#WhatsInTheTrap

By David Prescott, Save The Bay South County Coastkeeper

It is not often that you get the chance to really see who lives at the bottom of the Bay. Most times we are swimming along the shore, boating over the surface or fishing off the beach. However, just a few feet below the surface, we discover a whole new world of fish, crabs and shellfish.

Three summers ago, Save The Bay partnered with Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (Division of Fish and Wildlife) and the University of Rhode Island on a study to determine the abundance and distribution of blue crabs within Rhode Island. My focus area was in the lower Pawcatuck River and Little Narragansett Bay in Westerly. The purpose of the project was to analyze the effects of climate change of the geographic expansion of the range of blue crabs. In other words, as our local waters get warmer, are we seeing a northward shift of southern species (such as blue crabs)?

Save The Bay deployed  blue crab traps and checked them frequently throughout the season. While blue crabs were the species of interest to RIDEM and URI, I was equally interested in what other species of crabs and fish made Little Narragansett Bay their home.

We definitely counted large numbers of blue crabs over the past several summers. They seem to prefer the warmer waters of the tidal river where we found the greatest numbers.  However, in addition to blue crabs, we have counted various numbers of other species of crustaceans (lobsters, green crabs, rock crabs, and spider crabs) as well as fish (oyster toadfish, summer flounder, tautog, cunner, scup, rock gunnel, northern pipefish and black sea bass). Many of these animals loved the protection of the cage and used it as a refuge to hide from other predators.

While the study by RIDEM and URI concluded in 2014, Save The Bay has continued to monitor these traps for changes in species composition and abundance. This past summer was the summer of the scup. Large numbers of good sized scup (eight to ten inches) found their way into the traps on a regular basis. In addition, we also caught our first predominantly freshwater species – catfish. It is always interesting to discover what we find as we pull up these traps to the surface of the Bay.

To follow our adventures as we check our traps next season, you can follow me on Twitter @coastkeeperRI or follow the hashtag #WhatsInTheTrap

Volunteering with Save The Bay: A Day in the Life

By Annalisa Carmosino, Save The Bay Volunteer and Intern

When you volunteer with an organization dedicated to preserving something as dynamic as Narragansett Bay, you know every day will be different. Interns and volunteers at Save The Bay work behind the scenes and with the public, contributing to Save The Bay’s educational goals, orchestrating cleanups, and much more.

One of my favorite activities as an intern is assisting at our Exploration Center in Newport. The Exploration Center is home to a variety of creatures native to Narragansett Bay, and a few tropical friends who were misdirected by the Gulf Stream. I have loved learning about the animals in our bay, especially since there are so many I haven’t seen before now. The Exploration Center attracts families, school groups, and anyone walking along the beach who’d like to pet a starfish or see an octopus up close. Teaching our guests about the inhabitants of the bay and watching them interact with those creatures is extremely satisfying. When people have a face (or a fin) in mind, I think it makes them realize how important it is to conserve the Bay.

I’ve also learned that planning a Save The Bay cleanup requires more than gathering a few trash bags. Corporate groups, fraternities, and other organizations reach out to Save The Bay eager to do a group cleanup. Volunteers and interns find an appropriate cleanup site, organize trash removal with the city, and work with the group to figure out the best date for the cleanup. Any and all behind the scenes work is clearly worth it the day of the cleanup. These groups reach out to Save The Bay because they’re excited about our mission and want to help, so we always have enthusiastic volunteers. The beach captain-the volunteer or intern leading the cleanup-is responsible for explaining where and what to clean, and safety precautions. Every cleanup is different, so it’s up to the beach captain to be ready for anything. Volunteers find all kinds of litter on our beaches: clothing, toys, tires, tons of cigarette butts, lots of plastic grocery bags, you name it, we’ve found it.  The volunteers’ energy and the crazy things we find keep things interesting!

Save The Bay also hosts and participates in a variety of events, and throughout my internship, I’ve been assisting our events manager with preparations for Artists for The Bay, Save The Bay’s annual art show and sale in December.  Researching and contacting artists, donors for our raffle, and promoters has been a lot of fun; Rhode Island is a hub of artists and small businesses, so we’ll have plenty of great artwork and prizes. Save The Bay also makes an appearance at events all over the state. Recently we’ve participated in Johnson and Wales University career fair, the Artisan Show at Central Nurseries, and Bowen’s Seafood Festival. Interns and volunteers man the Save The Bay table, providing information about volunteering, upcoming events, and becoming a member. These events are an amazing opportunity to meet people who are unfamiliar with our mission, make connections, and recruit future volunteers or supporters of Save The Bay.

Save The Bay offers so many opportunities to get involved. There’s a role for everyone here. Whether you’re excited to work with the public or prefer to be behind the scenes,  as a volunteer, you’ll help Save The Bay in too many ways to count. To find out more about what you can do for Save the Bay, contact our volunteer manager July Lewis (jlewis@savebay.org) to dive in.

The Battle That Started It All

By Topher Hamblett, Director of Advocacy & Kendra Beaver, Staff Attorney

As Save The Bay approaches our golden anniversary in 2020, we can’t help but celebrate some of the heroes that made us who we are today. One of those heroes is Louise Durfee, the fifth President of Save The Bay. 

Louise has a remarkable record of achievement that has led to dramatic improvements in Narragansett Bay. She has served as director of the R.I. Department of Environmental Management (DEM), Tiverton Town Council president and council member, and chairperson of the Governor’s Sewage Task Force that examined the failure of the Fields Point Wastewater Treatment Plant in the 1970s. She negotiated the creation of the Narragansett Bay Commission and was one of the first female partners of a major law firm in Rhode Island. 

Louise Durfee, fifth president of Save The Bay.

Louise was a Tiverton Town Council member in 1970, when a small but powerful grassroots organization called Save Our Community formed in response to a proposal by Northeast Petroleum to build and operate an oil refinery in Tiverton, on the site of an oil tank farm. That organization became Save The Bay, and she was a key member. Sitting in her home, where the opposition to the refinery first met, Louise shared her reflections on Save The Bay’s first battle, the battle that began it all. 

“I would say that 90-95% of the people in town were in favor of the refinery when it was introduced. The proposers came in and invited the community and all the boards and commissions to free dinner and drinks. People flocked to the Stonebridge Inn. They showed this little video of the the refinery, and how this would lower our taxes. 

“It was here, in this dining room, where only about seven or eight people were saying, ‘What do we do with this?’ We formed a corporation; it was called Save Our Community. We got Jim Edwards, a litigator who threw himself into this, and he did nothing else for three or four months. There were zoning hearings. Jim treated it as a court case. There was no regulatory body in place. No CRMC, no DEM, no Clean Water Act. The social media, the web sites, these did not exist at that time. What we had was newsprint. The coverage by the newspapers was extraordinary.

“Every week, the local paper would have these huge headlines and it would champion the opposers [of the oil refinery]. Gradually, the townspeople began to say, ‘This may not be so good.’ And at the same time, the tank farm at the [proposed refinery] site had spills week after week, and after every single spill we’d call out the press and say, ‘This is what we can expect here!’ 

“We lined the first row of these public hearings with quahoggers, even though Mt. Hope Bay [which abuts northern Tiverton] was closed off to them. It was so amusing. The two lawyers representing Northeast Petroleum would call Jim Edwards and say, ‘Would you mind walking in with us? We’re so fearful of those quahoggers, we think we’re going to get beat up!’ 

“We established an office in the north end of town, with John Scanlon as our executive director. He was there a good part of the day. People came in and out, and there would be gossip and this and that. He was funny, I mean hilarious. He was a great guy. He became a focal point. 

“A guy named John Canulla was going all over the country, looking at refineries, getting reports and feeding them to the press. He was the first president of Save Our Community/Save The Bay.

“When it came to a vote before the Tiverton Town Council, their [Northeast Petroleum] proposal went down 4-3.”

Louise Durfee embodies the spirit of Save The Bay—determined, passionate, persistent, untiring. That was the spirit of the group that founded us back in 1970, and it’s been our spirit for all our 46 years. “It has been an amazing organization. It really has,” Louise said. “The staying power and the role it has taken on....is just extraordinary. It takes a long period of changing culture, and a new generation comes along. Same kind of movement, different technology today, but same work.” 

Louise also reminds us of the urgency of Save The Bay’s mission. “I think the Bay and its resources will always be a challenge. You have stormwater issues. I think we’re just in our infancy on stormwater. I see that as a major issue. It’s complex. We’re literally just beginning to deal with it. Mount Hope Bay, which I look at every day, still needs a tremendous amount of work. I think you’ve been on the right track on all the issues over the years. The education is important. The advocacy is important. There is still a great deal to be done.

“Save The Bay needs to continue its advocacy to make sure DEM and CRMC have the funds to do their jobs. If the regulators themselves are loathe to speak up for greater resources for fear of consequences, Save The Bay and others must carry the load. A weak DEM and CRMC do not serve the public. Enforcement of environmental laws, fairly applied, is a great educator for all of us and ensures that the State’s magnificent resources are preserved for all.”

Thanks to the strong foundation built by Louise and our founders, we look forward to the next 50 years of advocacy for Narragansett Bay. 

Bay-Friendly Living: How much poop is too much in your water?

By Tom Kutcher, Save The Bay Baykeeper

Dogs are really fun and cute and are, indeed, some of our best friends. They have personalities that endear them to us because they exhibit many of the same expressions and postures as humans, including happy, sad, excited and, yes, ashamed.

But frankly, I don’t want to follow along behind any of my best friends and pick up their poop directly after they relieve themselves. I did this with my kids for about four years, collectively, and that was quite enough for my lifetime.

So I understand when dog owners are tempted to just let Rover sneak into the bushes near the sidewalk to discreetly do his No. 2 business without the fanfare and humility of the inside-out shopping bag. But, as the Baykeeper for Save The Bay, I have to tell you that this is not good.

Let’s do the math. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more than 462,000 households in Rhode Island. And according to the American Veterinary Medical Association, 29 percent of Rhode Island households are homes to dogs. That means there are at least 134,000 dogs in the state that need to relieve themselves at least once per day.

Just about all land in Rhode Island is in the Narragansett Bay watershed, meaning it drains into rivers, streams, lakes and ponds (including drinking-water reservoirs) and eventually into the bay. Additionally, twice as much land in Massachusetts, with a similar but slightly lower dog ownership rate, also eventually drains into Narragansett Bay. Conservatively, we can estimate that when we add in Massachusetts, twice as many dogs are doing “business” in our watershed — that’s 268,000 pups.

Continuing with the math, let’s use a single dog poop as a starting unit of measure; 268,000 pups times 1 poop per day equals 268,000 poops per day. Now, let’s covert that to volume so we can visualize it. Everyone knows what dog poop looks like, right? For simplicity, let’s say the average poop is about a cup, and there are 16 cups in a gallon. Our conservative estimate of 268,000 cups of poop per day divided by 16 cups per gallon gives us 16,750 gallons of poop per day.

Now visualize a gallon of poop looking about the same size as a gallon of milk, except gross. If you stood those gallons side by side, the gallons of poop “contributed” by our dogs would stretch for more than 1½ miles per day, or 580 miles per year.

Now, none of us would ever consider dumping even a gallon of dog poop into the bay even just once. But if every dog owner in the Narragansett Bay watershed let their dog poop outside without picking it up, we could expect most of those 16,750 gallons of poop to end up in our waterways — the waterways we use for drinking water, swimming, fishing and shellfishing. That’s a lot of poop.

And for a community like Aquidneck Island, where most of the drinking water is gathered directly from watershed surface runoff, it becomes particularly important. In fact, the 24,367 households on Aquidneck Island (according to the 2010 U.S. Census, and that’s not including the summer visitors) translates to about 7,356 dogs on the island pooping about 1 cup per day, for a total of 460 gallons of poop per day being produced on the island.

How much dog poop is acceptable for us to dump into the waters we swim in or drink from? I’m guessing we’d all say “none.” But every time we leave Rover’s No. 2 on the ground when no one is looking, we’re essentially saying that swimming in and drinking contaminated water is OK.

So, just as every individual in Rhode Island collectively contributes to our proud community of Rhode Islanders, our collective conscience in picking up after our pets is what keeps our precious waters clean.

Gail Ginnetty: The Legacy of a Lifetime

Gail Ginnetty’s love of all things water first took root when she learned to sail and began racing during her elementary school days. In high school, she sailed regularly in East Greenwich, and Narragansett became a regular summer beach spot. Now retired from a distinguished career in banking and development, Ginnetty lives in Cranston with a view of the Bay and is on her third sailboat in partnership with other owners. She has plenty of vivid memories—like that time rough weather blew out the spinnaker and her sailboat capsized when she was just 12 or 13, and competing and winning races almost from the beginning—that have fed her love for Rhode Island’s most important natural resource.

“Narragansett Bay has always meant wonderful opportunities to enjoy the water, and every year I create a new wonderful memory,” Ginnetty said. As I matured into adulthood, I developed a growing appreciation for what the Bay means to the state. It truly is part of the body of Rhode Island, and from an economic standpoint, even if you live in Woonsocket with no view of the bay, it’s extremely important to you.”

So, Ginnetty’s first gift to Save The Bay decades ago—in response to a request from someone who knew she cared about the Bay—was sort of “a natural.” In the mid 1980s, she became a sporadic volunteer, and in 1998, began what turned into a 15-year tenure on the board, including eight years as Treasurer. Her knowledge of wealth management and nonprofit endowment planning gave Save The Bay an invaluable leader who would help strengthen the organization fiscally.

Like her involvement with Save The Bay, Ginnetty’s small annual gifts progressed as she got to know the organization better and saw it had all the hallmarks of a good non-profit organization—”well-managed, broad outreach, strong relationships with government, private industry and other non-profits, adaptive strategies, and continuous improvement. Most importantly, I believe in its mission,” she said. In 2004, Ginnetty made what may be her most important contribution to date. She became a founding member of Save The Bay’s Seagrass Society, by notifying Save The Bay of her legacy gift plans.

“My decision to make a legacy gift... is the culmination of all the time, resources and passion I’ve spent here, and I want to think I can continue that investment long after I’m gone.”

The Seagrass Society honors individuals who remember Save The Bay in their estate plan—a legacy gift. Just as seagrass beds are a foundation for a healthy Bay, legacy gifts provide for the longer-term future of the organization and the Bay. They are planned during a donor’s lifetime, and activated upon their passing, allowing donors to fulfill their philanthropic dreams through the legacy they leave behind. More and more people around the world are leaving legacies in increasingly diverse ways—including retirement accounts, life insurance policies, annuities, trusts, personal property or a percentage of one’s estate.

Ginnetty says she’s committed to legacy gifts in particular because they are accessible to everyone. “There is no minimum on a legacy gift. And they give people a chance to think about how they want to be remembered,” she said. “People with limited discretionary income can leave a larger gift in their will than they might be able to give during their life. Annual donors can continue their gift into perpetuity. Donors at any level can take their giving to the next level, whatever that is.”

“I’ve chosen to name Save The Bay a beneficiary of my individual retirement account. I have had the privilege of seeing Save The Bay move from its office in a very small old bank building to this beautiful location and the expansion of education programs that take marine science to schoolchildren all over the state. My decision to make a legacy gift—more than I could give today—is the culmination of all the time, resources and passion I’ve spent here, and I want to think I can continue that investment long after I’m gone,” she said.

An Intern’s First International Coastal Cleanup

By Annalisa Carmosino, Save The Bay Intern

On Saturday, September 19^th, at 8:00 am, Oakland Beach was gray, foggy, and deserted save a few sleepy dog walkers. In less than an hour, volunteers for the International Coastal Cleanup began to arrive: veteran volunteers, students from Bryant University, a group of Girl Scouts. Everyone was eager to get started.

As an events intern at Save The Bay, I helped our Grants and Foundations Manager Stephany Hessler distribute supplies, explain the ICC data sheet, and answer questions about debris found on the beach. By far, the biggest problem we encountered at our site was cigarette butts. One pair of volunteers focused on a small corner of the parking lot and picked up 764 cigarette butts! After working hard on what turned into a sunny day, volunteers made their way to the REI mobile campsite, where they could relax and enjoy lemonade, cornhole and even swing in a hammock.

This was my first cleanup with Save The Bay, and what impressed me the most was the diversity and dedication of our volunteers. It was encouraging to see many families with children; hopefully taking part in a beach cleanup will become a family tradition. I didn’t expect to see many volunteers come to the cleanup by themselves, but quite a few people came alone. The lone wolves, as I called them in my head, showed up to help despite the fact that family or friends couldn’t make it, and without a hint of insecurity. A Save The Bay cleanup is exactly what you’d hope for in a cleanup—a group of everyone and anyone who cares about our coast and wants to contribute the time and effort to clean it.

I love to color code and label anything and everything, so I was super excited about the ICC’s detailed data collection sheets…but a little worried that volunteers might get tired of recording every piece of trash. I was thrilled to be totally wrong. Volunteers valiantly recorded every single cigarette butt. Whenever a team turned in their data sheet, they showed Stephany and me the notes they’d made to keep track of the cigarette butts, or how they had written tally marks for cigarette butts all over the sheet. Their dedication to detail is what makes the ICC possible. Their painstakingly collected data is essential for the Ocean Conservancy to provide an accurate, big-picture representation of the problems facing coastlines around the world.

The total weight of the trash our volunteers removed from Oakland Beach was a little over 800 pounds. For those of you unfamiliar with Oakland Beach-it is not a large area. We also cleaned the parking lot and playground, but the shoreline is only about two miles long. Removing 800+ pounds of trash from such a small and beautiful part of our coast raised conflicting feelings for me and the volunteers: frustration, satisfaction, disbelief and excitement to have taken part in an International Coastal Cleanup. There is still trash on the beach, and people will probably litter tomorrow. But Oakland Beach is 800 pounds of trash cleaner, and that 800 pounds will be part of a larger solution.