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Stormwater Monitoring Season is Here! 

 

Autumn 2022 starts our second two-year stormwater sampling campaign. This time with a twist: new citizen scientists in three more cities will be monitoring city stormwater outfalls in addition to continuing our work in Anacortes. Oak Harbor, Mukilteo, and Edmonds are now part of the expanded monitoring work that Friends of Skagit Beaches is leading in the North Sound. 

20221008 104425 1000226 1K smThis work is funded by a grant from the National Fish & Wildlife Foundations’ Southern Resident Killer Whale Conservation Program for the purpose of improving habitat, food sources, and conducting research to support recovery of the Southern Resident Orca population within our region. The grant covers the costs for volunteer coordination, recruiting, training, equipping, and managing the data captured by our volunteers.

During the summer of 2022 Friends established a partnership with the Snohomish County Beach Watcher program and the Sound Waters Stewards on Whidbey Island to connect to eager citizen science volunteers in their programs.  We recruited, trained, and equipped volunteers in Oak Harbor, Mukilteo, and Edmonds, as well as new volunteers for Anacortes. All three groups of eager volunteers are ready to get down to the beach and sometimes even in the water (photo left) to sample and take monitoring measurements. 20211115 102742 1022691 1Kpix

This volunteer effort addresses a shortcoming in our federal Clean Water Act: no required periodic monitoring of stormwater outfall pipes. Local towns would have difficulty in financially supporting the manpower and equipment costs for this activity. That’s where Friends of Skagit Beaches and our citizen science volunteers come to the rescue . . .

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Rough Keyhole Limpet

Rough Keyhole Limpet

The Rough Keyhole Limpet lives low on rocky beaches around Puget Sound. Shaped like a tiny volcano, the Limpet shell is 2 to 3 inches long and ridged with a hole in the center. The keyhole, used to eject water and waste, separates this limpet from the so-called "true" limpets, which look similar but whose biology is quite different.

This hat-shaped critter is in the class of creatures called "Gastropods," which includes land snails and slugs. Limpets travel on a muscular foot and have a tongue-like "radula" studded with many tiny teeth. With this radula, they graze algae and colonial animals such as bryozoans and crust-like sponges. As the Limpet's front teeth wear out, back ones move up to replace them.

Almost all Keyhole Limpets have a tiny scale worm hidden between their foot and a fleshy body part called the "mantle." From this snug home, the worm feeds on left-overs and helps the limpet by nipping the feet of attacking sea stars.

Be careful as you walk along the intertidal zone on low tide days. To hold in the moisture they need to breathe, Limpets hunker down tight on rocks when the tide is out. Knocking them from their spot will cause them harm.

In Friends Notes

Autumn 2022 starts our second two-year stormwater sampling campaign. This t...
UPDATE: Grant for Fidalgo Bay and City of Anacortes stormwater monitoring. ...
Compiled by Chris Wood with contributions from Ellen Anderson, Betty Carter...

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