Menunkatuck’s Been Getting Ready for Spring with Cleanups and New Nest Boxes

Ospreys like to decorate their nests with colorful trash, including balloons, plastic bags, rope, fishing line, and the like. To lessen the possibility or them getting entangled, the nests at Hammonasset Beach State Park were cleaned out while the birds were wintering in South America.

A new purple martin house was installed at Hammonasset to accommodate the increasing numbers of matins in the colonies. The houses at the Nature Center were moved closer to the marsh in preparation for the new Nature Center building.

With all 31 tree swallow nest boxes at Hammonasset used last year and tree swallows trying to nest in the purple martin house at the Guilford Salt Meadow Sanctuary, we installed 14 new boxes at Hammonasset and nine at the Sanctuary. The boxes use John Picard’s starling-proof design with a top slit instead of a traditional hole.

(From the May, 2014 newsletter.)

Citizen Science: Marine Debris Tracker

Summer is here and millions of people worldwide will be heading to beaches and waterways for sun and fun. Will they find clean beaches and clear waterways?

With bottles, cans, abandoned or lost fishing gear and other marine debris washing up on our shores each year, the University of Georgia and NOAA have teamed up to create a new, innovative cell phone reporting mechanism to combat the marine debris problem. This high-tech tool, or app, tracks where marine debris is accumulating and gives anyone with a “smart phone” an opportunity to be a part of the solution.

The easy-to-use Marine Debris Tracker app can be downloaded free for use on iPhones and Android phones. The simple tool allows users to report the type of debris and its location through GPS features pre-installed on a cell phone. The data reported are posted at marinedebris.engr.uga.edu for viewing and downloading. The app also encourages users to recycle or properly dispose of the trash they find.

Jenna Jambeck, assistant professor for the Faculty of Engineering at UGA and one of the app’s developers, says the app is one way the initiative is trying to reach people and raise awareness of marine debris.

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Marine debris can kill or injure wildlife when animals ingest it or become entangled in it. The debris can also have an economic impact on the tourism industry and other coastal businesses by affecting the beauty and cleanliness of beaches and waterways. Jambeck and codeveloper Kyle Johnsen, her colleague from the Faculty of Engineering at UGA, hope that the Marine Debris Tracker tool will help officials make decisions about how to handle marine trash — from supplying extra trash cans to providing opportunities to recycle or dispose of abandoned or lost fishing line and other gear.

Marine Debris Tracker does not have to be used within 3G, wifi, or cell range. Since the majority of debris tracking might take place in remote areas or even on the water, you can log and track as many items as you want and store the data. Then you can upload them later once you are back in 3G/wifi/cell signal.

Marine Debris Tracker is designed exactly for beach cleanup data collection. Instead of the paper data card you would normally use to mark items you find, you simply open the app on your phone, choose items from the list as you find them and log them. The list of items you found will be sent to our database once you submit your data from that day. 

Marine Debris Tracker can be used for regular beach cleanups or just log any debris item you see when you casually visit the beach. If you feel it is safe, you can also pick it up and recycle or dispose of it properly. Do not try to pick up large items, dead animals or anything that you suspect to be hazardous. You can also follow some very general guidelines. Try to pick a beach location that you can monitor regularly (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly) at the same general time. Then walk the same area (both horizontally and vertically) each time using Marine Debris Tracker to log (and hopefully picking up using gloves and a trash bag) the debris items that you find. You might want to make note of any major storm events or any other noticeable factors (wind, etc.) that might be influencing the debris that day. You can keep track of your marine debris data over time and then examine trends, etc. These are good activities for students to conduct too.

(From the July 2013 newsletter.)

Balloons Kill

• More than twenty years ago Audubon magazine warned of the hazards of releasing helium balloons.
• In 1990 a Connecticut state law was enacted prohibiting the inten­tional release of ten or more helium balloons within a 24-hour period.
• Today, many people know of the dangers to wildlife that helium balloons cause and they cringe at the sight of even a single balloon, intentionally or accidentally, sailing upward into the sky.

And yet...

• High school graduations routinely distribute helium balloons for outdoor dis­plays to honor the graduating seniors.
• Children are encouraged to let loose helium balloons in celebration of a fundraising event for a worthy cause.
• A recent road race within our chapter area distributed well over 100 bal­loons on ribbons to participants to release simultaneously while town and state dignitaries looked on.

The Menunkatuck Audubon Society believes it is time to refresh the public's memory as to why that little law passed in 1990 is so important and why it needs to be enforced and obeyed.

Balloons kill wildlife. Whether intentionally released as a promotional event, or carelessly let loose from an outdoor celebration, or accidentally escaped from the grasp of a child, a helium balloon can travel very far in a short period of time. (One was documented to have traveled 150 miles in less than four hours after escaping from a realty office.) Eventually the balloon deflates and descends back to earth or sea and begins to wreak its havoc on nature.

Here's a quiz:

1. What does a deflated helium balloon look like in the ocean?

2. What is the favorite food of some species of endangered sea turtle?

If you answered 'jellyfish' to both those questions you now understand the problem.

Sadly, sea turtles, whales, seals, sea birds, and other marine creatures die ev­ery year from ingesting or becoming entangled in discarded plastics, including balloons. Plastics clog or fill the digestive tracts of these animals, causing them to starve to death.

On land a deflated balloon trailing a ribbon becomes a hazard to many species of wildlife, including osprey chicks. Notorious trash collectors, adult ospreys add balloons, fishing line, kite string, plastic bags, and other human garbage to their nest. The nest becomes a death trap for their young, who become hopelessly ensnared in our carelessly discarded trash.

Whether accidental or deliberate, balloon releases are a form of pol­lution that can easily be stopped if more people are made aware of the dangers they pose to wild­life. We ask everyone to help spread the word.

Read more about the threat posed by balloons and download balloon information posters at balloonsblow.org.