Hip waders make everything better

Now that I’m clean and rested, I think I can manage to produce the previously promised camping trip details. For the most part they are not that interesting. As usual, the other students continue to be great people. They are almost as dorky as I am, and that makes for all kinds of dorktastic conversations. Several experiments have been planned for the future.

On Saturday our goal was to visit a variety of streams and compare and contrast their health based on a series of chemical and biotic measurements. (Why, you ask is an Oceanography student studying streams in the mountains? The professor’s answer: “It’s ALL connected. You have to know something about everything in this business.” Take that Dr. Dunham!) Several of the streams we observed were affected by acid mine drainage. Now I’ve seen some pretty awful looking rivers in my time—one year the Reedy (the one I claim as my personal river in my home town) was affected by a diesel fuel spill, a dye leak, and a phosphorous detergent spill. It went from normal and healthy to neon green to bright red to foamy—but never having lived in the land of coal mines, I have never seen anything like this. The one stream is known as the least healthy in the entire state. The resource managers have been dumping lime in by the ton for years, but can’t keep up with the acidity at this particular site. About three weeks ago, through some fluke of geology, it unexpectedly got a little more than eight times worse. The water was bright orange with precipitating iron compounds, and the streambed and rocks were painted with the stuff. It was completely choking everything in the area. I wanted to cry. I’ve never seen a river in such a pathetic condition before, and according to the particularly haggard looking manager who was giving us a tour, there’s not a thing anyone can do. The technology to fix this does not exist because there was never any indication that it could get this bad. The damage was done 50 years ago when the area was mined, but we are paying for it now. About half the students seemed to get it, but they didn’t seem to be quite so upset about it, maybe because they had seen acid mine water before. The other half didn’t seem to care at all.The next site was our last for the day. It was a perfect, untouched headwater in a State Park. Still upset by the last site, I decided that the best thing to make me feel better was to put on the hip waders and learn to use the expensive toys, so I volunteered to help run the electroshocker (for those who don’t know, it electrifies the water, which stuns the fish and anything else so that you can collect them easily). After the collection, the TA who was helping us walked away crying. She later had the nerve to lecture us on how temporarily stunning four minnows was a waste of life, and we should feel bad. I had visions of wasting her life, but walked away and didn’t get into it with her, nor did I point out the inconsistency of her reaction to the orange river (she was definitely in the group that didn’t get it).

Having ranted for long enough that I’m sure no one is still reading, I’ll take this opportunity to say WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMEN! COAL MINING IS BAD!