It was early. The sun had yet to shape the eastern sky, but night was casually receding from the heavens. A pale blue light began to fill up the empty spaces. The whiskey and coffee in my gut kept me awake. Justin sat staring listlessly out the window, his eyes focused on the indistinct horizon.
“Where did you say we were headed?”
“Sachem’s head.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“Its just below Guilford, along the sound.”
“Ahhh, sounds good.”
We retained the silence until I began navigating the narrow coastal roads that provided the local neighborhoods with their “beach” access. We rolled our windows down, and the smell of low tide slipped into the truck cab. Private roads slid along the intertidal flats, and were walled off by ramshackle chain-link fences. No trespassing signs decorated the walls that divided the casual observer and the homeowner.
We came to a boat launch and I pulled the truck down to the tide line. In the east the sun had begun to pour gold onto everything. I shivered; it was colder than I had imagined it would be.
“Hey Justin, wanna swim?”
“Hell no dude, this water looks gross.”
I looked out across the water and took in the surround. What made this place gross? Was it our own preconceptions that the Sound was still a fetid pool of pollution? Or was it that it was an injured organism trying to survive, and we would be swimming in the wound?
Switchgrass danced along the shore in the morning wind, providing the steep, clay, banks that ran up to the road with some degree of stability. Erosion was occurring beneath the roots, but someone had brought gravel and stone blocks in to support the asphalt roads. This stunted the growth of the shore grasses and shrubs, and provided an unusual habitat where brackish wetlands would have once dominated the small estuaries that poked their fingers into the Sound.
Out on the flats, the water shimmered with mineral and petroleum waste, little man made rainbows. Small periwinkles filled the puddles. An invasive species, they feed exclusively on algae. The abundance of snails meant the algae level had to be high in the region.
“Is this still as polluted as it once was?”
“Not as much anymore…but it still struggles.”
I looked out into the water and imagined what it would have looked like in the summer of 1987, when oxygen levels dropped to record lows all over the western part of the sound. I pictured the algae bloom that covered they area from Rye, NY to Bridgeport, CT. It all decomposed at once and created the largest recorded area of hypoxia in United States history.
No oxygen in the water meant that everything died, almost instantly.
And here, on the Sound this morning I watched as gulls descended on the once dead water, and pulled out mussels and periwinkles. I looked over at Justin.
“The Sound is rebuilding itself.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, we just have to give it time.”
**Most of the info from this piece was pulled from first hand observation and from reading; This Fine Piece of Water, by Tom Anderson. Tom Anderson is a journalist and environmental activist. His book has provided us with a historical and ecological look at what man has done to the Sound, and the steps we are now following to fix our errors. In 1987, Barbara Welsh was the lead scientist on a research vessel that was doing routine tests on saltiness, water clarity and oxygen levels. In July she discovered a band of algae that covered nearly the entire western third of the Sound. On July 28th the algae died, and began to decompose rapidly. In the center of the band, oxygen levels dropped to 0.000 milligrams of oxygen per liter. This created a mass execution of almost all the living organisms within the band. Lobsters died in the pots, fish in the nets, and the smell was horrifying. Over the past 24 years, through policy making, and renewed confidence in the Sound, man has let the Sound rebuild itself. People have begun viewing it as a place where they can swim and fish again, but with this new mentality comes a new responsibility, we can never take for granted the very ecosystem we are a part of.
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