures themselves a little less horrifying.

“They are actually pretty amazing, even just in the fact that they are such an ancient species,” said Lyttle. Sea lamprey have been found in fossil records dating to the Pennsylvanian period. For non-geologists, that pre-dates Jurassic, the park and the period.

“They may sound nasty, but anything is when it’s out of control,” said Lyttle. Like cell division, or zombies.

“Things are much better now that everything is recovering,” she said, pointing out that a range of different species are benefiting from the lamprey control program, from salmon to lake trout to walleye to lake sturgeon, a state-listed endangered species in New York.

The lamprey program, along with complementary and integrated programs in research and assessment, stocking, fish passage restoration, and restoration of wetland and riparian habitats by the Service’s Lake Champlain Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office and their partners are allowing these species to come back.

For fish biologists and scaredy-cats alike, that’s reason to sleep easy tonight.

Four Years After Hurricane Sandy

This week marks the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, an event that lives on in the minds and hearts of many of us who call the East Coast home.

In the wake of Sandy’s destruction, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service received $167 million in federal funding to strengthen natural defenses and protect communities and wildlife along the Atlantic Coast from future storms.

Four years later, here’s a by-the-numbers look at what we’ve done to build a stronger coast as of October 2016:

• 3,500 tons of hurricane debris removed from refuges;
• 5 badly eroded beaches restored on Delaware Bay;
• 7 refuges installed with solar and back-up power;
• 20 refuges repaired for visitor and staff safety;
• 6 dams removed to improve river flow and reduce flood risk;
• 4,000 acres of invasive species treated;
• 30,000 feet of living shoreline developed;
• 1000s of native plants planted to restore wetlands, rivers and marshes;
• 4 breaches fixed, 9,000 feet of shoreline restored, 500,000 plugs of beach grass planted, 1,000 acres of marsh seeded, and 25 miles of channels dredged at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge – one of the largest coastal restoration projects on the East Coast.

Some highlights of our 2016 work:

Removal of the 150-foot-long Hughesville Dam on the Musconetcong River in New Jersey to restore fish passage and reduce flooding risks for the local community – a project that caught the eye of Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, who toured the site in September.

Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell visits Hughesville Dam removal in New Jersey. Pictured with Beth Styler Barry (left) and Eric Schrading (right). Credit: USFWS

 

Completion of a 21,000-foot living shoreline  at Glenn L. Martin National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland’s Eastern Shore to protect tidal wetlands that support a crab fishery essential to Smith Islanders – and that help buffer this island community from storms and sea-level rise.

At work creating the living shoreline at Fog Point in Glenn L. Martin NWR on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Credit: USFWS

 

Removal of the Pond Lily Dam in New Haven, CT, where local community members and politicians mobilized to bring attention to the flood risks of this dam. In April 2016, volunteers planted native vegetation at the dam site to help stabilize the riverbanks and create an urban nature park for the community.

Volunteers planting native vegetation along the river banks following removal of Pond Lily dam in New Haven, CT. Credit: USFWS

 

Completion of a $38 million marsh and beach restoration and resilience project at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware. The work is already showing signs of success — including helping to absorb impacts of storms and heavy rains to attracting record numbers of wildlife such as horseshoe crabs and migratory birds.

Recently planted beach grass at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. Credit: Citizen Racecar

 

Engagement of dozens of student volunteers to help build oyster reefs – along Delaware Bay in southern New Jersey and Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia – that will filter water and buffer the shore from wave energy.

East Windsor Middle School students and families helped build oyster reefs at Gandy’s Beach, NJ. Credit: Project PORTS

 

The staff, community and partners collaborating with us across the region from Virginia to Maine, people who are dedicated to making their communities #StrongAfterSandy – people like FWS staff Matt Whitbeck and Miles Simmons who are working at the front lines of climate change in the Chesapeake Bay.

“We spent a lot of time thinking about what management actions we can employ that will increase the resiliency of the salt-marsh community to sea-level rise, to storm impacts and how can we do that in a way that really maximizes the benefit to the wildlife that depend on it,” says Whitbeck. Credit: Steve Droter

 

Science tells us that the future will include more intense hurricanes and storms like Sandy, causing more damage to coastal ecosystems and communities. In fact, a recent study predicts disastrous floods like those seen during Hurricane Sandy may hit New York City 17 times more often in the next century.

With anticipated rising sea levels, more frequent and intense storms, shifting seasons and higher temperatures, we need to continue to work together to better understand and adapt to changing conditions. Strong natural defenses will help all of us better weather future storms.