The Wrack

2-3" of rain today. Flood warnings. Coastal flood warnings. A super moon high tide. "Multiple hazards in effect," declared the National Weather Service.

Really, quite a nice afternoon for a walk.

I've always loved our old bowl-and-chain gutters on the Coastal Ecology Center.

Removing a small dam from Goff Mill Brook in Arundel reconnects seven miles of stream habitat to the estuary, benefiting brook trout, other migratory and freshwater fish, and the watersheds ecology.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 9/20/2015, and Making It At Home newspaper.

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a man at a coastal research center during Maine Coast Week, all the worlds a coast.

Katrina Papanastassiou brought good news for her lunchtime talk about this summer's piping plover and least tern nesting season in Maine.

With almost 4,000 attendees over two days, the crafts festival set new attendance and gross receipts records in its 28th year. Proceeds from the event will continue to support and develop science, education, conservation, and preservation.

If you're reading this article, you probably own a computer, tablet, or smartphone. It is also likely that you have at least one unused or broken device languishing in a closet somewhere. What exactly is the responsible thing to DO with these things?

We at the Reserve have struggled with this dilemma for quite a while. Old technology was piling up in the farmhouse woodshed like cordwood. Although we didn't know what to do with it, we knew we didnt want it ending up in the landfill.

The Reserve's annual late summer effort to save monarch eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalises from the mowers that cut our fields happened last week. The mowing is essential in preventing the fields from growing into forests over time, and also as a management strategy for invasive species.

Thanks so much to the eleven volunteers who spent several hours in the warm sunshine combing the ubiquitous milkweed plants for signs of monarchs! We saved 38 caterpillars of all sizes, removing them from the fields that will be mowed within the coming weeks to fields that will not be mowed this year. The smallest of the caterpillars measured less than one inch in length, whereas the largest were several inches long. A handful of monarch butterflies were spotted fluttering over the fields during the rescue mission, providing hope that some of the rescued caterpillars will also reach adulthood.

Mantoloking, New Jersey, October 30, 2012.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 8/30/2015. (Continued from Remembering Katrina, Part I.)

Ten years ago this week, Category 3 Hurricane Katrina left nearly 2,000 people dead, hundreds of communities uprooted, and more than $100 billion in damage along the Gulf Coast. Adding in Superstorm Sandys devastation in October 2012, just two events swallowed the equivalent of: five months of Medicare spending, or two years of the federal education budget, or four years worth of the Federal Highway Trust Fund, our national gasoline tax-funded infrastructure bank that is now running on empty. So much money, washed out to sea.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 8/23/2015.

Perhaps a butterfly flapped its wings in Hong Kong, or perhaps the gods who play dice with the sky rolled double sixes. Whatever the cause, the atmospheric disturbance that formed over the southeastern Bahamas on August 23, 2005, would go on to have massive effects.

Not often you see a dude rounding a hedgerow, coming down the trail at a lilting half-run, tripod hanging off one hand, but that's exactly what I saw last Tuesday. It was Josh Fecteau on the chase. He had news I hadn't heard. Wilson's Phalarope. In the marsh. From the dike.