On the River with Douglass High School

 photos and text by Steve Schnarr
click here to check out photos from past Douglass river trips. 

John Reid at the Manitou Bluffs

We’ve been taking Missouri River trips with John Reid’s students for four years. Mr. Reid, as his students of course call him, is not your average teacher. And the kids that come along with him on these river adventures are not your average student.
John works at Douglass High School in Columbia.

He started a “Service Club” at Douglass, where he creates opportunities for his students to work with local nonprofits, and to generally get out in the community and make it better through creek clean-ups, community gardening and ecosystem restoration projects. Four years ago, it was the Service Club that hopped on our boats after class for a quick river tour.

Among other subjects, John teaches Environmental Science. So a couple of years ago we started taking some of his Environmental Science students out on the river in the morning, and the Service Club in the afternoon, during school hours.

We get to work with the students that want to come, and put forth the extra effort to make the trip. John makes it easy for them, and everyone gets a pair of mud boots so they have no excuse not to get out of the boat and check things out.

The Morning Crew - Environmental Science Class

The first group of students that walked down the boat ramp were from the Environmental Science class. None of these kids had been with us on a river trip, and only one of them had been on the Missouri River before. As they walked down the ramp, they made comments like “We’re not getting in that boat” “I’m not going out on that river” “What if we fall in” and “I’ll just wait here on shore”.

After they got their safety talk (interspersed with comments like “What! I’m not going to be in a boat with no fish that big jumping in!”), though, they all eagerly hopped on the boat. It was obvious that, even with all the bluster, they completely trusted Mr. Reid. Half were lobbying for us to go fast with the other half shaking their heads.

The second group, from the Service Club, were a more adventurous lot from the start, used to Mr. Reid taking them outside of their comfort zones.

The Douglass High School Service Club cleans up the river. photo by Steve Schnarr

We show them the recreated Tadpole Island, where the Army Corps of Engineers dug a new chute across the river from Huntsdale. Before the river was channelized there was an island there called Tadpole Island, and now it exists again, ringed with sandbars.

A bit further upstream is an eagle nest. In May, when our spring trip usually happens, the babies are beginning to stand up in the nest and test their wings. One of the parents sits in a tree nearby watching.

On our first trip this year, none of the kids aboard had seen a bald eagle before. They loved it and couldn’t believe the size of the nest. “Who made that nest for them?” “How did they make a nest so big?”.

We discuss the near collapse and latest success of the bald eagle. About how DDT nearly wiped them out, just because it made their eggs too fragile. And now you can find a bald eagle nest about every 10 or 15 miles on the Missouri River.

If we have time, we motor on upstream past the Manitou Bluffs to I-70. Most of the kids had been on this bridge on their way to Kansas City. They mention how the river seems so much closer from the bridge. We feel tiny in our boat motoring past bridge piers swirling in the current.

We shut off the motor and drift under the massive trusses, checking out the cliff swallow nests tucked underneath, little clay jugs stacked up like apartments. Tucked into the bluff just next to the bridge is a cave mouth swarming with swallows. It’s easy to talk about how those bluffs were where the swallows naturally would build their nests, but the bridges work fine too.

Drifting back downstream, we come to Lewis and Clark Cave. Previously called Torbett Spring, this cave is now tucked behind the Katy Trail, with its spring waterfall emerging from a railroad culvert dated 1904 and tumbling down rip rap into the river. Meriwether Lewis noted the cave in his journal, with little drawings to depict the Native American petroglyphs painted on the bluff above the cave. 

We show the kids the remnants of the paintings that are left. “A “Nike Swoosh” with a dot above it,” is how Mr. Reid describes it, and the kids see it right away.

Daniel drags a tire from the rack pile.

If we have time, we explore the mouth of the cave (the interior of the cave is closed to the public to protect Indiana bat nurseries), but today we are running out of time. We need to move onto the clean-up.

Morning and afternoon groups each get a different beach. This year, after last year’s high water, we clean up areas where driftwood has collected on the high banks. Balls, tires, plastic bottles, toys…all the usual suspects are there. The kids fill bags quickly, and help each other carry them across the wood piles. At first they’re bummed that they get some mud on their pants, but that disappears immediately.

They’re amazed at the trash they find out there.

Service Club scours the driftwood for trash.

We saw a turtle laying eggs in the sand. A group of deer getting a drink by the water. We stomped in quicksand. Buzzards flew overhead in a cyclone.

Just another day on the river.

One group got two and a half hours…the other only two.

Mr. Reid and his fridge.

We see a refrigerator floating next to the bank. With just a few minutes left in the trip, we decide to see if we can get it in the boat. One student, Daniel, and I got in the bow of the boat, with John Reid trying to push the fridge from shore. It seemed impossibly heavy, but with Daniel using a shovel to pry underneath and me lifting a corner of the fridge, we got one edge up on the bow. Then it became much easier and we shifted the fridge into the boat. Everyone on board was proud.

And by the time we got back to shore, they were old river pros. “We saw eagles, Mr. Reid.” One student laughs at the mud on his friends shoes. “What are you gonna tell people about all that mud on you?” “I’ll tell ‘em I’ve been hanging on the Missouri River YO!”

This past winter we came up with a new award to give. To the teacher that really stepped up and helped us get kids on the river for a real experience. We decided to call it the “Floating Classroom Award” and we gave it to John Reid. In fact we were able to give it to him at our screening of the Wild & Scenic Film Festival in the Blue Note in Columbia.

With the support of his school’s administration, John makes amazing efforts to get these kids out of the classroom and into the natural world and their community. Teachers like this are absolutely priceless.

Who will get the “Floating Classroom” this year?

Lucky (and unlucky) sturgeon

 text by Steve Schnarr and Danny Brown - photos by Danny Brown, Steve Schnarr & Colby Wrasse

When we do a clean-up in the Washington, MO, to St. Louis region of the river, Mo. Dept. of Conservation fisheries biologist Danny Brown usually shows up with his work boat to help haul volunteers. Danny’s a real pro. He knows how to inspire kids, take the opportunity to explain the river as he knows it and make it all look easy.

Danny’s also a world-class wildlife photographer, and you can see and purchase some of his images at www.dannybrownphotography.com. This week he sent us a photo of a shovelnose sturgeon they caught this week while sampling for pallid sturgeon broodstock. Every biologist studying sturgeon and every commercial fisherman I’ve talked to has seen sturgeon caught in rubber bands. As Danny explains below, it’s often a fatal struggle for the fish. Here’s his take on the photo:
 __________

Lucky Sturgeon
by Danny Brown, MDC

Here’s an image of a shovelnose sturgeon that my crew recently captured on the Missouri River. Sturgeon and other fish of our large rivers have endured many threats over the years, including habitat loss, pollution, and overfishing, but another challenge they face is litter. If you've never been on the Missouri River you would be amazed at the plethora of items including abandoned boats, washing machines, 55-gallon drums, tires, bottles, cans, and other stuff. 

A group of dedicated river rats, called "Missouri River Relief," has tirelessly worked to not only clean up the Missouri River but to instill a sense of ownership in volunteers, especially kids, who turn out to help with the clean-up events. Unfortunately, they can only do so much. For more info, go to: www.riverrelief.org .

Almost every year, as I collect sturgeon from the Missouri River as part of our monitoring efforts, I discover an individual like the one in the attached image. While feeding along the bottom this sturgeon inadvertently swam into a particularly ornery type of refuse -- a rubber band. Once a sturgeon swims into a rubber band, it wears it for life and as the fish grows, the constriction digs into its flesh, not unlike a piece of barbed wire around a tree. By the time we catch the fish, it is often grotesquely deformed near the constriction and in poor condition. 

photo by Copyright by Danny Brown

But instead of sharing a photo of such an unfortunate fish, I'm sharing an image of a healthy fish that was lucky enough to turn up in our gear before its rubber necklace began to tighten. I hope you enjoy the image of this ancient species and you will be happy to know that it was released back to the river, free from the girdling confines of this unwelcome accessory. Thanks to Josh Ward for serving as the hand model for this image.”
 _____________

At our clean-up events, we are always proud of the massive trash eyesores we remove from the river. But it’s often the little stuff that proves the most insidious when released into the river environment. Six pack rings that slowly strangle turtles, birds with stomachs stuffed with plastic, or in the case of this little blue catfish, a plastic cave that turns into a death trap (unless you’re lucky enough to then be caught by a helpful biologist).

USFWS biologists came across this poor blue catfish stuck in a bottle in one of their nets. They cut the bottle and let the little fish back into the river. photo by Colby Wrasse of the US Fish & Wildlife Service

Here’s a few more pictures we’ve taken and that have been submitted by biologists that show sturgeon trapped by rubber bands. They’re not pleasant, but what is more disturbing is that this is not an uncommon sight.

This is an endangered pallid sturgeon caught with a jar lid seal. Like the one above, this one is lucky. It was caught before the seal had a chance to cut into the fish, as you will see happens below. photo submitted by US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Missouri Master Naturalist Mark Chambers shows a shovelnose sturgeon with a nearly amputated fin due to a rubber band constriction. photo by Steve Schnarr.

This is another shovelnose deeply impacted by a rubber band. This photo was submitted by Colby Wrasse, US Fish & Wildlife Service.

Cleaning up the Confluence!

4th Annual Confluence Trash Bash 2012

Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, Spanish Lake, MO

March 24, 2012

Rivermile 0-5 – River Stages: St Charles – 23.4 ft; Alton – 14.5; St. Louis – 19.5

Hosted by Confluence Partnership, St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District, St. Louis Audubon, Arnold Stream Team 211, Grace Hill Americorps, Piasa Palisades Sierra Club and a bunch of other businesses, municipalities and organizations

text by Steve Schnarr, photos by John Ruskey and Melanie Cheney, paintings by John Ruskey

We finally got one. After three years of flooding and miserable cold/rainy/snowy weather, this year the Trash Bash landed on a glorious spring weekend. You can’t help but feeling unsettled by the mild winter and early, uniformly beautiful spring. But you also can’t help but get out and enjoy it.

Every year, we keep the option of camping somewhere down at the Confluence for this event, but cold and rain keeps putting us up in cheap hotel rooms. This time, we hooked up with our friends at Big Muddy Adventures (on an adventure that will be described later) and set up camp on the tail end of Duck Island, tucked on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River just downstream of the Confluence. After scouting our sites for the next day’s cleanup, we landed on the island only to be greeted by a beautiful rainbow.

Our Duck Island Camp. photo by John Ruskey

Our part of the Trash Bash is to take a group of volunteers out on the river in boats to clean up the Confluence itself.  Being blessed with perfect weather this time, we were able to go a little further than in Trash Bashes past, actually getting the St. Louis side of the Confluence as well as the mouth of Coldwater Creek, a major urban tributary entering the Missouri at Fort Bellefontaine Park. We were joined this year by two Army Corps of Engineers biologists Megan Kerrick & Ben McGuire and their boat.

Other sites in the Trash Bash include North Riverfront Park, sites along the Maline, Watkins and Coldwater Creeks, some areas on Chouteau Island on the Illinois side, Creve Coeur Lake Park and a massive tire dump on Fee Fee Creek.

Melanie was leading a site along Maline Creek, so she and I headed to the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge where all the NW St. Louis sites were meeting. We gathered our crews together, did a safety talk then headed to our sites.

Melanie's Crew on Site 12 on the Maline. photo by Melanie Cheney

Half our our volunteers were from the Washington University Alpha Phi Omega Service Fraternity. Great kids from a great organization. APO chapters across the state come to help at our clean-ups, always bringing more than 20 folks out to make it happen.

We had a sizable River Relief crew, with even our buddy Mike Smith from Washington, MO, coming to help. Friends from Missouri American Water, Boeing and Biomerieux showed up and we hit the river. All in all, we had 50 volunteers at our site, hitting three four different locations.

Because we had done a really big cleanup last year, this time we focused on spots missed last fall. There was plenty of trash to be hauled out of there, and couldn’t be a more beautiful day to do it.

Volunteers roll countless tires from the floodplain. photo courtesy Arnold Stream Team 211

The best thing about the Trash Bash is that you get to see the impact made in your area, but simultaneously there are groups all over the region making a similar or even greater impact. Our friends with Arnold Stream Team 211 gathered a team of really hard workers to remove tires from the floodplain along Fee Fee Creek. Our board member Francis Baum joined in the effort. These tires are thought to have been scattered from a landfill during a past flood and have been flooded several times since, scattering the tires throughout the riparian forest. This will be a project that takes several massive efforts.

A really great lunch was served up by Confluence Partnership, and then we hit the river again to haul all that trash in. Everything was loaded in boats, which were then trailered and hauled up to the dumpster. We hauled scrap metal and tires back to the Chain of Rocks Bridge to be added to the huge piles there. Including a massive metal tank of some kind dug out of the bank at Columbia Bottom which needed about six people to move.

Trash is unloaded from the trailered boat into a dumpster. photo by Melanie Cheney

After we cleaned up the ramp, we headed out to the Confluence to drift among the swirling junction of the continent’s two longest rivers. The Missouri was cresting, and was pushing huge swirls of muddy water far out into the Mississippi. Massive flocks of cormorants streamed above as we were tossed about in the eddies. We drifted down the Mississippi side of Duck Island, viewing the eagle nest there from afar to not disturb the nesting couple there.

Eventually we ran into John Ruskey and Mark Peoples filling one of their Bell canoes with driftwood. It was their second load and they had moved our campfire down to the sandy point of Duck Island. We parked in a foamy eddy at the point and gathered for a some serious river time with a group of our favorite river lovers. Some lunch leftovers were donated to our camp and were supplemented with healthy snacks. Everyone took turns wandering the island and a driftwood bonfire drew everyone in. Ominous clouds gave way to a beautiful sunset. Cleanup organizers Natalie Johnson and Laura Cohen got ferried over for a moment of relaxation after the firestorm of 750 volunteers.

The sun sets over the Mississippi River and a forest of planted driftwood. photo by Melanie Cheney.

After nightfall, we set up a projector and screen (with a generator tucked far away behind a sandbank) and watched a film about John Ruskey’s adventures last year riding the crest of the Great Flood of 2011 through the state of Mississippi. With a backdrop of the river itself, this film festival had the venue down!

Another short film we watched was about the Circumnavigation of St. Louis. This is the expedition that the Big Muddy Adventures Crew is still doing. Big Muddy Mike Clark, Driftwood Johnny Ruskey and Mark “Rivers” Peoples, “Queen Bee” Betsy Tribble and David Hanson from Seattle were working their way up the Mississippi River in light glass canoes. Their journey had started at the confluence of the Bourbouse and Meremec Rivers, scribing a circle around the greater St. Louis metropolitan area on a highway of rivers.

After pausing at Duck Island for a day, taking a group of Trash Bashers to the island by canoe to remove trash, they would be heading around the Confluence and 70 miles up the Big Muddy. Their virtual passengers were from 7 grades of St. Ann’s of Normandy School, following their adventures online and researching their own topics related to the trip. I’d be joining them Sunday morning, just as David Hanson was getting off and heading back home.

The Circumnavigation Crew heads upstream toward the 367 bridge. photo by John Ruskey

You can read all their expedition journals, check out their amazing photographs, view John Ruskey’s watercolors and see the postings of St. Ann student at the Big Muddy Adventures Schoolhouse Blog.

Around 11 on Sunday, our River Relief crew had packed up and headed to shore. I hopped in a canoe with Mike and Betsy and up we paddled. I stayed on for two days, getting up to St. Charles. It was a powerful and humbling experience, and I hurt for days after. These guys kept going to Washington, MO, 68 miles up the Missouri. From there they would be portaging their canoe overland for 10 miles to hook up with the Bourbouse and finish their trip around St. Louis with a brisk downstream float.

John Ruskey's watercolor of the Circumnavigation (in dark blue). 

John Ruskey watercolor of a side chute on the Missouri River.