Norwalk Harbor's Fish
If Dick Harris is right (and the couple of times I interviewed him and accompanied him on his little boat he seemed to know what he was talking about, enough so that I put him in my book and I cite him when I give a Long Island Sound talk) Norwalk Harbor is in bad shape.
Harris used to work for Shell oil but for years he’s been running a volunteer water quality monitoring program in Norwalk. A Stamford Advocate reporter went with him and his Wilton High School students recently as they did their routine fish surveys. Here’s an excerpt from today’s news story:
The more fish and diverse animals they find the better the water is doing, Harris said.
"We are looking for noncommercial fish that don't do anything for man but show him he has got a balanced environment," he said.
The totals from each day are sent to Penny Howell in the fisheries division at the DEP who, after years of data collection, can analyze the changes….
The fish count naturally dips and spikes between the years, but despite the creatures found on the recent trawling trip, 2006 is showing signs of a drastically low dip from previous years, Harris said.
Last year, Harris' team collected 14 species and 442 fish. So far this fall, they have collected only seven species and 60 fish, Harris said….
The numbers of fish in Norwalk waters were low to start, Howell said.
"This stock can't afford any more bad numbers," she said. "It's had too many bad numbers, so something is seriously wrong."
Howell's next step is to search for the cause of the sustained dips, which would take years of data collection. Her department is looking at links from the rising number of predators such as cormorants, diving birds that eat small fish, to man-made causes such as pesticide use.
Another indicator of unbalanced ecology in Norwalk Harbor was the thousands of mud snails Harris and his crew picked up last week. The tiny snails feed off organic material such as decomposed leaves that residents rake from their yard and throw in the water, Harris said.
But the trend is not all downhill. Some years have been worse, such as 2002, when volunteers picked up one fish the entire year. The modernization of the Norwalk sewage plant in the mid- and late-1990s also helped improve the harbor's water, Harris said.
(I add as a caveat that to me it’s hard to tell what’s really going on out there. The story says:
2006 is showing signs of a drastically low dip from previous years
The numbers of fish in Norwalk waters were low to start
But the trend is not all downhill. Some years have been worse, such as 2002, when volunteers picked up one fish the entire year.
So things are drastically worse this year than in previous years, except for 2002, when they caught only one fish, and in any case there weren’t many fish out there to begin with. To make it harder to figure out, the story reports:
The students have helped him collect data every year since [1991], except for a hiatus from 1994 to 2002.
In other words, they looked for fish in 1991, ’92 and ’93, and then again in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 – seven of the last 16 years.
Is that enough data to draw a conclusion?)
Harris used to work for Shell oil but for years he’s been running a volunteer water quality monitoring program in Norwalk. A Stamford Advocate reporter went with him and his Wilton High School students recently as they did their routine fish surveys. Here’s an excerpt from today’s news story:
The more fish and diverse animals they find the better the water is doing, Harris said.
"We are looking for noncommercial fish that don't do anything for man but show him he has got a balanced environment," he said.
The totals from each day are sent to Penny Howell in the fisheries division at the DEP who, after years of data collection, can analyze the changes….
The fish count naturally dips and spikes between the years, but despite the creatures found on the recent trawling trip, 2006 is showing signs of a drastically low dip from previous years, Harris said.
Last year, Harris' team collected 14 species and 442 fish. So far this fall, they have collected only seven species and 60 fish, Harris said….
The numbers of fish in Norwalk waters were low to start, Howell said.
"This stock can't afford any more bad numbers," she said. "It's had too many bad numbers, so something is seriously wrong."
Howell's next step is to search for the cause of the sustained dips, which would take years of data collection. Her department is looking at links from the rising number of predators such as cormorants, diving birds that eat small fish, to man-made causes such as pesticide use.
Another indicator of unbalanced ecology in Norwalk Harbor was the thousands of mud snails Harris and his crew picked up last week. The tiny snails feed off organic material such as decomposed leaves that residents rake from their yard and throw in the water, Harris said.
But the trend is not all downhill. Some years have been worse, such as 2002, when volunteers picked up one fish the entire year. The modernization of the Norwalk sewage plant in the mid- and late-1990s also helped improve the harbor's water, Harris said.
(I add as a caveat that to me it’s hard to tell what’s really going on out there. The story says:
2006 is showing signs of a drastically low dip from previous years
The numbers of fish in Norwalk waters were low to start
But the trend is not all downhill. Some years have been worse, such as 2002, when volunteers picked up one fish the entire year.
So things are drastically worse this year than in previous years, except for 2002, when they caught only one fish, and in any case there weren’t many fish out there to begin with. To make it harder to figure out, the story reports:
The students have helped him collect data every year since [1991], except for a hiatus from 1994 to 2002.
In other words, they looked for fish in 1991, ’92 and ’93, and then again in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 – seven of the last 16 years.
Is that enough data to draw a conclusion?)
posted by Tom Andersen at 7:39 AM
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