Schuylkill River: Perkiomen Creek to Riverfront Park (23-Sept-2016)

This was a clean-up I had been wanting to do all summer. It is dedicated to Stephen Kacir a friend and supporter of this project that passed earlier this year. Kacir was an avid birder, herpetological enthusiast, scientist and an all around good person. He was the first person since I started this project to ask me to clean up specific sites. He cared about the parks in his area where he would go bird watching and wanted to see something done about their condition. At the beginning of the year I did make it to Riverfront Park, the one Kacir told me was in the worst shape. Jeffrey Greco and I did a pretty thorough job of cleaning up the park then and I knew by this point in the year it would most likely be just as bad again. I didn't want to do just a small park clean-up though. I looked at some maps and decided to do an eight and a half mile paddle from the last dam on the Perkiomen Creek to Riverfront Park on the Schuylkill River. I hope to make this an annual clean-up in honor of Kacir and in coming years I will be asking for help from others. This time I did not know what to expect and ran it alone. The above photo is where I launched on the Perkiomen Creek. Before I set out I cleaned up around the dam and as you can see from the pile on shore in front of the canoe there was a good amount of trash there. 

As you can see I didn't get far before I had my first large item. It looked like someone had made a fort on the island right below the dam out of this large tarp. Removed it and an assortment of recyclables from the island then started my trip down the Perkiomen Creek. 

With water levels low everywhere I have been lately I didn't know how much walking I would have to do before I made it to the Schuylkill. Luckily there were only a few shallow sections on the Perkiomen and most of the float on the creek was like the above. 

Most of the trash I pulled off of the Perkiomen was found like this. After the dam and the island I did not find all that much on the banks. 

This is where the Perkiomen joins the Schuylkill River. If you click and enlarge the photo you may be able to see the Bald Eagle in flight at the top of the tree line on the right. 

Spotted this TV shell lodged in a strainer. It was really wedged in and at first I wasn't sure I was going to be able to remove it. Right after this I went to get a bottle that was behind some overhanging vines next to the bank. I started to use my paddle to fish the bottle out from the vines and almost immediately I was surrounded by wasps. I received a couple stings and left the area in a hurry. I was not able to retrieve the bottle before I got out of there. I never like leaving trash behind, but this was still the start of the trip and I had enough stings already. 

In previous posts I have shown photos of parasitoid wasps. This is a photo of an unlucky caterpillar that a parasitoid wasp laid eggs inside of. The eggs hatch inside the caterpillar and the larvae eat away at the host. Eventually they emerge from the host and pupate. The white objects on the caterpillar are the pupa.

On my regular river trips with my kayak this car seat would be a piece that I would have to leave behind. With the canoe I was able to load it right up and take it down the river.

Could see this item from a distance, wasn't sure what it was though. Upon closer inspection I still didn't know. It looks like a base to something, anyone have any clue to what it went to or what it held up? 

What a way to paddle. The canoe was starting to fill up and I still had miles to go.

This is one of my favorite photos of the trip. In the background is a Belted Kingfisher flying, on the log is a Cormorant and flying towards the log is a Green Heron. All are common along the river, but hardly ever could I get all three into one frame. 

From this perspective it is hard to imagine being so close to larger cities. In some of the sections I paddled through, the only reminder that there are other people around is the trash found on the river banks. 

This young Common Merganser didn't mind me floating by. Its siblings swam further down the bank, but it stayed on the rock and posed for a photo. 

In the long strait sections of river I wasn't finding too much on the banks. Above is a chunk of foam on the left and a river beer I plucked from the water on the right.

The strainers I came across did have a lot of trash. The problem here was the amount of aquatic vegetation that they had also caught. Some trash items I couldn't reach just because I couldn't paddle through the duckweed and other debris. 

I had been taking the right side of the river, until I got to a somewhat large island. There I took the left channel and found more items caught in strainers and calm water between them. 

I passed below a bridge under construction and it seemed as soon as I did the amount of trash on the riverside greatly increased. The wasn't much of a current past that point and that could be the contributing factor for all that I was finding. 

Getting close to Riverfront Park, this Osprey flew overhead. It looked to be scanning the water for a meal. I didn't get to see it dive, but it came in close for this shot. 

With the canoe nearly full, I didn't know if I should make anymore stops for larger items. Then I noticed this kids basketball hoop and I had to make the stop. After this I definitely couldn't take any larger stuff. 

This Great Blue Heron was surrounded by trash on his perch. I didn't want to disturb him and I don't think I could have paddled through to get to the trash anyhow. There was only one clear channel where it looked like larger boats may have passed through so I took that and had to ignore that trash I saw floating in the duckweed. 

This was a surprise. I can't determine the species from this photo, I can tell it is a type of Map Turtle and one that is not native to Pennsylvania. We do have native Map Turtle species, but in this case there are characteristics of this ones carapace that tell me it is not from PA.  

Not far after the last Map Turtle, I found another basking with a Red-Eared Slider. Again I can't determine the species of this Map Turtle, yet I know it is different from the previous one. 

After passing by a lot of trash in the duckweed I had to try for some. I paddled as hard as I could into it in the direction of the trash. Going through it was like slowly applying breaks to the canoe. I was able to make it to a few items and I couldn't go any further. Had to back paddle out to the open channel. 

Not far from Philadelphia this was not a surprising find. Second eagle of the day, I preferred the first. Once passed the islands of duckweed I collected more smaller items from both sides of the river before bringing the canoe into the launch. 

I was glad to be at the end. I don't think I could have picked up much more and the canoe was getting difficult to paddle.

I do think Stephen Kacir would have been happy with this haul and with all the birds I saw along the trip. After I put all of the non-recyclables next to trash cans furthest from the river I did do a small walk around a portion of the park and collected more trash until my ride arrived. Several park visitors came up to me while I was there and thanked me for the clean-up. I made sure to tell them about Kacir and let them know he is the one that needed to be thanked. This may be my last visit to Riverfront Park this year, I will return though. I understand why Kacir cared about this park. It is a window to the wild right in the middle of a city. 

I would like to give a special thanks to Joe Greco for picking me up at the end of the trip and to Andrew Curtis for letting me borrow a canoe! The help is much appreciated and hopefully the both of you can go along on this trip next year!

You too can help with taking out the trash! If you get out hiking take a grocery bag with you, give it a second use and fill it with trash while you are out! Every bit helps. You can also help contributing to this project here: Help Fund Taking Out the Trash

Like this project? Like it on Facebook: Taking Out the Trash in Eastern PA

Lehigh River: Walnutport (16-Sept-2016)

For this trip I drove down river to Walnutport. There I can access the canal, paddle up, then take the river back down to my car. I did this same trip earlier this year and I wanted to see what accumulated in both the canal and river over the summer. The canal like the river was low, this was a little odd normally the canals depth is regulated by the locks that have been converted into dams and not the height of the river the canal draws its water from. I would see later in the trip that the river was so low that there was barely any water flowing into the canal at all. That changes things and was most likely the reason for the low water in the canal. 

I did not find much in the canal. It was actually a lot less than I found in the spring. I am now interested to see what the lower portions of this section look like. I wonder if they will be the same or if all the trash has just accumulated further down?

Couldn't ask for a nicer day for paddling. Not too hot, not too cold, just right! Not much further up from this point the canals depth did become a slight issue. There was one area where I was only in a couple inches of water and really had to push through to make it. In that section I did see one can I couldn't get to. 

Once through the shallow area, something further up the canal caught my eye. It was swimming across from the canal path to the wooded side of the canal. I picked up the pace and as I got closer it was exiting the water. A Raccoon! In my encounters with healthy Raccoons in the past, they normally don't stick around for photos. This one was very slow and spent a good amount of time watching me. It didn't seem to care that I was getting closer either. 

 

It is best to keep your distance from any Raccoon, especially one that is acting in an odd manor. For the most part Raccoons are active in the evening into the night and not during the day. There are always exceptions though, so daytime activity doesn't necessarily mean that a Raccoon is rabid. I watched it until it moved up into the woods and went behind a tree. It continued watching me to, even from behind the tree. 

Not long after seeing the Raccoon I made it to the lock and ran out of navigable canal. It was at this spot I could see there was just a trickle of water coming in from the river. At the end of the lock, there was a small portage to the river. In the spring when I did this same clean-up, there was a well defined path to the river near where I got out of the canal. Today it was overgrown and I had to find a different way down. 

When I set out I did not have a specific trash goal set for myself, but I did have the goal of not getting my shoes wet. I was able to manage it yesterday, the river height though made this goal impossible. 

The first stop on the river where I found a large amount of trash. This particular spot was much worse last year and since there really were no high water events I think most of this is stuff I missed on previous trips. 

At this stop I just kept finding more and more. I picked through several debris piles and walked a dry channel on the side of the river. The large items found here included a tent, a canoe end, a insertable kayak hold (sticker still intact and looked new), garbage can and whitewater bucket. It really does aggravate me when I find the whitewater buckets, paddles and other items that are clearly from companies profiting off of using the river. They do not do enough to limit refuse their patrons add to the river, nor do they do enough to clean up these items lost on their trips. I have found whitewater buckets as far down as the Delaware River and whitewater paddles as far down as the islands just above Easton. 

I said yesterday that I wouldn't like paddling on moving water with trash piled up in front of me to the point I couldn't see downriver. This was the only way it worked with the amount of trash and how I could attach the larger items to the boat. It became an interesting paddle after this and there were few small rapids after this that I had to navigate. 

The second tent of the day. I find too many of them along the river. In the water wildlife can become entangled and trapped in them and removing them from debris piles or wrapped around trees isn't easy. Do people know these are not single use items and that zippers and poles can be repaired?

This section of bank had mostly newer washed up items along it. I floated the kayak as I walked it picking everything up. 

Back on the water I heard an Osprey and looked up. Man did I get a show! The Osprey had a fish and was being pursued by a Bald Eagle. My camera was in my dry bag under the large bag of trash on the front of my kayak and I had to scramble to get it out. I was thinking they would be gone before I did, but to my amazement the chase continued and they flew in large circles over the river staying in my immediate area. I watched this for over five minutes. 

Both birds had to be exhausted by the end. The Osprey came out to be the winner when the Eagle ended its pursuit. The Osprey headed up river and the Eagle down. 

Not long after the aerial show, I paddled over to this thinking it was trash. Instead it was the remains of a small Common Snapping Turtle. 

Identifying a Common Snapper is easy even with just a sun bleached shell remaining. The photo on the left is of the carapace which is the top portion of the shell. Common Snapping Turtles are the only species native to Pennsylvania that had a jagged edge on the back end of the Carapace. The right photo is half of the plastron, the bottom portion of the shell. Snapping and Musk Turtles have reduced plastrons. This means they cover much less surface area of the bottom of the turtle than the other species we have in the state. In this case if only the plastron piece was found you could still tell it is a snapper just by the size. Common Musk Turtles are tiny in comparison to snappers. 

The last section of the river was not deep enough to paddle and I had to walk and float the kayak. 

My final trash collecting stop was under the bridge in Walnutport. The sun was starting to go down and it was not a place I really wanted to be. I quickly grabbed everything I could see, piled it up, then packed it into the boat.

The launch was not far after the bridge. It is brand new as of this year and this was the first time I have used it and this parking area. This was also the first time I have seen it where it wasn't packed. I don't think I could have removed much more of the river than I did on this trip at least with the larger items I picked up. I disposed of the bag of non-recyclables in the trash can in the back and placed the larger items, canoe piece, garbage can and kayak hold next to a trash can further from the river. I never like leaving larger trash items too close to the river, there is just too much of a chance that someone might help the items find their way back into the water. 

You too can help with taking out the trash! If you get out hiking take a grocery bag with you, give it a second use and fill it with trash while you are out! Every bit helps. You can also help contributing to this project here: Help Fund Taking Out the Trash

Like this project? Like it on Facebook: Taking Out the Trash in Eastern PA