The Wrack

On Sunday morning, close to 150 friends, family, and colleagues of the late Michele Dionne gathered at the Maine Coastal Ecology Center to remember her life and to celebrate her influence on people, policy, conservation, and estuarine research. Wethe Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve and Laudholm Trusttook the opportunity to honor this remarkable woman by renaming her home away from home the "Michele Dio…

The 10th annual Punkinfiddle festival and National Estuaries Day celebration went wonderfully from all reports we've received and if you were there we hope you had a great time, too (either way, let us know by commenting below).

Thanks once again to the Punkinfiddle committee, our fabulous volunteers, everyone who participated, and our generous sponsors  Maine magazine, Sevigney Lyons Insurance Agency, Pratt & Whitney, Kittery Trading Post, The Bank of Maine, Captain Lord Mansion, Purdy Powers & Company, Bergen & Parkinson, LLC, and Roger A. Auger & Associates / Ameriprise Financial.

Here are 18 photos that capture many of the happenings of the day&

Doing a butterfly sit instead of a bird walk.

On Sunday, August 26^th, I attended an afternoon concert at The Colony Hotel. One hundred fellow music lovers and I enjoyed a dozen classical piano duets by maestro Warren King and his college roommate, recording artist David Pihl. Ticket proceeds came to the Laudholm Trust  it was music played for the benefit of science. What better accompaniment to our special nature at the Reserve than the seashell symmetries of Bachs cantatas or the sunflower melodies of Mozart?

Jennifer Dijkstra was always going to be a scientist. As a child summering on Grand Manan, she clambered over the islands rocky shoreline grabbing fistfuls of seaweed and peering into shallow waters to spy on crabs and snails. This summer shes been doing the same thing, but with three degrees of separation (BS, MS, and PhD), she now calls her objects of interest Ascophyllum, Carcinus, and Littorina.

For many budding biologists, the journey from tide pool playground to salt marsh research transect stops short. For Dr. Dijkstra, research scientist at the Wells Reserve, the dream came true.

Since her arrival at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm in 2008, research scientist Dr. Jennifer Dijkstra has followed two main lines of inquiry. In addition to investigating seaweed, crab, and snail interactions in the salt marsh, she has also looked into how climate change may affect mercury accumulation in coastal food webs.

When Jenn started her post-doctoral fellowship, research director Michele Dionne asked her to work on mercury. "It was a little daunting," Jenn admits. "I had never worked on contaminants, and mercury is not a straightforward contaminant."

Contents of the Summer 2012 issue of Watermark include&

Researchers in the Coastal Ecology Center recently received a call from the Harbor Master at Wells Harbor asking if someone would come down and look at a "strange" fish that came up in one of the local lobsterman's trap. Upon arrival at the harbor we were greeted by this "visitor" to our waters. It …

Back in July, Wells Reserve staff and interns teamed up with volunteers from the Sebago Chapter of Trout Unlimited and bravely struck out on an ambitious survey of road-stream crossings in the Kennebunk River, Merriland River, and Branch Brook. The teams worked hard and surveyed an amazing 81 road-stream crossings in only three days!

I led one of the survey teams and let me tell you, that data was hard-earned! Once we had located a crossing, we had to battle thick brush, mud, poison ivy and steep slopes of riprap to reach the stream. To measure the length of a crossing, we sometimes had to crawl through a culvert from one end to the other, dodging spider webs along the way. Besides being a fun excuse to go crashing through woods and splashing through rivers, this survey was an important way to gather data that will be used by town planners, landowners, conservation groups, and other stakeholders to reconnect stream habitat in these watersheds.

Last week, a group of sixteen devoted volunteers set to work to rescue the eggs and caterpillars of the Monarch Butterfly. Within the next week or two, many of the fields at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm will be mowed.?Annual mowing of select fields is necessary?to prevent important field habitat from growing up into forests, and to combat the spread of invasive species. The mowing is done in late summer, after field nesting birds like the Bobolink?have finished rearing their young.