 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||
 |
 |
|
|||||||||||||
 |
 |
|
|||||||||||||
Bay Day
Students explore rare environment
Woolwich Central School fourth-graders Sarah Gray, 10, and James Lacavera, 10, carefully scrape away a layer of soil at an archaeology pit Tuesday morning in Woolwich during annual Bay Day activities organized by the Friends of Merrymeeting Bay.
(Troy R. Bennett / The Times Record)
By Seth Koenig, Times Record Staff
Published:
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 2:11 PM EDT
WOOLWICH — There are only three other places in the world that can boast the unique natural conditions found in Merrymeeting Bay. For centuries, that convergence has made the area a cultural, geological and ecological hot spot.
But it often takes the annual spring “Bay Day” activities, sponsored by the Friends of Merrymeeting Bay, for children in neighboring towns to realize how close they are to such rare environs.
This spring’s Bay Day celebration took place Tuesday at Chop Point School in Woolwich. Students from the host school, Mt. Ararat middle and high schools, Woolwich Central School and Pittston Consolidated School converged to learn about the tidal bay formed by the convergence of two major rivers and four tributaries. The students separated into groups and cycled through different activity stations, which dealt with topics such as art, archaeology, pollutants, wildlife and geology.
“They all live around the bay, but very few of them have been on the bay and understand how special it is,” said Ed Friedman, chairman of the Friends organization.
Woolwich Central School fourth-grade teacher Becky Lenz said her students recently learned that Merrymeeting Bay is one of only two fresh water tidal watersheds in the country, and one of four in the entire world. Most often tidal watersheds are salt water by virtue of their connection to the ocean tides.
But Merrymeeting Bay, which ultimately empties into the Atlantic Ocean through the lower Kennebec River, features such a convergence of upstate fresh water rivers that it creates an active pool of fresh water that holds out salt water infiltration.
“You have a unique environment here that you don’t have anywhere else in the world,” said Woolwich Central School fourth-grade teacher Jan Driver. “Six major rivers pour into one bay. You have a lot of history here, you have science and you have geology.”
The meeting of the upper Kennebec with the Androscoggin, Cathance, Eastern, Abagadasset and Muddy rivers makes the bay a Grand Central Station of sorts for Maine waterways, which for centuries offered Native Americans and early European settlers their primary travel routes.
As historian Jay Robbins told students gathered around a small archaeological dig Tuesday, that cultural activity translates into plentiful finds in the grounds around the bay. He showed kids a 6,000-year-old arrowhead and 17th century European coin found a stone’s throw from where they were standing.
Elsewhere on the Chop Point campus, students heard coyote and bird calls, pretended to move like river-bottom macroinvertebrate organisms, studied coastal rocks, made mud-based models of the bay and imprinted fish designs on a paper mural.
Kathleen McGee, a member of the Friends’ research and advocacy committee, joined Mt. Ararat art teacher and Friends board member Sarah Cowperthwaite to run the mural station. McGee said the art project is used to “talk about species and the issues around protecting the species.”
“When (the students) find out that a lot of great fish can’t get to their natural habitats because of dams, within minutes they start coming up with all sorts of ways around the problem,” she said. “They say, ‘Why not turn the dam turbines off for a while? Why not make openings in the dam that don’t lead to the turbines?’ Some have said we should take the dams down.”
Ben Calloway, a Pittston fourth-grader, was one of the students to suggest the latter. Calloway said he wants to be a conservation biologist working with endangered species.
“There’s a great variety of animals here you can see,” Calloway said of Merrymeeting Bay. “It’s a great place for conservation because of that. We need to stop making dams so fish can get to their breeding spots.”
news@timesrecord.com
Sarah Stapler