Outdoors Maryland; 1506

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. Coming up. The season plays. And hopes are high for the return of the Chesapeake oyster. See what's one thing to watch in your own backyard jungle. And follow the trail of the lost and missing. Nights. Outdoors Marylanders produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. DENR. Inspired by Nature. You know.

It's a hot summer afternoon on the Lynnhaven river near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. This river was once three known for its oysters. But today it's closed to shellfish harvesting. The warm salty water here is a fertile breeding ground for the oyster killing parasites. M.S. Sachs and dermal. Cliff love knows this all too well. He heads up a local oyster restoration group that grows oysters off their docks so that they can be planted on Sanctuary reefs. Cliff pulls up a plastic mesh bag filled with oysters that he has raised for two years. It's not good news. A lot of these are dead. You can see they're open just a little bit. And it has a hollow sound. That's what a lot of these cloisters have been a

vital part of the Chesapeake Bay for centuries but their numbers continue to be decimated by disease. They are a critical species to the health of the Chesapeake Bay because they are filter feeders that help improve water quality. I'm not so worried that I have grazed that much of oysters and a lot of them are dead because we know the ones that are alive have good genes and they'll pass their genes on. That's good genes which many hope will someday produce oysters amused or at least resistant to disease from the Lynnhaven river to the less salty waters off the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Scientists are now searching for oysters that have a good survival rate. So we want a short quick is basically one grab each member from the edge to try and find the edge of the oyster see don't just grab fossil shelf. That we want to oysters that are on the bottom with his team of divers Dr. Ken painter of the University of Maryland has been studying various strains of oysters planted on Sanctuary reefs and the chop tank river. We.

Were looking at a survival growth in that we measure the incidence of disease in the oyster population. The divers have only five feet of visibility. Sometimes less. But Ken painter is pleased with what they bring up. There's one of the oysters that were planted last year. It's only about a year old but it's almost two inches long. They're growing very very well. These oysters have all been raised at the Oyster hatchery program at Horn points run by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Tens of millions of oysters are spawn here for our planting experiments. Dr. Donald Merritt runs the program. We're trying to evaluate different strains of our native oyster. Some of which we collect from different locations around the bay or even along the United States Golf and those different strains that have been selectively bred for disease tolerant. We do try to keep our bridge separate so that we can evaluate one strain versus another.

The hatchery not only spawns the oysters but produces food for them for two to three weeks until they're ready to say. Each year millions of these oysters are transported unto a small cargo vessel to be taken out to Oyster sanctuary. Fire It's a delicate process which has to be done quickly. Too much exposure to sun and the lack of water could kill the young oysters. On this occasion the oysters are dumped onto an oyster reefs near the chalk thank River Bridge. Charles friends heads up the oyster recovery partnership a nonprofit organization in charge of planting new oysters the overall program we're trying to do is probably put a hundred million oysters or more. In the just the Bay this year. With about 24 sites. About half of them will be sanctuary. The other half will. Befall the manatees are flitches A. Close the area. That will be open. In three or four years with these animals. Short for the commercial fishing operation. But these outflanking

experiments are still in an early stage. Don Merrick the short term goals are we're going to try to keep doing what we're doing here in the Hadrian. We don't want to just simply keep her on more more more which is over or we want to learn from everything that we. Throw overboard. I don't want to give you any false hope to think that we have the magic oyster out there. We have not discovered the magic oyster. But in Virginia scientists at the Virginia Institute for Marine Science are studying an oyster that many believe holds some promise. It's called area Kansas and it's from China. It grows for more quickly than the native oysters. And it seems to like the conditions in the Chesapeake Bay. More importantly it's resistant to the oyster killing parasites here. The defining immortality of Willsboro was out of about how many. But. 500 saw not one dead in 500. And we've had Dr. Stan Allen has been studying these oysters for more than two years. He is currently doing tests by submerging the oysters in plastic

mesh bags placed in floats on the York River. He's taken precautions to ensure that these non-native oysters cannot reproduce. He has also made certain that they're not carrying parasites or diseases. They're. Unbelievable. The real interesting thing is that you're not going to hear any clicks or clack from dad always to show they're just not dying is rare to find. Dead ones. But that enthusiasm is not shared by all scientists. Oyster specialist Dr. Marc Luckenbach has been studying how these oysters interact with native oysters. He's placed young Chinese oysters which are pink in color on the same slate as native oysters. The experiment is still not completed but Luckenbach says the native oyster seems to be overpowering the Chinese oyster. It looks like this Chinese oyster from these first experiments aren't quite as good at growing together in crowded in in clusters. And if that's the case then we we're not really sure if it be a

reforming animal. Lookin back says a lot more research needs to be done on the Chinese oyster. We don't know if we were going to try to repopulate the bay or populate the bay with this animal. We don't know enough about its lifecycle and its larval behavior and where they go and how they settle. We don't know enough to be able to do that we know very very little about its ecology. If we do want to be so bold or choose to be so bold as to introduce this animal into the bay we need to do it with very very careful balancing of the risks and the benefits. That sentiment has taken hold in Maryland where limited trials with the Chinese oyster have been approved. Even as scientists at the horn point hatchery continue to work toward a disease resistant native oysters. And while there is hope for now scientists say there is no magic wand solution to the Chesapeake Bay is fading. Oyster population. They harken back to the age of dinosaurs. They've inspired

decades of B-movie starring extra terrestrials big and bizarre beyond your average bug praying mantises prey on the imagination. Menaces are actually unique throughout the animal kingdom and many people believe that there are also beneficial. Dr David Yeager is a neuroscientist and associate professor of psychology at the University of Maryland College Park. Especially if she's got a good place to come to eat. She's got a lot of food around. Melinda Burns is Faculty Research Associate menaces are in sacks that in general belong to the same large collection of insects that includes things like grasshoppers and crickets and katydids and also cockroaches. In fact in many senses a madness is just a predatory cockroach. We're like Artemesia today which is a site site a College Park and this is prime time in early September for manis as menaces are

actually not a large group of insects. There are about 2000 species of mantises worldwide. Most of those species are found in the tropics and Chinese Mannus is the most commonly seen and in fact it's not native to our area. It's a species that was introduced up around Philadelphia at the turn of the 20th century and it's been very successful and spread both south and west and in Maryland is become of much more common much more frequently seen than the Carolina mantis. The Chinese madness tends to be either green or brown. The Carolina Mannus is our native mantis button. We're at the northern part of its range the biggest populations are found further south. It's easy to identify the Carolina menace compared to the Chinese menace because both the males and females are very much smaller and the man is on the left. It is a Carolina Mannus female so that you can easily see the size difference between the two.

Species. The females of the Carolina mouse can be a range of different colors. Sometimes you can find them almost an apple green and this particular female and is at the other end of the spectrum with model gray coloration are a pretty weighings that she has in the modeling one of the things that people notice immediately when they look at Mannus is is the huge eyes menaces are among the most visual of insects and they have an uncanny knack of turning their heads and focusing their attention on whatever they're looking at in an almost robotic way. Anna says are completely predatory. They are an insect that is specialized as a carnivore and the style of hunting that man has is use a certain way large adult Manson's like the Chinese man is that we have around here can handle remarkably big crayons.

And I only eat crickets and grasshoppers and katydids and in someone usual cases a larger menaces have been known to eat prey items like lizards and sometimes small birds and even in the case of one Manison downtown Washington DC is found eating a deer mouse that is captured running along below it as certainly predators they rely on their vision to tell them one prey is around and they are required to be moving. So essentially if something's not moving they don't see it. So follow a prey item and sometimes stocks of prey item until it's within range of their forelegs. And then they'll grab it and start to do just in they'll start eating at whichever part of the body happens to be convenient. Sometimes people have likened it to eating a cob of corn working on

the inside. Praying mantises are certainly dangerous to smaller insects with their spines and their braces appetite but they're not dangerous at all to human beings in General Manaf says miles are too small to grasp a piece of human skin. On the other hand menaces are just like any other animal in that if you treated badly or if you scare and in the trying to find itself in the way it defends itself is to strike out with these spined forelegs much as it would catching an insect and you'll feel like you've been stuck with pens. And this is what people say when they think they've been bitten by Mannus they haven't really been bitten. They've been stuck by the four legged spines. Praying mantises groom themselves frequently. They're cleaning off their sensory organs so that they can see better and smell better and taste better. She's been cleaning off

her eyes quite a bit and she does that by brushing them off with a special brush that she has on her forelegs she's been cleaning around 10 of them that takes off any dust and debris that might be clogging up the small receptors that just cleans her feet off. Because Nana says like most insects have contact chemo receptors on their feet. Essentially they taste with their feet. They can tell what they've walked on by the Kemah. Composition if you handle a madness of after it gets off the person will see it frantically cleaning its feet off from its antenna. Apparently they don't really like very much the taste of human skin. Another thing that sets apart Manison is they have an auditory system that consists of just a single ear and when the males are flying around at night looking for the pheromone plumes of the females they're vulnerable to attack by bats and in response to that they have evolved a sensitive

ultrasound detecting system that gives them an early warning and allows them to dive out of the way of an attacking bat. The single year makes them unique throughout the animal kingdom and we call them an auditory Cyclops because of that. Well look all the managers are primarily die early in fact they're also very active in the evening and as we're getting towards dusk it's females who hump aggressively darker until they become almost black. This is the visual pigment that helps them see migrating out towards the front of the eyes so that they will have much better nighttime Titian. It's interesting to Hunt Manners who said nice to try and launch their major activity at dark which is a reproductive behavior.

While it is true that the females tend to be cannibalistic this is something that happens rarely and is primarily something that happens in the laboratory. If the female is receptive she has eggs and she's ready to mate. She's relatively tolerant of the male the male will climb on the females back. They'll mate. And the male very discreetly and politely walks away and the female then will lay egg cases sometimes as many as five or six in cases from a single mating. And then the eggs well over winter and the hatch out and it will remain. The babies first job after they leave the egg cases to disperse. To get as far away from each other as they possibly can and any other insights that are likely to assume including their brothers and sisters are potential predators although mantis populations are thought to be stable climate changes may be having an impact.

This year has been an unusual year for menaces here in Maryland. The drought apparently has caused the planet's population to be very low so that when you find a man it's in your garden. Enjoy it watch it learn mung the most fascinating of the insects. 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 deep under water. They can also use their noses to find missing people that may be lost miles away in the woods. Yes and that's why officials at Greenbrier State Park have issued an urgent call for a volunteer search and rescue dogs on this chilly September day.

Care about wavy gray hair. The ground does not work. 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. Well have you dropped off your own 40 and with your work south. Towards her back this way and see if you could 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.

Al Rossi with the group mid-Atlantic dogs works with the French both named Joe Lee. Rodger that we're starting our sector. Right. Go find. The idea with the dog or thing it's going to work through a strong Assaf. At. The zigzag. Basically it'll go out of the sand which is going to be college they can come back into the sand and it is 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 Rasi encourages her to continue searching. Good Girl let's get to work and go find her 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 did you find somebody.

To. Show me where there are so many were she. Good girl. Actually. Yeah. 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 searches are hikers high honors low lost children and campers who may come to the park and on 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 a dog to be operational can take anywhere from a year to two years. Right herby right. Right in 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 goal 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. With. 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. To Devore dirt 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 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. More. Comfortable. But they'll let them jump over you know for a fight and watch your dog watch as a reaction to

when he's picking up the victim said. See that which is very good very good. Yes I've. Carried a. Bigger 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. Hundreds of hours invested in training in 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 actually. Breath. Is. Nothing more than a really fine trial. Life.

After they've been as for a day or two day break. Drop into our website at MPD dog orgy. You send us your comments and suggestions.

Outdoors Maryland is made to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members. Thank you.