A biting wind blew as a handful of Islanders, including two hardy 9-year-olds, gathered at Jensen Point to build a raft on Saturday. They drilled, hammered and sawed, occasionally retreating to their cars to warm up.
The Vashon volunteers, working with staff from the Puget Sound Restoration Fund, were on a mission of some magnitude: The raft would soon become a floating field station, part of a groundbreaking effort to determine whether mussels can help restore the nutrient-loaded waters of Quartermaster Harbor.
Charles Green, who was there with his son Chick Green, said he was pleased to have his son’s Cub Scouts Troop, Pack 275, participate in the effort. Once the raft is fully loaded with its bivalves — some 60,000 mussels that will dangle on ropes beneath it — the troop plans to help staff from the Puget Sound Restoration Fund collect water samples and mussels to measure their results.
“It’s good to have these boys working with tools and with our local scientists,” Green said. Smiling, he added, “I just wished they’d picked a warmer day.”
Quartermaster Harbor has drawn regionwide attention because of its low oxygen levels — a condition that is likely the result of years of storm-water run-off, failing septic systems, lawn fertilizer run-off and other problems.
Indeed, the bay is suffering from a well-known, ecosystem-destroying cycle: The influx of nutrients — phosphorous and nitrogen, in particular — triggers an explosion of algae, plants that die off and create thick layers of organic material on the bay’s floor. Those layers of organic material, in turn, absorb much of the system’s oxygen, resulting in a bay no longer hospitable to fish, clams and other species that require a certain amount of oxygen to survive.
A recent study mapped Puget Sound’s low-oxygen levels, using shades of red to indicate areas with the greatest oxygen problems, said Brian Allen, an ecologist with the Puget Sound Restoration Fund.
The outside perimeter of Vashon and Maury weren’t red at all, he said. Quartermaster, however, was a deep red — as dark as Hood Canal, where huge fish die-offs have triggered widespread alarm in conservation science circles.
Allen, who recently dived in Quartermaster to search for the right site for the raft, said he was struck by the lack of life he saw in the bay. “It’s a wasteland,” he said.
The mussel project, though small in scale, will help scientists determine the degree to which these filter-feeding animals can help restore an ailing marine system, such as Quartermaster Harbor, he said.
Mussels take in nutrients and convert them into protein, filtering out particulates and cleaning the water in the process, Allen said. In Europe, the bivalves are being used at an increasing scale to help clean up polluted bays and estuaries. Such experiments are not occurring in the United States, however, making the Quartermaster project particularly compelling, Allen noted.
“As far as I know, no one else (in the U.S.) has done this for the reasons we’re doing it,” he said.
Allen hopes to take tiny mussels out to the raft by mid-April, where they’ll attach themselves to the 160 strings dangling from the raft’s underside. Staff and volunteers will visit monthly, removing mussels that will then be measured to determine the amount of nutrients they’ve absorbed, Allen said.
Because the mussels will be contained within a cylinder, with in-take and out-take valves, scientists will also be able to take water samples during a few select weeks in the 18-month project, measuring differences between the water that goes into the cylinder and the water that comes out.
“This is essentially a water quality project,” Allen said.
The Puget Sound Restoration Fund, a nonprofit organization based on Bainbridge Island, selected Quarter-master for the project in part because of its identified problems — but also, Allen said, because of community interest in the health of Quartermaster Harbor.
Even if the project proves hugely successful, he said, mussels alone won’t be able to solve the bay’s problems, stemming as they do from a long of history of human impact. Islanders, he noted, will also need to play a significant role in helping to heal the bay, changing the way they live so that the bay doesn’t experience a regular deluge of nutrients.
“We have to figure out how we can live in a watershed,” he said. “How do we get Puget Sound back to a functioning estuary?”
“It took a lot of engineering to get us to the point where we are right now,” he added. “And I think it’ll take some engineering to get us out of it.”
Project organizers met with nearby property owners last year, securing broad support. “I think it’s a good idea to do the research to see if there can be some mitigation by mussels,” said Carl Holert, who has lived on his property perched above Quartermaster since 1984.
Those who volunteered on Saturday also said they hope the raft and its mussels will help to make a difference. Dan Houston, whose son James was part of the effort, said the project will enable the boys to fulfill one of their scouting requirements — a core curriculum as naturalists.
But more important, he added, “This gets them involved in something in their own backyards. We plan to stick with it. We hope to get involved with some of the sampling.”
As for the two boys, they said they were pleased to know they were helping to clean up Quartermaster Harbor.
“I think (the project’s) really good,” said Chick Green, a third-grader at Chautauqua, adding that he also enjoyed using his dad’s power drill. “I liked drilling in the bolts.”
