April Gonzales
DAN'S PAPERS, October 10, 2008 Page 21 www.danshamptons.com
Ponderings Why Did Fish Die? Can You Swim Underwater at Mill Pond? By April Gonzales Mill Pond in Water Mill is where Mosey Muller used to swim and play under water tag as a kid — his family has lived on the edge of the pond for over 60 years. Sometimes the water was crystal clear. Other times a little murkier, with visibility of 5 or 6 feet. In the winter, Muller and his friends would ice skate on the pond and when they got thirsty, they’d chop a hole in the ice and take a drink. When Muller was in high school, his love of the pond led him to do a study of the watershed to determine factors that affect it. Today, along with a lot of other long time Water Mill residents, Muller is wondering why
so many fish died so suddenly at Mill Pond, and if it still safe to swim with your head under water. (Having heard that blue green algae can be toxic, he keeps his head above water when the pond is murky.) He has noticed that in recent years the algae blooms are happening faster, and that there are big swings in the quality of the water, which can go from being crystal clear to pea soup and back again. Muller’s high school report revealed that during rains an enormous amount of water laden with farm soil would rush down Deerfield Road and into the pond right at the sharp corner near his family’s home. A plume of soil would extend out into the pond. At that
time, in the upland area that makes up the Mill Pond watershed, he discovered washouts — ravines created by the rushing water in the farm soils that were up to five feet deep. There are fewer farms today, so better fertilizers combined with efforts to reduce pesticides have decreased their impact on the pond somewhat, but not completely. Last week’s storm rains created a latte-colored river flowing down Deerfield Road. There are 13 catch basins between the corner where the soil-laden water enters the pond and the intersection of Deerfield and Head of Pond Roads. Muller had questioned the storm (continued on page 34)
OCEAN “CRISIS” DISCUSSED AT STONEY BROOK By Debbie Tuma It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the adage “there are plenty of fish in the sea,” is up for a challenge. But that sentiment was corroborated last Friday by Ellen Pikitch, the new Director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook Southampton, who told an audience of about 100 people that in the past 50 years, many of our fish species are on the wane. During her lecture on the state of our oceans, Pikitch said, “Over the past decades, the stocks in our oceans have vastly declined. During the 1950s and ‘60s, the world fish catch was growing,
and then it gradually began to decline.” Pikitch held up a large world map highlighted with red blotches indicating areas rich in fish. “Back then, there were 11 tons of fish per square kilometer of ocean bottom,” she said. She then held up a map of the year 2000, with much less red. “One century later, our oceans have become depleted of fish,” she explained. “We fished down the marine food web, from larger to smaller fish, and of different species and sizes, until 90% of the big fish were gone. And it happened quickly, with a rapid decline in all the oceans of the world.”
One of the biggest impacts was Japanese long-line fishing, which started in the Western Pacific and became rampant throughout the world by 1956. One of the first fish that started to die out as a result was the orange roughie. “They caught so many of these fish in the nets that the nets would actually burst, and suddenly the catches in New Zealand started disappearing,” Pikitch said. She explained that this fish lives to be 150 years old, and “this species was clear-cut like a tree, by all the net fishermen.” (continued on page 34)