Category Archives: News

News and events around the Lake Champlain Valley of northern New York and Vermont and southern Quebec

Adventurers to canoe 1,200 miles

The Voyageurs

Expedition 2012 Crew

In early April ten young men will leave Lake Dunmore in Salisbury, Vermont bound for James Bay, Ontario, Canada. What’s truly remarkable about the 1200 mile trip is thatthe entire trip they’ll be paddling a fleet of wood-canvas canoes that they’ve built themselves.

The ten paddlers, all in their 20’s, met through Lake Dunmore’s Camp Keewaydin over the past fifteen years. All are experienced canoeists who have paddled throughout the United States and on wilderness rivers in Canada. They hail from states up and down the East Coast, but four are living in Shoreham as they prepare for the trip.

Calling themselves “Expedition 2012,” they describe their trip as “fundraiser, environmental activism, and an honor to Camp Keewaydin’s heritage.” The crew is composed of Tom Bloch, Jeff Chandler, Johnny Clore, James Hogan, Nick Kramer, Rich Morgan, Ben Ramseyer, Kyle Sauer, Bill Souser and Peter Wright.

The Voyage

From Lake Dunmore, the group will travel down the Leicester River to Otter Creek, out to Lake Champlain. They’ll carry their boats around six hydropower projects before they even reach Lake Champlain. Once on Lake Champlain it’s north to the Richelieu River, into Canada and onto the St. Lawrence River. After passing through Montreal, they’ll turn upstream for some 300 miles. A series of lake crossings and portages will bring the team to the Abatibi River, where they will paddle with the current down to James Bay at Moosonee in far northern Ontario.

With the hydro projects, rapids and drainage system crossing, they estimates that they’ll do about 50 miles of portaging. Fifty miles is a long way to walk, even without an 87-pound, wood-and-canvas canoe over your head. But the third pillar of Expedition 2012 is “heritage,” and the travelers intend to be stylishly outdated. The crew will carry their food and gear in handmade wooden boxes called wangans, portage using tumplines, and plan to name their boats after time-honored camp songs.

The Tradition

In keeping with tradition, the men built all five boats from scratch, with the help of Connecticut master builder Schuyler “Sky” Tomson. “We started building the boats last winter with Sky. We milled the wood last fall in Connecticut, and made a lot of trips between here and there to work on them,” Wright said.

The boats are beautiful pieces of craftsmanship. Their waterproofed canvas sides are a silky bottle green, and the gunwales, deckplates and thwarts are carved in ash and cherry. They are slight modifications of the iconic wood-canvas canoe — the Chestnut Prospector. At just over 17 feet, they’re a little longer and slightly deeper than the original. For a repair kit, the team will carry canvas patches, epoxy and a mysterious compound called Ambroid.

Expedition members expect to arrive in Moosonee, Ontario, in about 70 days. If they leave on schedule, they’ll be back at Camp Keewaydin before the end of June.

A trip this ambitious and romantic has caught the attention the outdoor recreation industry. The group is already signed on for two episodes of Outside TV: a preview of the trip this spring and a recap when Expedition 2012 returns. The expedition has been publicized in Canoe and Kayak magazine, and on the web at Outside Online.

With the help of Camp Keewaydin, Expedition 2012 has also picked up big-name sponsors like Polartec and the HD camera company GoPro, as well as, Vermont businesses like Dakin Farms, Cabot Co-operative Creamery and Green Mountain Coffee.

 

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Vermont to Preserve Lake Champlain Marsh

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees check a sea lamprey trap in Malletts Creek, Vermont

Malletts Creek Marsh / Munson Flats Wetlands

The Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife is working to buy 110 acres of Lake Champlain marshland in Colchester that is home to a variety of rare species of fish and plants such as the eastern silvery minnow, black nose shiner, harsh sunflower and a threatened lake cress .

The area, known as  Mallets Creek or the Munson Flats Wetlands is just south of Chimney Corners along U.S. Route 7 and I-89. It’s home to common wildlife such as deer, mink, songbirds, osprey and water fowl, and plants such as wild rice.

Protection From Development

William Crenshaw,  State Biologist says the marshlands are safe from development, but show the scars of agriculture and other human intrusions. The State of Vermont is negotiating to buy 110 acres of the approximately 500 acres of the marsh. Crenshaw said the area will become a wildlife management area that will be open for public use such as hunting, fishing, trapping, bird-watching, and photography.

The property is assessed at $173,800, according to Colchester town records. Money to buy the property comes from fees charged to people seeking duck hunting licenses, Crenshaw said. The 110-acre parcel already was part of a federal wetlands reserve program, which helps landowners protect, restore and enhance wetlands on their property, Crenshaw said.

Malletts Creek USGS Colchester Quad, VT, NH, Topographic Map Protecting Marshlands

Protecting Marshland

James Ehlers, executive director of Lake Champlain International, said it is important to protect marshes such as Malletts Creek, and added he is happy at least part of the marsh will be bought and preserved. Plants and soils in marshes filter out pollutants before they can reach Lake Champlain, Ehlers said.  Buying the land also will help ensure that development does not encroach on the wetlands, according to Ehlers . Although wetlands are a pollution filter, too much development too close to a marsh could overwhelm its natural ability to cleanse the environment.

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Tundra Swans Visit Lake Champlain Area

Tundra Swans on Lake Champlain

Three tundra swans from the arctic tundra have taken up temporary residence in Lake Champlain and are drawing area bird-watching enthusiasts to the open water near Ausable Point State Park in New York. The birds that normally winter in the Carolinas have been seen for the past few weeks and are probably staying on Lake Champlain because of the mild winter and open water.

About Tundra Swans

Tundra swans are a bit smaller than the more common mute swan. An adult tundra swan will weigh in around 20 pounds, but are still a very impressive bird with a 6-foot wingspan.Tundra swans are much less accustomed to humans than other species, such as mute and trumpeter swans, and tend to shy away from a crowd.

 

Tundra Swans

 

Lake Sturgeon Thunder

Lake Sturgeon

One of the many interesting creatures inhabiting Lake Champlain is the lake sturgeoLake Sturgeon Thundern. It is one of the largest freshwater fish. Mature adults average between three and five feet in length and weigh from ten to eighty pounds, but can sometimes measure over seven feet long and weigh over 300 pounds.

The lake sturgeon has a torpedo-shaped body, covered with five rows of bony plates: one row on top and two rows on each side. The lake sturgeon has a sharp, cone-shaped snout with four smooth barbels on its underside.

People near water inhabited by sturgeon have reported mysterious sounds and vibrations, apparently caused by the sturgeon. Native-Americans in the Fox and Wolf River watersheds of Wisconsin have long associated this “thunder” with sturgeon spawning runs in the spring .

Here’s an interesting article from the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Program about ‘sturgeon thunder’: Sturgeon “Thunder” Has Roots in Biological Process… (Read More) .….

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Are there fish in your beer?

As a craft beer lover and avid home brewer I was thrilled when Linda Bowden, ECHO’s Life-Long Learning coordinator, announced that she was planning the beer-themed event called “FeBREWary: The Science of Beer.” As an aquatic biologist, I’m always seeking ways to link our local aquatic fauna to things that people really identify with and care about… like beer!

As it turns out, there is a quite a long history of using fish parts to clarify beer and other fermented beverages. Many fish would sink without some extra buoyancy provided by a structure called an air bladder. An air bladder is essentially a bag made of collagen into which fish can add or remove gas as they move up or down in depth. This allows fish to maintain neutral buoyancy- not sinking or floating, but hovering in one place. As with many anatomical features, air bladders can provide additional functions beyond buoyancy control.

For example, drum use the air bladder to produce and amplify a thumping sound (like a bass drum) during spawning season. Other fish, like long-nose gar and bowfin, can thrive in warmer waters that have low amounts of dissolved oxygen by gulping air and passing oxygen from surface air into their blood stream via their air bladders.

The air bladder is an essential structure for many fish, but it’s the collagen from which it’s made that matters to beer lovers. Consumers of the vast majority of beer styles look for clarity in the glass along with satisfying flavor. Most modern breweries use some form of clarification to achieve the bright clear appearance that consumers expect. Among several options for achieving clarity is isinglass, which is made from- you guessed it- fish air bladders. By extracting and processing fish air bladders, the collagen building blocks are dissolved into an acidic solution to make isinglass. When the isinglass is added to beer, millions of tiny charged collagen particles bind to oppositely charged particles of suspended yeast cells and other dissolved by-products of fermentation (hop oils, protein, etc.) that can make beer cloudy. Once added, the binding action of isinglass forms larger, more dense particles that sink to the bottom of the container and the beer “drops clear.” In as little as two days, a batch of beer will go from hazy (photo on left) to clear (photo on right) and be ready to carbonate and drink.

How the use of fish parts in the brewing process got started is not well known. One of the most likely scenarios that I’ve come across is one in which ancient people used air bladders to carry liquids, including beer. Acidic beverages, like beer and wine, likely dissolved some collagen and created favorable conditions for clarification to occur. Perhaps some ancient ale drinker set down his or her bladder of beer for a day or two, only to discover a clearer drink later on.

Want to find out more about intersection of science and the enjoyment of good beer? Join us at ECHO on the evening of February 9th. Prost!