A small sample of what our camera captured this summer.



Look closely and you should see lots of eelgrass, two flounder, one Dungeness crab, many mussels and even some Beach Watchers!

Finishing Cornet Bay - July 10

On a brilliantly sunny day Gregg, Neal, Clarence and I (Nancy) managed to get the rest of the transects done in Cornet Bay. Gregg made it much easier by plotting the transects on the navigation software and unifying everything on the laptop, eliminating the need for a hand held GPS and paper transect maps.

What made it hard was the wind, the current, (none of us had ever seen whitecaps on tiny Cornet Bay before)


the sun, (that's Neal hiding under a towel in an attempt to see the transects plotted on the laptop)


and numerous navigational hazards in the shape of boat traffic, crab pots,

derelict vessels


docks, (note the sailboat trapped behind the pilings)


and rock cliffs.


Under these conditions, the path of our first attempt at a transect resembled a ball of yarn attacked by a cat.
It took several passes, but Clarence figured out tricks to keep us on course. On our longest, downwind transect (the straight turquoise line) he ran the 130 horse outboard in reverse to slow our progress enough so that the camera didn't record a blur of sand and eelgrass whooshing by.

Gregg says "the transects we did July 10 were: #4,#7,#24,#40,#50,#12,#5 and #6. MediaMapper didn't print out all the transect point numbers (quirk of the program.)"


Neal also sent his view of our trip. "On Thursday, July 10 we had 8 transects. I consider this the most successful outing. We had good transects mapped on Mediamapper and we could track our position in real time. It was difficult at times, but we knew how we were doing. Besides we were getting used to a new boat. With more experience we would consider this a normal day in very acceptable conditions."

Cornet Bay - July 7

Gregg reports that on July 7 the team mapped the following transects "(roughly) #5, (#3 or #6), (#10 or #?), (#20 or #?), (#?), #1 and a failed attempt at #4." Obviously we're still working the bugs out of our system.

Neal says "we had 6 transects and an interesting track near the NW edge of our survey area."

Doing a transect at Cornet Bay

On June 27th we headed out to Cornet Bay for a chance to see our subject eelgrass meadow in the video monitor. Jan, Ken and Neal had successfully recorded eelgrass footage on a trial run in Holmes Harbor, but this was our first time at Cornet Bay, which is the site of a planned restoration project. Our funding mandated that we provide video footage of Cornet Bay before the end of June. We got things together just in time, thanks to heroic efforts by Jan who spearheaded the equipment purchase and Neal and Gregg who took on the huge task of making sure all the technical aspects of the project work together.

Adjusting the camera to look straight

down at top of eelgrass canopy

A view of placid Cornet Bay

Jan and Ken deploying the tow fish

Cornet Bay Transects plotted on paper

Neal viewing our course on the laptop

Cornet Bay as seen on the laptop

More perks of the Beach Watchers job

Our Equipment - Clarence's Boat

Here's the set up for our second boat, which belongs to the fisherman husband of Beach Watcher and founding Eelgrass project member, Jill. Clarence is a great addition to the team. He's even amazed us by drilling holes in his deck to mount the Minn Kota trolling motor. We're not sure we want to know how much pressure Jill applied. He also built a special adapter for that pesky GPS/Transducer pole.

We first used this setup on July 10th.

Our Equipment - Ken's Boat

As we get started, the Island County Beach Watchers eelgrass project depends on two volunteer captains and their boats. This adds the necessary dimensions of portability and adaptability to our set up. Our captains and our techies had stepped up and devised mounting and deploying solutions for both vessels.

Our equipment has arrived and has been set up on Beach Watcher Ken's boat. We took it out for a shake down cruise on June 25th. As expected, there were minor technical difficulties - our first involved not being able to see indicator lights on the electronics in the bright sunlight. (Our techies, being Northwesterners, had never before encountered this particular difficulty.)
Launching Ken's boat Ken brings the equipment laden, but not yet organized boat to shore so that Neal and I can climb aboard.

The GPS/Transducer Pole is one of the items that must be fit to both boats. For Ken's, Gregg devised a mount - at bottom right - and a cruciform fin that fits into the mount. Neal and Ken are installing the pole.

While the three of us in the boat had a go at getting everything set up and running, the second string was relaxing on the shore of Holmes Harbor waiting their turn. One of the perks of being a Beach Watcher is the amount of time spent on the beach enjoying great weather.
















Other vital equipment:
Minn Kota trolling motor



Electronics suitcase













Tow Fish and camera

Tech Support

The Equipment

When we were setting up this project we visited the Friends of the San Juan Islands eelgrass monitoring team to see their set up. They also started because of concerns about eelgrass beds in their county, principally Wescott Bay where the plant disappeared a few years ago.

Jim and Tina showed us the open skiff they use and explained their equipment array and video mapping methods.

The red box contains the electronics for the video. Attached to the nav station are all the connections to integrate the navigation software and GPS coordinates. The cage with the white hourglass shape that Jim is holding is their tow fish. The camera - gray cylinder at the center - is protected by the cage and the hourglass shaped fin stabilizes the unit as it is pulled through the water.