Quick return to Willapa

On return from a conference in Vancouver, I picked up my new crew (John and Valerie) and headed back to Willapa for 2 more days of fieldwork in order to finish this round of data collection. We'll return later in the summer to see how things have changed at all 3 of the sites. Last time, Kate and I didn't make it out to one of the sites - Nemah. This site requires boat transportation, which we coordinated with Brett and Lee for this trip. Taking the boat is alway fun and never for lack of adventure....


We made it out to Nemah way too early the first day. This is always a bit annoying because it means that you could have slept in for another 3o+ minutes. We anchored in the channel and waited for the eelgrass to emerge. With the tide still high you have no idea that an intricate maze of oyster cultivation, rotation and ownership exists beneath you - only an inkling as indicated by the weird tree boughs popping up from the water haphazardly around you. These aren't as random as one would guess, but mark the channels and the different oyster beds.



With two extra hands we finished the work just before the tide flooded the sites. I was very gracious for the extra set of hands as the tides were much worse this week, and we had to hurry to get things done in time. Things weren't too stressful out there though as John and Brett are old hacks at this line of work, and Valerie is an experienced fieldworker, on loan from Universite de Rimouski. She's currently visiting the Lubmenge lab, and was really good natured about yucky fieldwork, most likely because her work involves scraping mussels off of frozen St. Laurence River buoys in the dead of winter!


When the tide starts to bite at our heels we can be assured that Brett's phone will ring. This is always Lee, wondering where the heck we are, as we're suppose to pick him up further up the estuary. Answering a cell phone is very difficult when you are wearing layers of clothing and also trying to drive a boat, not to mention the occasional passing downpour! The winds picked up daily just as it was time to power up-estuary. This slowed us down some, but we managed to cut through the rough chop at high speeds. The knees are a little worse for wear despite my best efforts to absorb the boat bounce with my snowboarder stance.


I'm glad the cell coverage is good out here though, or we may just have missed Lee and Steve before their little oyster hummock went under! (Note: this is not as dangerous as it seems, the water is still quite low and they could have walked home if we didn't show up in time.... I hope!)

Back in town, we stopped for a quick coffee (of course) at Adelaide's before getting ready for the afternoon's eelgrass and algae sorting and packaging extrazaganza. More to come re Adelaide's later this summer when we do our official rating of the Coffee Houses of the Pacific Northwest, but here's a picture of the bookstore adjoining the shop to shop you just how upscale quaint little Ocean Park can be!I have some more good videos, but until I figure out how to upload them faster or cut them down to size I'll wait with those. Until the next trip to Coos....