Natural Perspectives: Curious corp members marvel at wildlife

Today is the autumnal equinox, the time of year when the sun is halfway between the summer and winter solstices. As we head into autumn, the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve is showing clear signs that summer is over.

I was there last Thursday with yet another group of new hires from the Orange County Conservation Corps. This group of young men and women was a joy to be with. They took the wildlife survey that we do very seriously and looked hard for as many critters as they could find.

During the summer surveys, my groups saw dozens of round stingrays lazily swimming beneath the boardwalk. But as winter approaches, the stingrays leave Inner Bolsa Bay for deeper water. Last week’s group saw only one, but the sighting raised a lot of excitement.

“Check it,” shouted one of the young men, pointing down at the stingray. “That’s tight!”

That’s corps-member speak for “look at that, that’s really neat/cool/nifty.”

I could tell that autumn was in the air, because the normally green pickleweed had turned red. Take a walk across the boardwalk at the south parking lot and look out over the marsh. You’ll be amazed at how beautiful the colors are this time of year. The saltwort is still lime green, but the pickleweed has deep red tips. The marsh takes on a painter’s palette of color this time of year.

One of the young men, Matthew, spotted a coconut in the marsh and asked if he could get it. I told him that we’re not allowed to walk on the marsh vegetation. He said that he could get the coconut without stepping on the plants. Since I thought that was impossible, I told him he could try.

I was amazed that he actually was able to retrieve the coconut from the boardwalk without touching any of the marsh plants or setting foot on land. With Spider-Man-like agility and tool use, he was able to dangle from the boardwalk to reach the marsh below. Vic did the same thing once to remove a particularly ugly piece of trash. Of course, that was long ago.

I asked Matthew what he was going to do with the coconut. He wanted to eat it. I had to strongly advise him not to do that, because there was no telling how old the coconut was. It was undoubtedly covered with bacteria from sitting in the marsh.

Nevertheless, Matthew carried the coconut with him on the rest of the wildlife survey. At lunchtime, he smashed it, planning on eating it. The coconut looked perfect, with snowy white flesh. But alas, it reeked of putrefaction. Matthew retched, and then offered a piece to the other boys to smell. They had seen Matthew’s reaction to it, but they sniffed it anyway. Of course, they gagged too. It’s a guy thing.

This was an unusually curious group of corps members. They really enjoyed seeing all of the wildlife at Bolsa Chica. They asked a lot of questions, mainly falling into three categories: Are those good to eat? Will that hurt me? How do those things reproduce? I get those questions from most of my crews, but this group was focused more than other groups on the edibility of the various kinds of wildlife.

I bring donuts for my crews to eat before we begin our wildlife surveys, because I know that only about a third of the kids on any given crew have had breakfast. Until they get their first paychecks from the corps, many of them are really low on funds. Because they often get up at 4 a.m. to get dressed and catch one or more buses to get to the corps by 6:45, some of them haven’t had time to eat. And because the corps is made up mainly of young men in their late teens and early 20s, they’re in an age group that is hungry most of the time anyway.

We found dozens of large, striped mullet in the Wintersburg flood control channel. Naturally, the kids wanted to know if they were good to eat. My answer was that I wouldn’t eat fish that live in a polluted flood control channel.

This crew had such a high interest in wildlife that I took them over to the public docks by the Huntington Harbour Yacht Club. They searched along the side of the docks for marine algae, finding four different species. They also found a couple of different species of invertebrate animals called tunicates, and were delighted when the tunicates squirted water at them. In addition to the black, stalked tunicates, they found some half-inch long, gelatinous tunicates that they promptly named sea boogers. I was glad that they had no interest in eating them.

Two surveys ago, my corps crew spotted a large group of snails under the wooden walkbridge. I was surprised because there aren’t normally snails at that location. When I looked, I noted that they were a species that is not native to Bolsa Chica.

Vic and I alerted Department of Fish and Game biologist Kelly O’Reilly. She authorized us to collect them. When Vic and I put on our boots and waded into the marsh, we were surprised to also find a pair of lethargic Dungeness crabs. Those are definitely not native to these parts.

On last week’s survey, my crew spotted a shell from a channeled whelk under the walkbridge. Something had already eaten the interior tissue of the channeled whelk, leaving only the shell behind. It really looked as though someone had dumped the contents of a marine aquarium into the wetlands a few weeks ago.

The Dungeness crabs that Vic and I collected were quite sick, as they prefer colder and more oxygenated water. The channeled whelk had already succumbed. But the other dumped snails are still alive. Kelly identified them as a tegula snail species, but not a local species. Tegulas live in the highly oxygenated rocky intertidal zone of the ocean, and are not likely to survive in the less oxygenated environment of a salt marsh.

My concern is that if some of those snails do survive, and if they eat cordgrass, we have a new ecological disaster in the making. Introduction of non-native species into environments in which they don’t belong is one of the greatest problems facing wildlands these days. Without their natural predators, they often multiply unchecked, wreaking environmental destruction and displacing native species that belong there.

Fish and Game biologists are working on removing the non-native snails, and the population has been greatly reduced. I’m really pleased that the wildlife surveys being performed by my corps crews are providing a valuable monitoring service at Bolsa Chica.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at LMurrayPhD@gmail.com.