The Pemaquid peninsula  is not only a beautiful place to study coastal marine ecology, it is also a place rich with the history of colonial New England and the fishing and seafaring communities that settled here. We took a short break from intensive writing sessions to enjoy a few hours exploring this history on a beautiful autumn afternoon.

We visited Fort William Henry and the Colonial Pemaquid Restoration, at the entrance to the inner Pemaquid harbor. This site was once an important fishing outpost, and as a trading center, protected by the British colonists with a series of forts. Each fort succumbed to French or native raiders, who would also lay ruin to the adjacent village. From 1635 to the 1790s, the fort and village were settled, razed, and resettled numerous times. The end of the French and Indian wars and the American Revolution brought an end to the need for a fort, and the village declined in importance relative to other regional settlements – but this site preserves the rich history of early colonial days and the rough life of a northern New England settlement. The present-day fort was reconstructed in 1908, and the archeological site includes re-creations of early buildings, such as the waddle and daub lined wood house, where a wonderful guide in period dress walked us through the history. The students tell me the site also houses Pokemon(s).

The Pemaquid lighthouse is another wonderful historic site, an iconic lighthouse and one of the most depicted from the Maine coast – its image is found on the Maine state quarter. Situated on a fantastic rocky promontory, it’s a wonderful place to explore the formations of the Maine coast (micaceous schists, right students?) and learn the history of lighthouses in New England.

We all went up into the lighthouse for a view, and scrambled on the rocks for a relaxing diversion from the academic grind. This is one “lesson” they’ll keep with them always.

-Greg Teegarden

This past Thursday, our group embarked on a day long adventure out of the Darling Marine Center on the research vessel Ira C. We were introduced to Captain Robby Downs as he showed us how to operate the CTD instrument and how to interpret the data on a computer. The CTD measures temperature, salinity, chlorophyll, density and depth in a vertical water column. The study took place on the Damariscotta River which is an estuary. An estuary is generally known as the area in which salt water and fresh water meet. On the way down to the first station we saw numerous oyster farms and local wildlife including seals, heron and cormorants. We began our study closest to the river input near the Newcastle bridge, and collected multiple data samples as we moved towards the mouth of the estuary.

At each station we collected zooplankton and phytoplankton samples with plankton nets. We also used a secchi disc in order to determine the depth to which the sunlight penetrates the water. Everyone also took turns deploying the CTD instrument at the different stations. We took the plankton that we collected to the lab at the Darling Maine Center to be examined under microscopes. We found an abundance of different phytoplankton and zooplankton species, each more alien than the next!

Overall the experience was very eye opening. It was awesome to spend the entire day on the boat enjoying the crisp Maine weather. As we traveled down the estuary the scenery was astounding, there were clear skies and the leaves were just beginning to change. We also saw lobster men collecting their traps and then later in the day we witnessed them unloading the days catch for sale. We finished off this day with a great dinner at a local lobstah shack.

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-Olivia Marable and Ben Poisson

We made a smooth transition from geological perspectives on coastlines to an ecological perspective by studying how the dynamic sedimentary environment of a beach controls and affects the organisms trying to make a living there. Most visitors to a beach are there to relax, enjoy the lovely scenery, perhaps take a swim, and their thoughts of what might be living there (not just visiting) are dominated by the obvious, such as seagulls looking to steal a cookie, or perhaps wariness of what large toothed fish might be lurking in the waves. A look at the sands below our feet might not stimulate thoughts of life, yet that is where we are looking in this block of Marine Ecology.

The intrepid students had completed a beach profile, documenting the slope of the beach face, and we carefully observed and recorded features of the wave environment, such as breaker height, wave period, and distance of breakers from shore. All of these affect how much the sands are moved by wave action, which can make it easier or more difficult for organisms living there. We learned what allochtonous matter is, an obvious example being the seaweeds ripped up during a recent storm and washed up on the beach, and how that provides a food source for various consumers. With our observer senses on high alert, we started rooting around for organisms, to see the life that might escape the casual observer’s notice.

On the east side of Popham Beach, with its steeper slope and more dynamic wave swash zone, we found fewer forms of life, dominated by small crustaceans called amphipods, sometimes called “beach fleas”, though they do not look like fleas, and do not bite! Larger ones were found in the wrack stranded in the high intertidal. Vigorous digging along a line towards the water revealed no other visible forms of life, but once we reached the swash zone, where water rushes back and forth from the breaking waves, we found abundant smaller amphipods, happily tumbling in the sands, accessing the organic matter stirred up by wave actions. A fine mesh sieve was needed to sample these critters; without it, they would have escaped our notice. The shorebirds, little sandpipers, were certainly well aware of the amphipods and feasted while we sampled.

The west side of the beach, with a much shallower slope, sand bars, and much calmer swash zone, harbored a greater diversity of life forms, particularly various worm forms down in the sediments. We even found fish, sand lance, hiding in the sands awaiting the tides’ return. The amphipods of the east beach were much less abundant here, showing us how different energy regimes support very different life forms.

All in all, the students enjoyed some lovely days at the beach, learned a great deal about life they hadn’t noticed before, and forged the connection between the physical/geological environment and how that constrains and shapes the community of organisms there. There were a few sighs of melancholy bidding farewell to the beach, but many interesting ecosystems await our attentions!

-Greg Teegarden