With a bald eagle flying in echelon off the Baywatcher’s stern, Albert Hill Middle School students from Stephanie Perry’s sixth-grade science classes set off down the James River to do some real science: testing water quality and fish populations.
What they found Monday went into a Chesapeake Bay Foundation database for a continuing monitoring of what’s flowing into the bay.
After a couple of minutes, a series of great blue herons took up the escort duty — “I love that bird,” said Kamaya Raines, 12. “It’s my first time on a boat. I think I got over my fear of boats.”
The trip, one of the four to five weekly the foundation runs on the bay and its tributaries, is at the heart of the 50-year education mission it has run in tandem with its advocacy work for restoring the bay.
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“Today, we’re going to be scientists; today, we’re going to be explorers,” Chesapeake Bay Foundation program manager/educator Caleigh Remocaldo told the two dozen kids.
They were, she added, going to run tests on the water — why did the kids think that mattered?
“To make sure it’s OK for the animals,” said Lena Sargent, 11.
Some of the students tested the river water’s temperature; some lowered a 6-inch-diameter plate, painted black and white, to discover how deep it could go before they could not see it anymore.
They measured by counting knots on the line, each 25 centimeters apart. Elijah Wright, 12, said he could see after counting 10. “I can’t see it,” said Marrion Gayles, 13.
Baywatcher captain Aaron Bouchard checked in and said he’d take a look — so they ran the test again. This time, they counted seven, which was still unusually clear for the James — it meant they could see the plate when it was 175 centimeters or 5 feet, 8 inches deep in the water.
Other students tested for the river’s saltiness — though the river is tidal below the Interstate 95 bridge, their hypothesis that the water was brackish was wrong; the James is fresh water this far up, their tests showed. Bouchard insisted each group have a hypothesis — that’s what real scientists do, he said.
They tested for oxygen in the water, acidity and phosphates.
“Why do we test for oxygen?” Bouchard asked.
Fish breathe it, said Kamaya, the heron fan.
And why look at how clear the water is?
So fish can see? one student suggested.
“Think about when it’s really dusty and it is hard to breathe,” Bouchard said. If there are lots of things in the water, it’s harder for the fish to breathe, he said.
But what other organisms might be affected? he asked, spreading his fingers and doing a waving dance. Carmen Recinos picked up on the hint right away.
“Plants!” she said.
And what do plants need? Bouchard asked.
She pointed skyward.
“Sunlight, yes,” Bouchard added. And if the water isn’t clear, underwater plants can’t get enough sunlight.
The phosphate count, too, was down. And what organisms like phosphate, which is used in fertilizer? Bouchard asked.
“Algae,” Aleeza Rachel answered — like what she sees in the ponds at Byrd Park.
That matters because algae create dead zones — areas with no oxygen — when they bloom in the bay, Bouchard said. And as Lena Sargent had pointed out, the James and the Bay are connected.
Before they started the water quality tests, the students were asked by Bouchard for a thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs sideways vote on their view of the river’s health; he got a universal sideways vote.
After the kids reported the results, the vote was all thumbs up.
But the real test was in a trawl net.
When the kids, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder along the port side of the Baywatcher, hauled in the line, they found they had captured 15 white perch after a trawl of about 100 yards.
“We got fish! We got fish!” the kids chanted.
Bouchard and Remocaldo lifted some carefully into small plastic tubs and let the kids handle them — or try to. The perch were slippery and kept slipping away as the students tried to grab them.
“Ee” and “Oo!” filled the air for a time; so did one boy’s warning: “Don’t touch that one, he’ll spear you!”
What did the students discover about the fish? Bouchard asked.
They were slippery, slithery and they had spiky fins, the kids called out.
All adaptations, Bouchard said. That’s how the perch tried to avoid predators.
Remocaldo, meanwhile, had spotted something — maybe the most important find of the day, hidden amid the plants the net had picked up: an inch-long dragonfly larvae.
She placed it in a small plastic container with magnifying lenses attached to give the students a look at the brown, six-legged and somewhat hairy creature, which looks more like a tiny crawfish than a dragonfly.
They live in the water for up to two years but rarely come up in a trawl net, because the Baywatcher crew tends to trawl above the very bottom, where the dragonfly larvae prefer to live.
But what was really something to see, she said, is that they’re among the first species to disappear when the water quality goes down.
Hypotheses refuted, thanks to tests, 15 perch and a dragonfly larvae, Ms. Perry’s kids headed back to shore.