Spring Whirlwind

Wow! It’s been an amazing couple of months. We’ve got a great new class ready to lend a hand in Whatcom County and we’ve had terrific team work from experienced Beach Watchers.

Low Tide Walks and Beach Clean-Ups

Thanks to Lisa Balton, Steve Bailey and Bob Ryerson for helping the Gooseberry Point neighborhood association with their Earth Day celebration and beach clean-up. This great team shared information about what lives on their beach and juiced up the neighbors to enhance their stewardship for the beach.

And thanks to Lisa Balton again, Margo and John Ferdon and Jennifer May for lending a hand with the Northwest Indian Colleges Service Learning beach appreciation and clean-up day on the Lummi Reservation. I'm so glad we had a chance to work with our tribal neighbors through the Northwest Indian College!! Hurray!

If anyone has pictures of either of these events I would really love to have them.

Rain Gardens

We did a lot of Rain Garden Promotion this spring

Great Big Thank Yous go to

Beach Watchers Bob Ryerson and Sue Brown, who were joined by Master Gardeners Katharine Harrison and Dac Jamison and Master Composter/Recycler Kay McMurran who did a super job at the Conservation District’s Annual Native Plant Sale in March.

Bob Hendricks, Rose Lavoie, Jeanne Bogert, and Bob Ryerson at the Master Gardener Plant Sale in May.



And Jean Waight, our Beach Watchers intern Sarah Burnett, Crystal Wojcik, and you guessed it, BOB RYERSON, at the Backyard Habitat Fair.



Jean Waight has a lovely blog called Green Tea and Sympathy with a humorous take on "Going Green." Check it out! http://greenteasympathy.blogspot.com/

And Bob Ryerson has been very active in the Marine Mammal Stranding Network and has in fact become their volunteer coordinator. Way to go Bob!

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Forest Conservation Tour

We also had a fantastic team teaching students about the healthy forest, healthy stream, healthy fish connection at this year’s Forest Conservation Tour. Big Thank Yous go to Shelley Halle, Jennifer May, Jim Krieji, Steve Bailey, and Rose Lavoie.



And finally a round of applause goes to Jane Lewinski for entering all of the Beach Monitoring Data from 2008 into the online database!! Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Training 09 Slideshow photos by Margo Ferdon

A creative approach to plastic awareness from San Francisco

March & April 2009 - The Training Issue

The class of 2009 is in training and we’re having a great time. This year’s class consists of 13 fantastic students. We have enjoyed a few new activities and field trips this year.

Highlights for me included touring Bellingham Cold Storage, learning about effective educational techniques from our 4-H Educator, Michael Wallace, and doing a beach seine at the Post Point Lagoon with Glen Alexander from the Padilla Bay Estuary Research Reserve – we found fish, a nudibranch, and numerous other neat creatures in the net!

Once again, I've been a bit overwhelmed by training preparations and have neglected the newsletter. But the world has not slowed down one bit and I suspect you haven't either! There's a ton of things I have to share with you as well as upcoming events and opportunities on the events page.

Enjoy!

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Marine Invasive Species Monitoring (MISM)

On Monday April 13 from 6 to 9 pm, at 322 N. Commercial Street on the second floor we’ll have Ann Eissenger wildlife biologist with Nahkeeta Northwest explain marine invasive species and train us in what to look for and introduce the MISM program.

“The Puget Sound Marine Invasive Species Volunteer Monitoring Program (MISM) is a new citizen-science shoreline monitoring effort – targeting 32 non-native marine and estuarine organisms. The purpose of the program is to identify the distribution of selected non-native species and provide early detection for high-risk invaders.”

You are all welcome to join us for this Beach Watchers training session or any others you wish to brush up on. I sent out a course agenda earlier this month to everyone. Please just let me know when you would like to come.

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Ferry Landing Fish and Wildlife Habitat Enhancement Project

This project to restore and enhance marine habitats, reduce water pollution and secure eroding shoreline bank, spearheaded by Watershed Master / Beach Watcher Wanda Cucinotta on Lummi Island is ready to roll!

Want to help do some fun work and protect our marine waters and public tidelands? Come join our Saturday morning volunteer work parties this spring.

Volunteer crews will:
• Remove noxious weeds, install approx. 2,000 native plants along the bluff areas around the ferry terminal and shoreline to the north.
• Install 1 mutt mitt station with signage at a location approved by Whatcom County.
• Remove rough creosote logs from the northern shoreline.
• Install pretreatment bays and an oil/grease separator to the rain gardens in the new ferry terminal parking lot.
• Install bioinfiltration measures along the wetland path north of the new parking lot.
• Install and maintain a Bioclean catch basin insert in the catch basin immediately north of the southern entrance to the new ferry terminal parking lot.

Call Wanda at 220-3077 if you would like to volunteer, or have any questions and/or concerns. Check out their Blog: http://liwec.wordpress.com.

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When 1+1 = 100

Garden-variety pesticides add up to more than the sum of their parts when it comes to attacking the nervous systems of salmon, a newly published study finds.

http://www.wsutoday.wsu.edu/Pages/Publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=13986&PageID=

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Cutting water use Could be Best Way to Save Electricity

Policies that lead to reduced water consumption could help to address climate change, writes Ben Block, a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/13/network-water-efficiency-climate-change

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Check out The Jellyfish

Inventor Chad Maglaque doesn’t just want to bring change to the world of renewable energy -- he wants to mass produce it. The Seattleite has recently invented an affordable, accessible version of the micro-wind turbine, which he calls the Jellyfish

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009415.html

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Global Warming Groove

This is serious fun!

http://www.climatecrisisjam.org/

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Ecosystem Services

Around the world and in our backyard people are talking about ecosystem services – a way to recognize, value, and protect the ecosystems that provided life-support services to humanity. This issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences delves into ecosystems services and challenges to implementation.

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/28.toc#content-block

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An Ocean Fairy Tale

A beautiful story with a powerful message - a different way to educate!

http://chge.med.harvard.edu/programs/healthyoceans/once_upon_a_tide/home.html

Wetlands Video

This is a great, short video from the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Enjoy!

The Seri & the Sea

February 2009

New and Improved Web Site

I’ve finally updated our web pages (with a lot of help from Vincent, our tech support guy) and I have to say they look beautiful. All of the articles the class of 2008 wrote are linked, so you can explore those if you wish. Take a look:

http://whatcom.wsu.edu/environ/water/beachwatchers.html


I’m also gearing up for this year’s training and, as always, want to recruit as many new Beach Watchers as I can and you can help! Please forward the website to anyone you know who might be interested in participating in the program. Everything they need to know is on the site including dates, times, contact info, and the application.

Is this day and age of information overload, personal recommendations are increasingly important. They really do make a difference.


Stories from the Sea

I've been working with Bob Hendricks, Friends of Blaine Library, and Sonia Hurt to put together what I think will be a great evening for the Blaine community and something that should be of interest to Beach Watchers as well. On February 25, we'll be hosting Val Veirs, Professor with the Beam Reach Marine Science School and President of the Whale Museum, and Todd Schuster, Captain of the Gato Verde. Val and Todd will share their research experience and what has been discovered about orca communication, otherwise known as bioaccoustics.

Sonia Hurt, fellow Beach Watcher, will also share the film The Synthetic Sea - a documentary that explores plastic debris’ harmful effects on our marine life.

I hope you'll join us: February 25, Wednesday 6-8 pm at the Blaine Public Library


Point Whitehorn Marine Reserve

In 2007 the Whatcom Land Trust aquired 54 acres of forest, bluff and beach, and tranferred the land to Whatcom County Parks & Recreation. The newly created park features a 3/4 mile accessible trail to spectacular viewpoints of the Strait of Georgia and San Juan Islands. A switchback path descends from the bluff to access a windswept cobble beach.


That Whatcom Land Trust is celebrating the opening of the Point Whitehorn Marine Reserve this spring and the want to make a splash. They're planning to have tours of both the beach and the upland and they’ve asked if any of our volunteers would be willing to help provide tours of the area (I guess word is getting out that you are a great group to work with!). I already have a tentative yes from Heather Mackay for the wetlands portion. They would love to have Beach Naturalist type tours and perhaps a native plant tour guide as well.

The date is May 25, Memorial Day, and the tours would take place between 11:30 – 1:30.