Team Logs

Gulf of Maine Expedition New Brunswick Journals
July 23 - August 16, 2002

Living with Leave No Trace    (see Leave No Trace in our Skills & Safety section, too)
Philosophical Musings by Sue Hutchins
Low Impact Recreational Practices by Dan Earle
Gulf of Maine Expedition on Leave No Trace by Natalie Springuel

Natalie's notes from New Brunswick
On Navigating in the Bay of Fundy
On Paddling and Observations in New Brunswick
Mary's Point N.B., Shorebird Migrations

Dan's notes from New Brunswick
Recovering River Valleys

Sue's notes from New Brunswick
Decision-Making Theory

Living with Leave No Trace

Philosphical Musings by Sue Hutchins

When we started this trip, we agreed that we would be adhearing to a "Leave No Trace" policy (LNT). Having taught at an outdoor education center in Ontario for ten years, I figured I knew exactly what that involved. It turns out I knew nothing about it. Yes, I was familiar with good stewardship practices and the idea of taking only photographs and leaving nothing but footprints. What I did not know was that "Leave No Trace" was a formalized protocol accepted by the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. National Park Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Such a formal policy does not exist in Canada yet.

Once we crossed into Canada, the team all agreed that some things would change organizationally. So it seemed reasonable to discuss whether several topics related to LNT would change as well.

Carry in - carry out:
Whatever you carry in, you also carry out, including your human waste. We have been using two Eco-safe portable toilets, carried on the back of our kayaks, which get emptied at official dumping stations.

So far, so good. But we had just been informed that St. John, N.B., still dumps 60% of its sewage directly into the Bay of Fundy. This means that we are carrying our human waste with us for seven days, only to contribute it to a system which will then flush it into the Bay for us.

How ironic! Would it not be better for us to be contributing a little each day to the Bay at low-use areas rather than adding our entire contribution at a point which is already overloaded? Should the LNT policy be situational, rather than global, to allow for thoughtful adjustment? Should we stop using our groovers for this leg of the trip and start pooping below the high tide line again?

Kindle no fires:
For the first three months of the trip, we have had no campfires, as per the LNT policy. However, having grown up with a campfire tradition, and living in a country with one tenth the population of the U.S. where a "Kindle No Fires" policy does not exist, and where there is very little development along the edge, I was hoping that we may now be able to enjoy a small evening fire, if the situation was appropriate: lots of available wood, space below the high tide mark, low risk of fire, etc. When in Canada, would thoughtful adjustment of this policy be acceptable in some situations?

Do No Harm:
Just before lunch yesterday, we found an egg case floating on the surface of the water. It was about 10 feet long and about 6 inches wide. We picked up a small portion of it and put it in a container full of sea water.

During lunch, we all took turns looking at it through a hand lens. To the naked eye, it looked like a saliva streak with black dots in it. Under the glass, you could see dozens of small embryos, each with a little tail which was constantly flipping, topped by two very large eyes. Whatever they were, they were alive and active. We were looking at the embryonic stage of something.

We now had an ethical dilemma. Our mission statement says that we want to record our biological findings. To do that we must identify what we find. The very act of identifying these embryos required that they be mounted on a slide. Some of them might not survive the process.

Was it important enough to identify these embryo to kill them? If the LNT policy asks us to avoid flushing seals and birds from their nests so predators cannot attack their eggs, why should we be the aggressors toward baby fish?

I personally found our position very interesting. As a woman who finds herself on the Pro Choice side of the abortion debate, I was now on the Pro Life side of this one. I felt really strongly that we should "Do No Harm" to these babies. Was it simply that I could see into this womb that made the difference? Yet I understood our mission from the start. Was it fair to object now?

What to do?

Low Impact Recreational Practices by Dan Earle

A part of our mission is to promote low impact recreational practices. One manifestation of this is the concept of Leave No Trace. Three aspects of LNT that have caused discussion on our trip are carrying out of human waste, campfires, and wildlife and plant disturbance. The policy has been to carry out all human waste, have no campfires, and avoid seal and bird concentrations. Certain aspects of the policy elicit discussion.

I feel that the proper course of LNT action is highly site situational and our actions need to be guided by considerations of overall environmental impact. My guiding principle is "try to cause no lasting damage" since the very act of camping causes some damage to many sites. For example, it is the rare site at which some vegetation is not compressed by walking, setting up of tents, and cooking activity.

Human Waste
The concept of carrying out what we term "human waste" is certainly a sound practice on sites where there is concentrated camping use, frequent use by even a few campers, lack of tidal flushing, or other dilution or treatment mechanism. However, bringing a concentration of fecal matter back to civilization has environmental costs.

Using a carry-out system we take a small amount of excrement, add that of others to it, put it in a container, and let it warm in the box as we paddle. That is, we greatly increase its biological activity and potential toxicity. To counteract this we add chemicals to the container. When we get to land we use fossil fuel to drive around finding a dump site. The dump site is eventually pumped by a truck and the material transported to another waste facility where it is finally given no better than secondary treatment and discharged into the environment. That is, there is considerable overall environmental cost to our policy.

In situations where we have low camper use and good tidal flushing there would be less total environmental stress if we just deposited the small quantities of our excrement below high tide line. What we label "human waste" is a resource in the bigger picture food chain. The remaining nutritional content of our feces would be quickly used by micro-organisms and plants. Bacteria would be killed or greatly dispersed with no toxic side effect.

On some sites where there is concentrated or frequent human use, the placement of composting or mouldering units would be preferable to carry out units. Composting and use of "humanure" is an accepted practice that turns what we have labeled "waste" into a resource. The composted material could be used on site to counteract soil compression and loss of humus caused by camper use.

Seen in the big picture the carry out policy is one, but not the only, or necessarily the best, solution to dealing with human fecal matter on a particular site.

Campfires
There are two issues related to use of campfires. One of them is use for cooking, the other is recreational use. These can be discussed as separate items.

We are using a two burner propane stove with a large sized tank. This system comes with its own environmental costs when we consider the manufacture of stove and tank, the manufacture of propane itself, transportation and storage, and automobile fuel used to procure it. There is some question as to the relative environmental cost of burning propane vs. use of wood that we have not resolved. However, in our experience the supply of wood has been very limited and propane is often the only choice.

Recreational campfires are considered by many to be part of the camping experience. They serve as a cultural and social catalyst that is not without merit. Given conditions of a good wood supply a fire below low tide line is unlikely to have any lasting environmental damage associated with it.

Wildlife and Vegetation
We all agree that flushing of seals and birds is not a desirable practice as it places unnecessary stress on the adults and their young. We try to enjoy them from afar. Our perspective on wildlife impact, however, tends to end with consideration of our fellow vertebrates. The smaller creatures of the shore - the periwinkles, mussels, and others fare less well. They are regularly crunched by feet and boats in loading and unloading in low tide situations. Plants and animals are lost in the collection and identification process. Plants and soil get compressed by paths and tent locations. Our daily dilemma is at what level we set "acceptable damage" and remain within the Leave No Trace concept?

It seems to me that human waste, campfire, and wildlife, decisions based on each camping situation is a reasonable approach. Each action we take is going to have implications in the immediate area or the larger environmental picture. We need to look carefully at appropriate alternatives to minimize site damage as we camp and serve as LNT explorers and innovators.

Gulf of Maine Expedition on Leave No Trace by Natalie Springuel

It seems that ever since we crossed the border from Maine into New Brunswick, we have discussed our Leave No Trace policy on a daily basis. Our team shares a strong commitment to stewardship ethics in the backcountry and on the water but there are multiple variations on this theme and they are all situational. Given that being a responsible paddler is directly connected to personal habits and comfort, the issues are passionate. As such, a few days ago, some important questions came up about whether our Leave No Trace standards on the Expedition should, or should not, change given our entry into Canada. These questions where precipitated by the fact that pressures on the Gulf are different in New Brunswick than they are in Maine.

New Brunswick is still far enough away from the booming explosion of coastal recreation that asking if it is ok to build campfires or poop in a small hole in the intertidal zone seems almost funny. With so little use of the coast, why wouldn't it be okay?

We have been batting these questions around for a bit and made a few Expedition decisions. The Leave No Trace standards we adopted at the beginning of the journey stand firm for the rest of the trip. This is not an easy task. RV pump-out systems are getting harder and harder to find. And, as Dan has pointed out, how small a trace are we really leaving when we zoom around the countryside in a volunteers car to find a campground with a pump-out station.

There are lots of texts out there covering the ecological rationale behind zero-impact camping ethics according to the region traveled. Our team is also hoping to find the time to put on paper some of our concrete thoughts on why we have adopted the specific LNT standards we did. But for me, the reasons to adopt these standards are a little more personal than scientific.

Although recreational use of the Bay of Fundy coast is still comparatively low, trends indicate more and more paddlers are looking to remote waters for future trips. For good or bad, the Gulf of Maine Expedition itself may cause a few paddlers to come this way who otherwise may never have thought about it. And trends in the Gulf indicate kayaking is exploding throughout the whole region.

Many will attest that other coasts have seen a little too much use by folks who have not learned the skills of travelling lightly. The evidence is, for example, in the toilet paper found on some islands.

I think for me, it all boils down to education. If the Gulf of Maine Expedition takes on standards such as "no fires" or "pack out all solid human waste" - standards that in the Bay of Fundy may seem radically un-camper-like in the traditional camping sense - maybe it will give folks reason to pause and think. Maybe future coastal users will think about the affect of their own fire or their own poop next time they venture out of civilization for a few days. Even if they go somewhere far from the Bay of Fundy, especially if they go somewhere that gets lots and lots of recreational use, encouraging outdoor enthusiasts to think about the affect of their behavior in the backcountry or on the water seems like a valuable exercise. And given the amount of thinking our own team has given this topic, it is certainly an important issue to us, on a very personal level, even if we do not all agree. The successful education lies in our own habits.

Check back in the next few weeks when we hope to add a section to our website that covers the rational behind our specific Leave No Trace standards.

Natalie's notes from New Brunswick

On Navigating in the Bay of Fundy

The Bay of Fundy has some of the world's highest tides. Here in southwest New Brunswick, they run in the 20 to 30 foot range. The flood tide tends to move up the Bay driving a northeasterly flow and the ebb drains southwesterly, both with enough force that it is well worth planning to go along for the ride rather than paddle against it.

We paddled today from Morans Island on the eastern outskirts of Passamaquoddy Bay to Orange Cove, about ten nautical miles east. We left at low tide expecting to ride the flood current all day. Instead, we found it flowing against us. Surprised – not to mention a little more tired than expected! – I spent some time this evening looking at marine charts, as well as tide and current tables, trying to figure this out . . . and of course, now I have a new theory.

We must have underestimated the geographical edge of current from the Passamaquoddy Bay tidal flood. Passamaquoddy Bay forms a vast inlet surrounding the mouth of the St. Croix River which feeds into the Bay of Fundy through either the Quoddy Narrows or Letetes Passage. Islands as large as Campobello and Deer, and others no bigger than ledges and shoals, act as barriers that funnel the water in multiple directions.

I had expected that after the infamous Letete's Passage was safely behind us, we would simply be immersed in the Bay of Fundy's flow. I was wrong. Instead, as we paddled east out of Passamaquoddy Bay and into the Bay of Fundy itself, the flood current (the rising tide) at our location was still rushing into Passamaquoddy Bay in a westerly direction, precisely the opposite of our direction of travel. In fact, although the Bay of Fundy floods roughly east on a rising tide, I now think we run the risk of paddling against the tide for one more day until we make it around Point LePreau, ten nautical miles east of here.

Navigation adds a new dimension to our overall understanding of the vast Gulf of Maine. Had we been travelling by motor boat, I likely would not have noticed this localized trend at the margin between Passamaquoddy Bay and the Bay of Fundy. If it affects me in my little human-powered boat so much, I cannot help but wonder how these local currents affect the greater diversity of species dispersal in the whole Gulf of Maine system.

On Paddling and Observations in New Brunswick

Why is paddling so important and crucial to all of this? Why am I so convinced that I wouldn’t really know the Gulf of Maine if I hadn’t paddled it?

Perhaps because paddling provides me with a way of seeing that I thrive on, a perspective that is based on water. It lets me see the modern Gulf of Maine as the sailors of days past saw it, from the water with the sea providing all the roads to everywhere. The ports are approached by water; the harbors, the islands, the people, all are approached from the sea. Conversations stem from a point of origin, a point of knowing, and when paddling, that thread is the sea.

Paddling forces me to be absolutely in tune with my environment, which helps me understand the Gulf of Maine from an intimate perspective. I have to move slowly. Rarely can I zip by shore at any pace faster than three knots, maybe four if the current is with me, so I notice things.

I notice the change in shoreline composition. The hardwoods grow more abundantly over sandstone cliffs while the softwoods thrive atop the volcanic rocks such as basalt and granite. There are scree slopes along the New Brunswick shore where mini avalanches have stripped the cliff of softwood trees and alder brush colonize the disturbed zone like little armies of erosional resistance. East of St. Martins the rivers flow into the sea so differently than before. Here the banks are steep and the tidal currents swift, so fingers of cobbles build up into barrier beaches pushing the main flow of the river well into the sides of the main gully.

I notice that the Bay of Fundy tidal current, sloshing back and forth like the wave caused by a body moving water in a bathtub, gains elevation at the edge of the seiche. For us in little boats at the northern tip of the Bay, the current moves us with the gentle determination of a salmon swimming upstream in fits and starts over the rocks underwater.

With expedition kayaking, there is continuity in the journey, a stringing together of the daily routes all planned carefully with the wind and tide at the helm of the ship. Observations start becoming relative to the shore seen last week or last month.

Woodchips, no bigger than a cracker, started appearing in Grand Manan Channel. East of Saint John I saw no more woodchips either floating or washed up on land. How much money, I wonder, is Irving Ltd. losing in transporting uncovered chip barges across the Bay of Fundy to its pulp mill?

I notice that the aquaculture sites and herring weirs that started just west of the Maine/New Brunswick boarder crescendoed in Passamaquoddy Bay and just east. They are sited where islands and coves and the swift tidal currents flush feces out and fish in, helping cleanse industrial farm sites while at the same time supporting a more traditional fishery. And I can’t help but observe that the closed summer lobster season gives the New Brunswick shore a remote feeling, far faraway from the year-round diesel bustle of the Maine-based lobster industry, my own backyard.

Although standing alone, many of these New Brunswick details may be known to a fisherman, a fish farmer, an oceanographer, or maybe even a tourist, but they are not noted collectively by the average citizen who may not have the opportunity to observe so closely. For paddlers, observers of the coast, perhaps the draw is the thrill of watching coastal trends, developing theories about nature, analyzing observations. After more than three months stringing together the edge of the Gulf of Maine by kayak, the region comes to life in a new way, a more complex way. There is so much more to observe.

Mary's Point N.B., Shorebird Migrations

On a recent bout of strong winds and fog, we found ourselves grounded in Alma, New Brunswick, for a few days. Our friend, Mary Merges, was up visiting, so we had the rare opportunity to go on a little road-trip to a nearby natural wonder: Mary’s Point in Shepody National Wildlife Area. Mary's Point is easily overlooked from the road. A small interpretive center sits next to a small parking lot and down back, a ten minute walk from the road, lies a mudflat with some of the best foraging for thousands upon thousands of migrating shorebirds.

As we emerged from the wooded trail onto the beach, a couple dozen people were settled upon huge drift-wood logs with binoculars, spotting scopes, and cameras, all pointed towards the water. I followed the direction of the optics when my eyes landed on a tight cloud of gray movement, rising, falling, moving, turning, flashing white then back to gray. An immense flock of shorebirds – Semipalmated Sandpipers, Least Sandpipers, and Semi-palmated Plovers, I would later learn – were dancing around the sky with the collective grace of a single undulating body. It was a magical sight to walk into.

Before long, I heard the Mary's Point naturalist, a college biology student having the summer internship of her dreams, announce in her native French Canadian that a Peregrine Falcon had just flushed the shorebirds into this frantic tizzy. Soon they landed only to rise again uneasily, then land, then rise, than land again. In turn, we settled onto the sand between groups of bird watchers and, as if falling into the unspoken code of ethics among nature lovers, held binoculars to our eyes for most of the next two hours. In between, lots of conversation about birds and local natural phenomenon was had with those around us.

Estimates of the size of the roving flocks ranged from 5,000 to 40,000 individuals, depending on whether independent flocks had joined in the melee at the time of the count. Meanwhile, tide kept creeping in swiftly, silently, and the roosting birds were pushed closer and closer to the high tide line, becoming bigger and more detailed in my binoculars' field of view. It was an original M.C. Escher drawing: patterns of repetition – wings, neck bands, yellow legs, dark legs, scalloped backs, eye patches – fit together among the diversity of three species. Behind the closest matting of birds stood dozens of layers of additional ones, playing games with my depth perception, leaving me wondering if the space between two birds was another bird or only just space. I suddenly understood Escher's work as I never had before. I was mesmerized by the mosaics of nature.

Why so many shorebirds? Though it was only the second week of August, the shorebirds had begun their migration south, and this place along the upper reaches of the Bay of Fundy offers them some of the best foraging available. Mud Shrimp colonize the immense mudflats in populations large enough to feed such massive flocks. In addition, the August full moon dropped the water lower than average, exposing flats, and thereby shrimp, which are normally still covered during less extreme tides. It is a perfect stopover point for shorebirds to refuel and fatten up for the long voyage south for the winter.

We were lucky to be there at that time. It was a rare natural experience. Had we not been grounded by the strong winds and fog, we would have entirely missed Mary's Point because it is much further up Chignecto Bay, into Shepody Bay, than we would have paddled.

Dan's notes from New Brunswick

Recovering River Valleys

The shore of New Brunswick from St. Martins to Alma is lined with magnificent cliffs of volcanic rock and sandstones. Twisted rock formations, caves, and flowerpots are common features. In contrast to the cliff walls are the great valleys cut by the Salmon River, Little Salmon River, Goose Creek, Goose River, and the Alma River, among others. These broad valley watersheds reach far inland.

An interesting common feature of these valleys is that the mouth of each was a populated center for lumbering and/or ship-building in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The remnants of old log roads, wharves, dams, bridges, and buildings are still present.

At Salmon River, and again in Alma, we had the chance to see old photographs of many of these places. In their day they hosted mills, houses, stores, churches, schools, and other buildings. Each river mouth was a major center of industrial activity. It is quite evident that every tree of value in the watershed was cut, put in the river, and floated to the mouth where they were either used in the town or shipped out. Pictures show the stripped hillsides and intense activity of the loggers.

The devastation of the native Atlantic Salmon stock must have been near complete. Channels were dammed, hillsides must have eroded leaving spawning pools full of silt, and the logs themselves filled the rivers from bank to bank leaving little room or habitat for the fish. By the 1930s and 40s most of the settlements had been abandoned.

Through neglect, the river valleys started recovery as vegetative succession began to repair the hillsides. Today, the hills are covered with trees and the water runs clear. We have not discovered the extent to which salmon have been able to return to what must, at one time, have been important breeding rivers.

For the paddlers, these rivers offer opportunity for extended camping, paddling up river valleys on incoming tides, hiking in tributary streams, and seeing beautiful scenery. Low impact practices can allow recreational use and enjoyment without disrupting the recovery that these watersheds are making.

Sue's notes from New Brunswick

Decision-Making Theory

Decisions, decisions . . . they never stop. From grocery lists to compass bearings, each day is filled with an endless stream of choices.

Decision making is one of those major life skills for which we get very little training. We become adults and are automatically expected to make good decisions. But where did we get any formal training for this skill?

Being an ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) adult, this is an important question for me. Attention Deficit Disorder can be summed up in two words . . . unregulated attention. Sometimes I pay no attention to topics (particularly if they do not interest me) and sometimes I can be hyper-focused to the point where I cannot stop paying attention (especially if the topic really grabs me). Therefore, my situational awareness is often not good and my track record of good decision-making is about 50/50. Consequently, I have not taken on tasks on this trip which are critical. Who wants a navigator who is correct only 50% of the time? So I stick to the social side of the expedition, and the photographic side . . . areas where the forgiveness factor is larger. Not that I don't have the technical skills . . . I do. But my ADD gets in the way at critical decision-making moments. This has been a constant frustration for me all my life.

So imagine my joy when Tom starts talking about the course he teaches on decision-making theory. Ah-hah! They do teach it somewhere! That somewhere is Daniel Webster College in New Hampshire, a school for aviators, people who have to work as a close team and make correct decisions under stress. (Too bad they don't teach it in school, it might save a few marriages later on!)

Following is my best synopsis of the information I wrote down on a restaurant placemat as we waited for our eggs in Alma:

Team Decision Making

Situation Awareness

All team members share
1. a positive obligation
2. for active inquiry
3. and effective advocacy

This means that all team members MUST ask questions about a situation they do not feel comfortable with and effectively advocate for a correct decision. No one gets to sit back and go for a free “decision-making” ride.

Once a challenge has been raised,
1. the challenge must be acknowledged
2. a conservative response must be taken to assure safety
3. while a final decision is validated.

In short, a "challenge" cannot be ignored and conservative action must be taken. You slow or stop your travel on the path you are taking to ensure safety. Then you take an objective look at the options and only proceed once consensus has been reached.

To be actively involved in decision-making, you must have a high degree of situational awareness. To understand the situation you are in, you must be constantly gathering information. The more people there are gathering information, the better decisions you will make. One seemingly insignificant piece of information can actually be the missing bit that ensures safe passage (e.g., the Digby ferry arrives in Saint John at 4:00 pm.).

Having a professional decision-making model to work with has been a real gift to me. It has taken the process out of the personal realm and placed it into a professional realm. If I question a decision, I am now not challenging a persons judgment, I am fulfilling an obligation to contribute to our safety .

If this stuff intrigues you at all, Tom suggested reading Cognition in the Wild by Harry Reasener, Recognition-primed Decision-Making by Kline-Klinger, or Naturalistic Decision-Making. You can also do a web search on “frame cognition”. This all falls under the heading of cognitive psychology.

Tom's final gift to us was a quote:

"Superior pilots exercise superior judgment to avoid unnecessarily testing their superior skills."

He then substituted paddlers for pilots.

This sport of ours is surely as much a head game as a physical challenge. And as I watch the fog roll in, I realize we will have many more decisions to make before we get to Cape Sable Island. But at least we have a model to base them on now. Thanks, Tom.