Federation Blog

 Yesterday was a great day to be outside.  A term known as phenology is a basic way for identifying what our environment is telling us. Wikipedia states that: Phenology is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate.  I was taught this at a very early age by my father that used to say: "Be very quiet while observing and nature will tell you what is going on".  Yesterday was one of those days.

Early in the morning a ground hog was eating clover next to our office.  Later in the day I went on field assessment call near Duvall Creek to find 3 Brown Water Snakes, and macro algae growing on the shores of the River.  This species of algea is Entrermorpha flexuosa, it is not considered one of our good Submerged Aquatic Vegetation.

Happy Earth Day---Diana

In the early morning hours on March 12, 2009 my crew and I were performing our routine water quality monitoring.  The River was calm with a low lying dense fog, that was just starting to disapate.  As we left out of Broad Creek and started heading up the South River toward our next station at Flat Creek was saw a fish lying in the middle of the South River near Granville Creek.  When we netted the fish is was slightly gasping, then died.  This is one of South River's famous Lesionous Catfish.  We found two of these catfish, approximately 14" long, both with red lesions all over them.  You have to ask youself, how can this happen?  We have a river with no industry on it; however we are pulling fish that have the same problems as areas that are hightly industrialized.

---Diana

Hello,

Welcome to the South River Federation Blog.

Happy New Year!

-SRF Team