Outdoors Maryland; 1909

Outdoors Maryland is made by NTT to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members. Thank you. Coming up watercolors Waterman and the magical light. Follow along this week's glory of the hidden world of street. Something. Uncovering the mystery of the world's only floating. Next. Outdoors Marylanders produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Dno are inspired by nature guided by science. But.

Like other artists whose work falls into the Marine painting genre Marcus Stelly is fascinated by the magic of life as advances on wind driven waves were plays on the weather surfaces of wooden boats. But Castello who is based in Chestertown on Maryland's Eastern Shore has found an unusual niche within that artistic tradition. Many of these paintings focus on the water men who make their living harvesting the Chesapeake Bay. So while his water colors are beautiful studies in composition geometry light

and dark. His works also evoke the gritty struggles hardships and hopes of the men who still fish the bay. In this time honored way. The independent water men hold a special fascination for his deli in part because they like the artist himself pursue a risky occupation where no one can predict what a day will yield. There's just challenge every day of going out and I have to see what's there. It could be the best day they've ever had. It could be a total bust day but they don't know until they go out. I find new things every time I love small subtle things or if it's a grand glorious day with light that I've never seen. It's kind of like velvet. If I don't get out. I don't know what's up. It took a Stelly seven years of hanging around the dogs and Rock Hall before Waterman invited him to spend a day out on the water. Because Tellier in the men's trust and now he spends one or two days each week avoid various work boats

observing and photographing the man in all kinds of weather harvesting everything from crabs and oysters. To eels perch in raw. Fish. The accuracy of what I'm painting. Has to be spot on and the only way to catch that is with a photograph. The nuances of posture the disappointment of a face for instance or the intensity of a hand to going someplace you might try to remember. I use a photograph I use a camera. Back in his studio. His telly selects the slides he wants to use as a reference point for a painting. From a crabbing trip on the Bushwhacker with Waterman Dave or when. His telly chooses an image filled with intense expectation. And drenched with the early morning sun. The pot was on its way up. Is it going to be full of crabs is it going to be a bust I had been able to fish their gear for nine days so their posture in that painting which was more important in their faces process sunrise the sun's not in the water yet but it

has broken the horizon. So it's all over the inside of the boat. It's all over the. Very strong lights and darks. It's a lot of magic on the water. For another painting titled crabbing in the Red Sea. Because Stanley had to lean out over the side of the boat with his camera. Shooting forward. Just as a huge wave was about to slam into the boat. That is the shot that I waited five years for I'd been seeing at sea and I finally figured out I was going to have to lay over the side and get wet. And it turned out. It's still his desire to see the action from perspectives like this that gives his work such an unusual immediacy and surprising detail. Carlin was Sony his owner of the car limo Sony gallery in Chestertown which handles just Delhi's work. If. A waterman is up for Marcus Apple for if a waterman is having a cold miserable terrible day. Mark's having a cold miserable terrible day. And I think. It's the thing that separates him from most of the maritime hitters out there.

He wasn't an observer he's a participant and you know what. And you feel it. And you're able to be a participant in that way. Out on the thing with Waterman Jimmy Klein just really captured a dramatic view of the patent tonguing process. These hydraulic cars are coming up out of the water are streaming out of the oysters. Little Jimmy of profiling a lot of them. Along with providing artistic renderings of the harvest process because still these paintings also speak eloquently about the difficulties of this work and the dignity of the men who pursue it. Jimmy Cliff. When Mark paints a picture and does a sketchy I thank you for doing that as a tribute to the whole industry. All the bad not just person in it. It's a good public awareness public education for people to say what actually happened. And still his work is gaining a growing following.

People have walked out of the gallery with paintings to hang on their walls of total strangers in the grittiest of circumstances cover divide for picking fish and they hang them on the walls of the water to get the biggest kick out of this because for them they don't see themselves as picturesque. Dave Kerwin it's funny because when we were at art shows people come up to me now recognise me and say you're on my living room wall or you're in my den and I'm like OK or really don't know how to act about that I mean but it is an honor that he chose the subject matter. Part of the paintings appeal goes back to the artist's mastery of the watercolor medium. Pete Loesser is a curator with the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in his wife Mariana a collectors of Delhi's work. Mark I think has particularly mastered how to paint water and how to paint reflections on the water how to paint waves water colors. It's a very flat

medium. There's no inherent bossiness reflectiveness in a water color on paper and yet what he achieves is an illusion of what an illusion that causing this water or in some cases water on painted water varnished wood. It's a real technical mastery of the medium. Still these paintings aren't confined to work boats. He's also drawn by the elegant lines and beautiful geometries of sailboats including the Chesapeake Bay these historic racing log canoes. It's pretty neat being pretty much the only photographer out there year after year on the canoe shooting pictures and from those pictures I get to do paintings. That puts you the viewer on the boat changing sails or out on the spring. I really want people to understand just how crowded these boats are at the speed of them and then you have these people stuck way out on these boards that almost defy logic and purpose that high just the

physical drive of capsize and also heightens the effect of speed while Castelli does not consider himself a documentary painter. His paintings of work boats and log canoes are nonetheless capturing a way of life that is increasingly fragile. Dave Cohen I think they're telling a story of the way things are now. But they might not be that way in a hundred years. This industry has changed and I are here and not necessarily for the better. And it might not even be a feasible way to make a living. And not too many young ones want to get into it anymore. It Castelli also captures the water in the news. Hope for the future. The hope that's poignantly expressed in a painting titled handing down. In it Dave Cohen is teaching his son which landmarks to use on sure when setting out ramparts and I'm pointing out over the horizon now are a song take of it later.

You know my shoulder like this love can ever bring a tear to your throat when you see that. You're there's a hidden world flowing beneath the surface in our neighborhoods. Far less. Woods. Most of us live oblivious to the life of strains. Of the streams. No us well. Unable to refuse they accept our thoughtless run off. And careless cast offs. Now a growing corps of volunteers is determined to befriend their streams and test their local waters. My GP had. A cinder block in. A sea of police officers like this. Extreme leader has been a great success and started in 2000 and we've trained about

700 people since we began to sample streams all over the state. And today we have about two thousand eight hundred sampling sites sampled by stream leaders volunteers. Daniel Boulud is Assistant Program chief of the ecological Assessment Program at the Department of Natural Resources. Well every year we're amazed at the number of people that we get interested in the program. I think their love for the outdoors and their willingness to help the natural resources with our stream monitoring efforts just is very rewarding to many of these folks. So that's the first section history really. Mark goes for about that bridge 100 feet and that will take us to about round this. Then. You're going to. Go. Scott strength helps train volunteers from local watershed organizations to find and collect benthic macro invertebrates that look better known as weather buffs.

Right so I'm putting the roots in the net and then I'm again I'm going to be aggressive about this I'm not going to be timid about shake it around. Pretty hard to dislodge the book's sampling procedures are uniform across the state and schedule for the bugs early underwater larval stage before they sprout wings and fly away. Right right. Absence or relative abundance of certain bugs gives researchers a snapshot of the streams water quality. The data these volunteers will collect in their own neighborhoods later this spring will supplement findings by scientists with the Maryland biological stream survey. Part of the beauty of stream writers is we're able to connect people with their local environment. We provide them with all the information and equipment that they need to basically find out the help of their local watershed. It is really up here in March and April the volunteers set out to sample local streams following guidelines. Roger Fitzgerald located his backyard stream by G

p.s. when we sample a stream we record the date and time. And that's important because external events like a big flood could really change what we find in the stream. For daughter Natalie. The stream will forever flow through childhood memory. Living the dream does well feel closer to nature because it's just like there in front of you. At first glance this stream seems rural and pristine but Roger is by trade an engineer and an active member of the pretty boy watershed alliance. He understands his dream is part of a complex watershed system that feeds into pretty boy a reservoir. One of Baltimore's main sources of drinking water. What's happening on the scene upstream impacts water quality. What we sample at each stream is a variety of habitat in proportion to what whereabouts found in the stream. In this dream we did 14 riffles. 300 cut banks. In three submerged logs and sticks. From

that. Habitat we find a variety of creatures. Looks like I found a stone fly larvae here on their banks in place. They generally have two tails he may have them stuck together. The stone flies sound in good quality streams moderate quality stream so would not be sound in the poor quality streams. Some of our streams have had buckets with just crawling with stone flies just popping out of the sea out of the bucket. This one is more of a moderate quality and it has some stone flies and some crane flies but not a an abundance of invertebrates. Miles away near downtown Baltimore. Hardy volunteers with the Jones phones watershed Association are teaching their daughters some raw truths about urban

living. Without the help of such volunteers as Ellen Schmidt restoration coordinator the survey of streams in this area could never be accomplished. The Jones post-watershed is about 58 square miles and there's roughly about 200 stream Miles. Part of our watershed is in Baltimore County and part of our watershed is in Baltimore City there's a definite difference between the streams that you find in Baltimore County and the streams that you can block to more city due to urbanization and the amount of impervious surface you do get directly what the waters are gathering on the street running into the stream so as you may notice there is a lot of trash but there are also other hazards in the stream. For instance the runoff of chemicals pesticides fertilizers are all eventually going to run to the stream as well which will affect the quality of the stream. You do you see anything that you can tell is living in there. Listen right here. Some things are really good maybe a legion something that. It's. Going to look like a little warmer than the one.

Carole Howard the science writer who lives near the street I would see all the trash there just to break my heart. If a sweet lovely little stream and yet there's just. So much so much. Trash. Thrown and good the soapy water coming in the outfalls of. Hope we want to clean up the basis of this is. The place to start though with all the water that goes into the face of it. So. I'll need it to feel like I can do something. Give me some sense of. What's next a progress. This. Hope. To get other people involved this wealth of. In their heart. It. Was one. Big night. Many of. The bugs that we've been seeing today and that were typical of what we've sampled last year aren't very high quality they're usually tolerant of pollution which is typical of the stream.

In spite of recent budget cuts the string Withers program continues with the vital help of volunteers. I think it's great that Maryland has such. Forethought. Not only. Trying to learn more about their streams but giving citizens the opportunity to do that for themselves as well. Late summer in the mountains of western Maryland the seasons colors will soon drop to the fourth floor. The sure sign that now is the last chance before winter sets in to explore one of nature's most mysterious and misunderstood creatures. You're in the hills. Scientists are looking for better ways to track and understand Marilyn's bats. With the support of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources the Maryland Bureau of Mines and University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Frostburg. These

projects are important as bats and humans increasingly cross us. Dan feller an ecologist for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources is monitoring caves and abandoned coal mines in the region. We monitor bad highborn Akeelah sites every other winter that way we minimize disturbance but still get trend data. And we go into account and we do identify the species and on occasion we do handle bat to determine what species it is. Feller hopes to learn how to balance Bat Conservation with safety concerns. These particular lines are very dangerous and there were people that were using it on a regular basis. We found evidence in here that people had killed bats in the past and had been shot. Fireworks have been set off in the mines during hibernation which can be detrimental to the species. We have protection now in the form of gates in the caves. Since that has happened the number of bats hibernating in these mines

has increased actually in some mines it's over doubled. It turns out bats are in the habit of moving into our manmade habitats even as we destroy their natural ones. You've heard of bats in the belfry and bats in the attic. How about bats in the real room. Tom this scenic scieno canal near popo Maryland is the site of another potential conflict of interest between bats and humans. Jay Edward Gates associate professor at the Center for Environmental Science. This is the Indigo tunnel and we've been conducting a bat survey since the middle of September and the objective is to determine what bats are using the tunnel. This is the time of year when that swarm around caves and tunnel entrances. This study is being conducted because the tunnel may be converted to a recreational trail as part of a national rail to trail program. The problem is that anything you do to make him prove it as a something that

people can use. You're probably not going to make it better for bats. Another problem is the catching and counting bats is easier than it sounds. That researchers use a harch trap at the entrances to bat hideout so named because it has fishing line strong in two rows. Amy HASKI was a graduate student at the Appalachian lab and they see it but they know they can get through it. They just don't quite detect the second row in air so it's a nice little trick we play on the bats then fall into a slick plastic sleeve where they are trapped. Every hole around the trap must be blocked off so the bats only have one route out of their residence with the huge opening of the tunnel. This requires climbing rappelling and lots of netting. Researchers also use the high tech method of plastic garbage bags. Held together by sticks rod remaining opening. The setup must be done before nightfall because bats surveys not

surprisingly happen at night. A large part of each evening is spent waiting. Besides a love of bats one important characteristic in these biologists is patience. Finally a big brown and a little brown bat. The researchers record the species in sacks measure their wingspan weigh them. And mark them before releasing. Researchers at the Appalachian lab are also involved in mitigating another potential clash between bats and man. This bad survey funded by the DNR is power plant research division monitors bad activity on Appalachian ridges. The home perhaps a future wind turbines which can generate sustainable energy but may also kill bats and birds in the process. There is the hypothesis that bats are using ridges to

migrate they'll follow along these linear landscape elements and use this to navigate their way south. We have three species of migratory bats in Maryland and we have the hoary bat the Red Bat and the silver haired bat. And those are the ones that are being struck most often at the wind turbine facilities specialized bat detectors called Ana bats which record ultrasonic sound have been placed at the top of 10 different fire towers from Pennsylvania to West Virginia as the bat flies through the area. There's a Plexiglas dish angled at 45 degrees. What happens is the echo location pulses come in hit the Plexiglas dish and then are reflected into the microphone. The call will go through the audio wire come down into the end a bad system and be recorded on the CFC cards. That audio information is then downloaded onto a laptop computer for analysis at the lab. So what we have here is examples of different echolocation calls for bats we've collected at the different fire towers. This first that here is a silver haired bat.

It has been called that are typically hockey sticks taped whereas a hoary bat which is the second bat is down for here. This has much lower frequency calls. And then this last batch of the eastern red bats and they have a have calls that are typically between 35 and 40 killer ETS. This information could be used to help determine where to place the wind turbines or when to operate them to minimize bad mortality. Back at another abandoned mine this night survey of band activity is going the way natural surveys sometimes go. Slowly. Nothing. But that's the way it goes sometimes and there's always another tower or mine or cave. Where bat researchers can seek and find these amazing creatures. Drop into our website at w w w dot NPT dot o r g

to send us your comments and suggestions. Learn more about Maryland's diverse natural beauty on our website. And in our magazine. Dno are 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.