Outdoors Maryland; 104

Outdoors Maryland is made by NPT to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members. Thank you. Outdoors Maryland is produced in cooperation with the movement department of natural resource which you know. Inspired by nature guided by sightings. Right.

Now you might say that these dogs have a nose for trouble. The special search and rescue dogs can sniff out drowning victims that are deep under water. They can also use their noses to find missing people that may be lost miles away in the woods. Yes I bet you're OK and that's why officials say Greenbrier State Park have issued an urgent call for a volunteer search and rescue dogs on this chilly September day. Got brown hair a belt belt or shoulder weaving three pair of brown eyes does not work with a 9 year old diabetic girl has been reported missing from the campground. A preliminary search has turned up nothing. So the park has turned to dog handlers to help intensify the search. What have you dropped off your own 40 and what's your work south. Towards her back this way and see if you can find anything in

this area. The dogs are receiving assignments here today are a special type of search dog known as air scent dogs. Unlike tracking or traveling dogs which follow the victim scent trail on the ground. Air scent dogs can detect human scent carried by air currents. These dogs are used for searching large areas and in situations where the victim's path is not known. Al Rossi with the group mid-Atlantic dogs works with a French boat named Joe Lee. Roger that we're starting our sector. Right. Go find. The idea with the dog. Arafat it's going to work. It's wrong aside. From the zigzag. Basically it'll go out of the sand which is going to be college they can come back into the south and it was exactly in a now but after ranging up and down the rocky hillsides for some time.

Jolie still has not picked up a definitive scent. Rossi encourages her to continue searching. Good Girl let's keep work and go find us a short time later the dog picks up her pace a sign that she's closing in on a scent. She tears down a hillside. Rasi can't see if she has located someone but the dog returns to him to lead them to her fine. What you guys did you find somebody. Show me where they are. Show me where is she. Good girl. Actually. There you go. I. Come here to find you. Are you OK. I'll let you come in and. Q turns out Ashley is fine. In fact she was never really lost. She was planted in the woods as part of a training exercise designed to help dog handlers and other volunteers hone their skills in preparation for the dozens of real searches that go on in Maryland forests and

parks. Every year. There's a dog in the home. Brown is search and rescue coordinator for Maryland's Department of Natural Resources. Typical sorts as are hikers hunters lost children and campers who may come to the park and walk through the park. In cases where we bring air scent dogs and we find that 50 percent of the time that they'll find it. These dogs and their handlers go through an arduous training regimen to learn the complex skills involved in finding missing people caring Morlan is a trainer with an East Coast Canine Search and Rescue based on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The time involved after trying to dog to be operational can take anywhere from a year to two years. Write her be write. Write to her novice dogs begin simply by learning to run after a stranger when given the go find command.

This is mainly to establish the foundation of the dull find command and to make sure that the dog will go in on a stranger because ultimately on a source a dog is looking for someone they don't know. More advanced dogs are taught to find someone who's hidden out of sight. A short distance away in the woods. Go find. Out. What it's all leading up to ultimately is for the dog to find a victim. Come back to the handler and take the handler in to the vet. These exercises teach dogs to follow the scent from live human beings. But not all searches have a happy ending. Sometimes we are looking for drowning victims. Suicide victims and even homicide victims it was so the dogs must be able to find that cadaver scent along with lives. The group uses what they call cadaver dirt for this part of the training.

Cadaver Durt is dirt from the ground where somebody has died and had lain for some time. Because some dogs have an aversion to the smell of death. The initial training involves heavy use of rewards. Can we walk them directly past the scent source as soon as they show an interest in that set then we reward them. Very good very good. Yes what is it. What is it. In addition to training in forest that ends the members of East Coast Canine also undergo extensive training on the water to learn how to find drowning victims. Dogs are very effective in drowning searches because they're able to pick up on even the slightest amount of scent they're able to a war. On human scent that 60 feet under water buried under debris. This phase of search and rescue training starts with placing a floating person in the

water. The dog's approaching a boat driving into the wind. And learn to signal their handler as they pick up the scent. Given the GO FIND command. We have got our. Cover to. Cover. But don't let them jump over you know for a fight and watch a dog watch his reaction to when he's picking up the victim said. She. Which is very good the wine is very good. For a. Paralegal as. Bitter as the boat reaches the victim. Jake is rewarded for his efforts with his favorite treat a tennis ball. Despite these lighthearted moments in training search and rescue is ultimately a serious business. The hundreds of hours invested in training and mock searches are all geared

to honing the skills of the handler and dog to the point where the team might one day. Save a life. That's. The goal. That's what we all stood for to be able to do actually. A raft. Is. Nothing more than a. Really fine style of life. After they've been missing for a day or a few days. If the break feels. It's early morning at sunset marina in Ocean City. When the charter boat the out of bounds pulls out of its lip and heads to sea. The ocean is calm making it easier for Captain Gary Stam to set a course.

The boat is headed far offshore 70 miles to the deep waters of Wilmington Canyon. Satellite maps have indicated that this is where the fish are concentrating their Marlin blue mall and white marlin wahoos and of dolphin. Shark right here we've got a lot of nice maker that here. But the boat's crew and passengers are not after sharks. First mate Scott Miller baits the hook for white marlin. It's July. And these migratory billed fish have begun their travel northward following the warm waters of the Gulf Stream in search of prey. Miller sets out a complex spread of fishing lines running at different lengths from the boat with teasers and baited hooks. I got two tasers. On the sides of the boat. One's a spoiled chain with a horse ballyhoo and. The other one's a ballyhoo chain with a horse ballet behind it and all the baits are naked values. Some skip

some swam most of the time they're off elfish will be attracted to the taser. Onboard is an experienced Marlin fisherman by the name of Joe Zimmer and two top officials of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Service. Eric Schwab and Jill Stevenson are concerned about the white marlin because the numbers of these Bill fish have declined sharply in recent decades. The white marlin stock has been for decades over fish and continues to be over fish throughout its entire range. I don't believe that where a few years away from extinction of the species. But certainly we have stocks that exist at about 15 percent of their historical levels but that. Concern has grown so much that recently the white marlin was tagged as a candidate for the threatened species list. The problem is not with recreational fisherman. They release about 97 percent of the catch. The real problem lies with commercial long liners that kill huge numbers

of white marlin inadvertently in their efforts to catch swordfish and tuna. Challenge with white marlin is this is a stock that ranges throughout the entire Atlantic Ocean. And is therefore shared by many different countries. Upping the management challenge considerably. The crew on board knew they were getting close to Marlin when they spotted the familiar fins of whales and porpoises breaking the surface. These mammals are searching for some of the same prey as the marlin. One of the great opportunity of about an off the coast of Maryland is that there are a lot fo the best people doubt that the whole Again they're all concentrating having to put up the water level before. The out of bounds was now trolling in one of the war movies that spin off from the Gulf Stream an area that should be fertile territory for marlin. Joe Zimmer president of Ocean City's white marlin club has been fishing for more than 30 years and knows how much of a challenge these Bill fish can be for sports fishermen.

They're not particularly easy to fly. Less easy to catch. What. What. So they are great sports. Within two hours of setting out the lights. Not one but two Mormons drop. The captain back down the boat to help their Rikan jewelry and then the fish. Quite minor largely a solitary animal. When we catch more than one about that just happens to be that prey is probably concentrated in an area where a number of Marlette have come to that area to. Enter there. It's very exciting to rely on it because they will often dive or take off going a different direction at a marlin do what we call a damn thing they put on quite a show which is why they're such a popular sport best.

For both jewel and Derek. The release of the Marlin is as important as the catch. Coming up. I was perfectly OK to enjoy a catch and release fishery but we want to do so in a way that minimizes any mortality might result from the stress of the catching process. That. Wants. To make its most cases disengages the fish in some cases breaks the line so that the fish can be released very rapidly. Later that day with the seas still calm the fisherman pullin a dolphin a favorite food of the marlin. For Jools Stephenson this catch offered a lesson about the food chain. And the river of life that flows in the warm gulf stream waters. What we have here are some young fish that were found in the stomach of the dolphin fish we just caught. It's not often when you fish off shore easy fish the small. Right now are sitting in a very productive part of the ocean you pick out several hundred miles in a different direction and that you may not be any life at all out there.

With the arrival of nightfall the captain and first mate Scott Miller set out lines for yellowfin tuna. To play at night you mostly cut. Corners in a case like dolphin here and there but for the most part we're just primarily targeted. But there it is right now. And they too know we're striking as a bit like you know. That fish got away. But during the long hours of the night several others didn't. For the out of bounds on this two day trip. Finding fish was not a problem. Tuna dolphin and even more white marlin. Once again Eric was fighting to bring in another of these Bill fish. Locating attracting and hooking up to a fish like that in a bad ocean 70 miles off shore is just a tremendous experience. And then experiencing the power and the grace of that fish is a life time opportunity.

But the great thing about white marlin is that half of the food chain and small fat are proliferations predators are looking for food on that concentrated only just about anything that the right thigh. Later that day the out-of-bounds headed for home. As the boat powered into the marina the maid raised for blue flags indicating that four Marlin had been caught and released. It had been a successful outing. Judging by other boats fishing with you know two days that we've been out there you know we did well as well I think as could be expected for the story here. But for the fishermen on board despite their success it was still a bittersweet moment. All of them knew that the numbers of white marlin are at dangerously low levels and that what they had just experienced may not be easily repeated in future years. I'm a very competitive person and. In the past

it was beating the person next to me or catching the person in front of me or not letting the person behind me get in front of me. Now I have more personal goals and I'm competing against my Tainos from last year. General McIntyre defines herself as an elementary school teacher. Wife. Mother of four and a competitive athlete. Janell has raced in the Columbia triathlon in Maryland every year for adult life. Since age 18. When I was young I injured my back. The doctor suggested swimming which lead to triathlon. Since then that's been a major part of my life. The triathlon is structured to challenge the total after. The race begins with a bracing 1.5 pace win. Followed by a grueling forty one K bike race. Finishing with a vigorous 10k run.

At age 36. Gentle sports go on 100 these gamma of someone who rises well before dawn almost every day. To train. But to be a triathlete you have to be very disciplined even on a cold or rainy morning when the alarm goes off you have to get up and do it once you get into the habit. It just becomes automatic. It becomes part of your routine every day and you look forward to doing it. All of the training pays off in late May. The Columbia triathlon is held at Centennial Park an elegant City Maryland. Sign up early. The registration limit of twelve hundred athletes fills months in advance. But if you're ready to. Take a break. Right here but I do like it. The race will start with the open water swim around a cordoned off section of Centennial lay.

On the phone the water temperature say could be a degree. Possibly sixty eight point five. Right here right. At the start athletes are grouped into weights by age. The grandmasters age 65 start first. Person read my. Column. Each wave is assigned a different color catch. Janell's age class female thirty five to thirty nine wears green. This is the first and last time athletes are ordered by any criteria except their own speed. The. Individual times are tracked electronically by an ankle band chip system. This year believe it or not getting into the water felt good it was a very chilly morning and the water temperature was actually warmer than the air temperature.

Jenelle's kept a sports jacket black stripes to help us track her among the other contenders. At the beginning of the race while you're entering the water there's a lot of anticipation about what is about to unfold inside of you. For the swim it's probably one of the most challenging parts of the race. So if you're a novice Offaly you have swimmers. All around you in front of you behind you both sides and it's really a fight in the beginning to get to a place where you can swim at your own pace and just get into your own rhythm in the water. It's either. Go under or or fight to keep going. Heading out the sun is right in your face and it's hard to see but once you turn the corner and. You have your air you're still there. It's enjoyable it's a nice moves when it was very hard getting out of the

water and back into the chilly air temperature of. 1.5 K. in less than 26 minutes later. Gentle sprints out of the water and runs up from hill to the bike transitionary getting out of the water. And. You come in to all the fans lined up running till you hear everybody cheering and screaming for you. This year you could feel the temperature as soon as you got out of the water started getting covered in two spots. You keel your legs started to shake you you need to get some. Heavier clothes on to us to be able to stay warm on the bike. When the bus went by transition it's pretty exciting Has this is their chance to get to see where you are in the race who has already come out who is still in the water and then you start concentrating more on getting out the transition area and getting started out on a bike race.

And the bike is the longest part of the race fraternally out there for over an hour an. Hour and a half. So it's very important in the beginning of the race to not go out too hard knowing that you're going to have a very hard run ahead of you so you need patience self. Time with at least a half way. Point of the day. And night. Start. Pushing harder. I look forward to the end of the bike and starting the run. Heading back into the Centennial Park and into the transition area getting off your bike your legs are very shaky from cycling for so long and this year because it was so cold. My feet were numb. It was really hard getting out of my cycling shoes and into the running shoes. The run is a it's a very challenging course there are a lot of polls on it. There are a lot of sharp

turns so it's hard to maintain a pace and get your rhythm down. On the run you're. Constantly changing up going up the hill or down the hill or. Around the corner. So all set. Points for myself. On the run. You get to the next. Station. When it's her she can. And then make it there. Until OK now let's make it to the next aid station. And. They keep going through the way. When you come down that last hill on the backside of the lake you have about a mile to go. You can hear the fans cheering at the finish line. And now kids like you feel a boost of adrenaline. Yelling. You're almost there. This is something that's worked hard for you prayed for and when you get to that set aside you know you can do it. Jenelle spent. 383. Out of one thousand fifty six contests.

This sets a good example for all of my children especially because to so that means that a woman can go out and watch. Children. And also. Do it all. While. Dropping to our Web site at W W W dog o r g to send us your comments and suggestions for. Learn more about Maryland's diverse natural beauty on our website and in our magazine inspired by nature guided by science outdoors Maryland is made by NPT to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members.

Thank you.