Monitoring Buoy Deployed in Buffalo River

Through a fruitful partnership involving Riverkeeper, RIT and Buffalo Public Schools, Water Monitoring Buoy # 1 was deployed this morning on the Buffalo River near the Seneca Street bridge. This experimental low-cost buoy will transmit temperature data at three depths to a receiver affixed to the roof of Southside Elementary School. South Park High School's notorious Labman even made an appearance during the receiver installation.

We plan to install two other buoys this season, on Caz Creek and Buffalo River. Additional measures, including turbidity, may eventually be added to the buoys. The real-time data collected by these buoys will be available for use by all students in the Buffalo Public School system. The buoys will help us to track trends and variations in the conditions of the tributaries and the River.

Urban Dragonfly

Shannon found this fellow outside of Riverkeeper's Main Street office downtown. His flight muscles were damaged, possibly from being pecked by a bird, and he was unable to fly. Our ornithology go-to guy Jim Landau helped us identify him as a Swamp Darner (Epiaeschna heros). Click on the pictures for a full size image.

Navy Island Recon Expedition

Navy Island Reconnaissance
Sunday August 20, 2007
Robbyn Drake, Captain & Crew

(As transcribed from notes during the expedition. Times may be approximate.)

1:00 PM. Launching the Riverwatch 2 solo from Eagle Overlook, Grand Island. Weather report: Mixed clouds. Moody. Chirpy. Kinda hot. Will have to watch for storm action.

1:12 PM. Arrive at Navy Island and call Canadian authorities as instructed (by Canadian authorities, this morning). Bon jour! They want to know if I am carrying guns, fruits, animals, explosives, beer, vegetables, cigarettes, $10,000 in cash, other people or items for resale in addition to myself in this 10 foot kayak. I am amazed at the possibilities. Then we have a problem because Riverwatch 2 has no identification number, other than “2”, which is not actually on it. For five minutes the excessively polite and increasingly flustered fellow and I seek a number on the boat, until I finally accidentally sit on a thistle in the process (Ow! What? Nothing.). I write my birthdate on the boat in blue ballpoint and read it to him. He seems relieved, hanging up quickly.

1:17 PM. It feels good to have Navy Island at my back, river lapping at my boots in the gravel – better than the mainland or Grand Island. The water is like glass today, so clear that coming over I could see the exact spot where the bottom drops out of sight into blackness. Then there is just the current rippling and sliding at the surface like the muscles of a massive animal. I should have brought some food.

1:25 PM. The immediate forest is spiky Hawthorn with a few Ash, dead Elms and a lot of deer sign. Poison ivy abounds, mostly in the trees. There is a vine of it thicker than my lower leg. I'll move counter-clockwise around the island. I hope I hid my boat and paddle well enough. If not, guess I’ll become an islander.

1:35 PM. I encounter a ditch with 30-year old trees growing in it, running due west. On the shore side it enters a culvert about a foot in diameter. I wonder if this is from the hoteliers of the early 1900’s or the 1800’s farmers.

1:45 PM. Big trees and seasonal wet forest (says the dark stained leaf litter). This place is underwater in the spring! Right now it is bone dry and all the nettles are wilted. There is little evidence of human traffic. Even the beer cans look like they’re from the 80’s.

1:55 PM. I just heard a couple of whistles that could be bird or human. A jay screamed too, in the same direction. I am rather hoping not to meet any humans or feral dogs. A wolf would be okay.

2:05 PM. Am hearing a dog barking kind of frantically from the same spot as I move. Hmm. From a boat, or stranded on the island? I’ll set a course a little closer to shore and see.

2:15 PM. Found a big turkey feather! Two deer leap up in front of me – they are small and rather orange. Coyote scat is on the deer trail.

2:25 PM. I stuff some raw walnuts into my pack in case I get desperate. Found the skeleton of a young female deer on the edge of a field. Teeth are still very sharp, probably a yearling. The bones are scattered as in a merry feast. This should be Deer Island. Navy Island is a stupid name.

2:40 PM. Whoa! A huge fence, 10 foot high of chainlink & wide chickenwire, strung on wood posts set in cement. A sign partially crushed by a tree says “Deer Exclosure, 2004, Pen 2”. The pen is several hundred yards square. It has a lot more forest floor plants than the surrounding landscape.

2:50 PM. Here is the biggest cottonwood tree I have ever seen. The grooves in the bark go deeper than my second knuckle. A cavity at the base is big enough for me to sleep in. The wind through the leaves sounds startlingly like waves crashing on the lake shore.

3:50 PM. Flushed two snipe, poked a big monarch butterfly caterpillar, scrambled through thick brush and fallen trees, discovered a recently eaten pigeon, several campsites, at least half a dozen mostly female deer carcasses. The Canada-facing shore has more trash; probably because it is more accessible to boaters (the shallows don’t extend so far). Having just discovered two redneck toilets (plastic lawn chairs with holes hacked in the seat, the sharp edges smoothed with duct tape, empty beer cans scattered to the right), and beer bottles sprouting like strange growths from tree branches, I think it’s time to cut back across the island and find my boat.

4:14 PM. Footsore & hungry I arrive back at my boat, which is still there in spite of some fisherman checking it out. I wave and they motor away from the dirty twig-haired sweating girl with walnut bulging backpack. There’s a good chop on the water now, between the wind and some squealing tubers (humans, not potatoes) hurtling by at the end of a tow rope town by a massive cabin cruiser. I contemplate peeling and cracking the walnuts, decide to leave them on the beach for the next traveler.

Reconnaissance successful! I love Navy Island.

Grand Island Circumnavigation Report

Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper staff & friends undertook an eventful, if grueling, spin around the big island this past Saturday during Paddles Up. We had Riverkeeper director Julie O'neill in the bow for part of the trip, I paddled "amidships" and in the bow, and Riverwatch Captain Yuri Hreshchyshyn took the stern. Our vessel was the battered but sturdy canoe Riverwatch 1. None of us had ever made the trip before, either by canoe or kayak.

Yuri and I launched from Big Six Mile Creek marina into the West River in a dense fog at about 9am. The air was dead calm and the water smooth and glassy. We took a little trip toward Canada and invoked the interest of the border patrol, but no one stopped us (thankfully, since Yuri's passport was safely locked in his car at East River marsh). In an hour or two we made contact with Julie and picked her up somewhere near Fix Road as the fog lifted. With all of us aboard and paddling (and Julie an ex-rower), we made good time but were awfully short on freeboard. We were having fun, laughing really hard and maybe almost capsized on a couple of occasions, especially with big boat wakes rolling in from different angles, but made it to Little Beaver Island for our first break.

Then it was on to East River marsh, passing and greeting the scores of Paddles Up paddlers on the way (who were by this time returning). Our timing was just right as we got to see pretty much all of the boats this way - what a great turnout! At East River Julie left us, having her son's 7th birthday party to attend. We launched again, with more freeboard but less power, into a very disappointing headwind that negated our long-awaited downstream drift.

Through heavy powerboat traffic and high seas we plied the East River, finally catching the strong current and losing the headwind somewhere around the south Grand Island bridge. We rounded the bend near Tonawanda Island and began looking for the north bridge, way too soon. Seemingly hours went by and no bridge, and Yuri suggested that we had been paddling so long, perhaps they had taken it down. Finally he went on hunger strike, vowing not to eat one more Triscuit until the bridge appeared. I began to enter an alternate reality, sleep-paddling while imagining I was a fish under the river, between being shaken into alertness by the larger wakes. Eventually we stopped paddling and drifted helplessly. The bridge obliged by appearing around the next bend.

With the hunger strike over, we paddled across to Cayuga Island to stop at Justin Tyme on the River to fuel up. We tied up next to the cabin cruisers and dragged ourselves over the seawall, fighting the desire to lie down and die, and instead sat outside on our sore asses and ordered some dinner. After a brief rest it was back across and through the gap at the point of Buckhorn State Park in a pinkish sunset.

This is the part of the trip involving anguish. We spent a while paddling in the Navy Island torrent, standing still, having intended to cut the corner of the island. There was also a sail we attempted to deploy but I won't get into that. We pulled into Eagle Overlook the worse for wear, to pee and regroup. We relaunched and crept up the shoreline. Darkness fell. A big moon rose. We paddled. I took a break while Yuri paddled. Crickets chirped in the warm evening air. We paddled some more. Our harbor light appeared in the distance! Hooray! We began to paddle very hard. The light did not get any closer. We were out of sweat. The lights of another boat appeared way in the distance, merrily motoring into the harbor. We began to paddle very hard again. A car went over the bridge over our harbor, far far away. Yuri hurled the paddle into the bottom of the boat and quit. I paddled while Yuri took a break. The moon rose some more. We paddled some more. The bridge over Big Six Mile Creek loomed at last above us.

We scraped onto the launch at 10PM, thirteen hours and many miles after our departure. Listlessly, we rejoiced.