Anyone driving by the Waterfowl Festival’s Bay Street Ponds in Easton may have noticed the activity there recently.
The ponds are undergoing renovations that will allow them to function better as a collection area and sediment trap for more than 700 acres of Easton watershed. When completed, the ponds will be restored with greater depth and new plantings around the perimeter.
As part of the renovations, the ponds will be dredged to remove much of the silt that currently limits their capacity. In order to do the dredging, the ponds first had to be drained, which Waterfowl Festival Executive Director Judy Price said led to the question, “What do we do with the fish?”
Unwilling to drain the ponds and just leave the fish high and dry, Price reached out to an old friend and Festival supporter for advice. John Foster works with Environmental Consulting Services in Middletown, Delaware. He and the company’s owner, Charles Miller, immediately offered their services at no cost to trap the ponds’ fish. Skip Bason of Delmarva Aquatics inSmyrna, Delaware, brought aerated tanks to transport the fish for release in other ponds.
The three of them spent an afternoon corralling the Bay Street Ponds fish. Knowing this was easier said than done, Bason started out with low expectations for the results. “Every one of these that I have been involved with has been a fiasco,” he said, laughing.
It began to look like the afternoon would run true to those expectations when Miller proceeded to get stuck in mud above his knees while trying to take the seine net across the pond. The initial plan was to drag the net from one end of the pond to the other, catching as many fish as possible in the sweep.
After managing to extricate himself, Miller and the others came up with Plan B. The net was stretched across the lower end of the lower pond, where a small concrete dam impounded the water. The dam had already been partially broken through to lower the level of the ponds, so they would open it up further to allow the water to drain.
In this plan, the fish would follow the water and be caught in the net. A second seine was placed where the upper pond empties into the lower pond, trapping the fish fleeing from the upper pond’s dropping water level.
Plan B had its own glitches. First, the concrete dam proved formidable, requiring hours with a jackhammer and concrete saw wielded by workers from Dixie Construction, the site contractor. Then, when the water level began to drop, shallow areas created by accumulations of silt left pools that could not drain completely.
Wearing waders, Foster trudged through the upper pond with a hand net, chasing the fish over the shallow areas and toward the seines. He and Miller used the hand nets to scoop fish out of the seines as they were trapped, with Bason then adding them to the tanks on his truck trailer.
Besides holding an array of shopping carts and other urban debris, they found the ponds to be home to schools of bluegills and sunfish, along with a few sizable carp and at least one angry snapping turtle. The number of fish was smaller than expected, which the fish catchers attributed to the torrential rains that had hit the area two days before.
With the water levels already being lowered, they surmised that the fish had been stressed enough that, when the ponds overflowed their banks with the sudden rains, many had taken the opportunity to escape over the dam and down the stream to the Tred Avon River.
Still, at the end of the afternoon that he had expected to be another fiasco, Bason said, “It turned out better than I expected.”
The fish were transported to live in new ponds and the snapping turtle was released downstream. After the ponds are dredged, renovated and refilled, they will be restocked with bass and bluegills.
Price thanked Miller, Foster and Bason for the unique help they gave to the pond project. The nonprofit organization was awarded a grant for the renovations through the Maryland Department of the Environment’s Water Quality Financing Administration, utilizing funding available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Environmental Concern of St. Michaels is providing guidance and assistance for the project, which is scheduled to be completed by the fall.
The 2010 Waterfowl Festival will be held in Easton November 12, 13 & 14. For more information, to volunteer or to make a donation, contact the Waterfowl Festival office at 410-822-4567 or visit its website, www.waterfowlfestival.org.