Top row: Scott Matey, Rick Rosa
Middle Row: Julia Cichowski, Alicia Lenci, Michael Schruben
Bottom Row: Trish Katzman, Steve Whitford, Anna Krowczynska, Leah Neal, Al Bozza
Not Pictured: Robert O’Neil

Jenny Wu and Scott Matey

Jim Caroza and Al Bozza

Julia Cichowski and Scott Matey

Coming Soon!

 

Text by Alan Budreau

The Organization for the Assabet River (OAR) holds its annual cleanup the 2nd Saturday after Labor Day. The Assabet is a tributary of the Concord – it joins the Sudbury in Concord to form the Concord River. Until I got involved, it did not include diving. About 4 years ago, I joined, and started including the cleanup as a New England Aquarium Dive Club (NEADC) dive. As the OAR provides doughnuts and coffee before the dive, plus latex and work gloves, a T shirt and a Clean Up Your Assabet water bottle, filled, and a pizza lunch after the cleanup (at noon) it is a good deal! In past years, it has been a solo dive- not my favorite style, but pretty safe as it rarely is too deep to stand up! But I have thoroughly enjoyed this relatively clean and clear stream, with green plants, fish and turtles. I was delighted this year to receive an email from Michael Whyte of NEADC that he planned to join me. The OAR had located an area of the Assabet in Hudson, MA where they knew that there were tires. It is not feasible to remove a tire dug into the bottom even in 4 ft of water without SCUBA (unless you have arms more than 4 ft long!). At the same time, divers alone are fairly useless, as the tires need to be removed and disposed of. Michael and I met the Hudson contingent (OAR meets at about 5 different towns for the cleanup) at the closed PC Creams on Rt 62 in Hudson at 9 AM.

We got our goodies, mentioned above, and waited for Marty, from Hudson, and the man with the 2 flat-bottomed boats on his pickup truck. We followed them to a bridge over the Assabet, where there was easy access. After putting the larger boat in the water, we geared up and began the dive around 10:30. Marty followed along as we went downstream, paddling. , The water was warm - around 70degrees. I was very comfortable in my normal wetsuit, except that I wore a 1/8 in hooded chicken vest instead of my usual hood, and leather gloves. Michael reported sweating in his dry suit. Visibility ranged from zero to a few feet. I spotted a few freshwater fish and a large crayfish. A very good sign, as crayfish can’t tolerate much pollution. There were plants most everywhere. At times it was so shallow that I was running aground. Maximum depth was around 4 feet. Michael found 8 tires, which it took the 2 of us to dig and lift onto the boat, with help from Marty. In addition, we found assorted small trash, including bottles and cans. When we had about 5 tires in the boat, Marty managed to paddle upstream back to the launching point and leave them on the bank and return. While Marty was gone, we reached a point over a mile downstream where the river was barely passable -fallen trees and branches pretty well blocked the stream, as well as plants which completely covered the surface. Also, there was some sort of animal body with maybe a thousand maggots feeding on it floating in my way. I thought at first that it was a large bird or small mammal-say a raccoon. But then I spotted the empty 2½ ft. long turtle shell. I was able to move the plants back and recover some floating bottles. At that point I also spotted 5 ft long kid’s plastic jeep and retrieved it. But one of my yellow Force Fins came off- apparently stuck under a branch while I was standing in the 3½ ft deep water. At this point visibility was negligible and I had to wait until the water cleared to find it. Meanwhile, Michael had found more tires and put them on the bank. The bottom was highly variable, and here was so muddy and soft that it was impossible to walk on, even with fins. We now proceeded back upstream against the current. Total bottom time was about 1½ hours. With the negligible depth, we still had plenty of air. We got the tires and other trash, and boat, up to the road and waited for the boat to be picked up, then joined the rest of the Hudson crew for a pizza picnic at a local park.
The Organization for the Assabet River has photos on their web site: www.assabetriver.org/riverpics/arc2005/index.html. If you then click on the picture of the boats on the pickup truck, you can see the flat bottom boat (larger, bottom one) and (from left to right) Alan, Michael (admire the NEADC shirt), and Marty. Scroll down and look at us getting into the boat (we actually pulled our gear right out, and never used the boat, except to load in the trash). And, further down, see us in action. Alan is wearing a black wet suit and yellow tank, and Michael a blue dry suit and gray tank.

Great Annual Fish Count/Stelwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Celebration-Saturday, July 17, 2005, Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center

By the end of the day, the divers had filled out 120 surveys and identified 33 species. And everyone went home with some kind of prize! Here is an article from The Boston Globe

14th Great Annual Fish Count - The 2005 edition of the GAFC was another great success for this premier citizen science marine conservation event. The GAFC generated nearly 2,000 surveys in the month of July. It also boasted participation from approximately 1,000 volunteers throughout REEF's survey regions who contributed directly to marine conservation. For the fourth year in a row, the folks at Stellwagen Banks National Marine Sanctuary and the New England Aquarium set the single-day GAFC record for involvement - they had just over 100 divers complete 127 individual surveys!
- REEF-in-Brief e-Newsletter November 2005

Dive into Earth Day 2005-Saturday, April 23, 2005, Lane’s Cove, Gloucester Massachusetts (44 degree ocean temp)

Dive into Earth Day 2005 was a great success thanks to Dano Norris, Michael Schruben, Eileen Byrne, Cheryl Hill, Jim Karos, Aaron Burke, James Karos, and Anna Krowczynska.

The foggy weather did not keep these divers from participating in this event. Seas were calm and vis was about 25 feet. About 180 pounds of trash were removed from the water’s edge. Mostly bottles, cans and food wrappers. Much fishing line and gear as well as plenty of plastic bits and plastic lobster id tags. Some of these tags were Maine lobster pot id tags. Dano found some green army men (we seem to collect these every year here). Jim Karos removed a hair brush from underwater and his grandson James removed a golf club. I also found a golf club along the coastline as well as a few golf balls. What made this day even better was that we finished just before the deluge of rain, it was perfect timing. Thanks again to all participants, you made a difference. Want to participate in a cleanup this year? You still can, check the dive calendar to learn more.