There are worse ways to spend a Friday afternoon than crawling along the Henry Fork River, breathing through a tube and looking for crayfish. For Catawba Riverkeeper’s Jenn Dunn, it’s a good excuse to brush up on her species identifications. She’s the nonprofit’s South Fork Watershed Manager, and part of her mission is to make people care about the South Fork River Sub-Basin.
“A lot of times, people will just think of the river as something to get power from or to recreate on, but it’s this whole ecosystem that they don’t know about,” Dunn said. Ankle-deep in this tributary of the Catawba River, she’s already spotted smallmouth bass, insect larvae and fieryblack shiners, a small, ray-finned fish.
A small school of shiners swam behind Dunn, the males’ faces still flushed from breeding season, bright red like a clown’s makeup. “They want the detritus and other organic material that you just kicked up,” she said.
Catawba Riverkeeper is planning to add two snorkel trails in the upper South Fork basin to the Blue Ridge Snorkel Trail for next summer. That means erecting educational signage and developing a program to educate folks on the aquatic species living in the basin — and getting the word out that you don't have to head to the tropics for a vibrant snorkeling experience.
Pollution flows
When it rains on our streets or driveways, that water doesn’t go to a water treatment plant, but rather, it winds up in our streams and rivers. This means the Catawba River receives all Charlotte’s spilled motor oil, trash and other waste whenever a storm passes through. The same goes for fertilizers and other chemicals that we spray on lawns and farms, and whatever leaks from old septic tanks. It’s part of the reason parts of the South Fork and Catawba rivers often aren’t safe to swim in.
“Everyone wants to be a good neighbor,” Dunn said. “If people learn about the things in their river, they’ll want to be a good neighbor to them.”
- Check it out: Catawba Riverkeeper swim guide
Dunn is scouting out the Possum Rock access point for a potential location for the future snorkeling trail.
“We’re here to make sure that there are healthy populations of fish, and it’ll be easy for people who maybe aren’t super familiar with snorkeling to still have a good time,” Dunn said.
Near its source in South Mountain State Park, the water is crystal-clear. But farther downstream, parts of the South Fork’s main stem are heavily polluted. Catawba Riverkeeper Brandon Jones told WFAE that 15% of the 748 miles of streams and rivers that make up the South Fork Sub-Basin are no longer fishable, drinkable or swimmable.
Fortunately for Dunn, that does not include this section of the Henry Fork. She squirts a blue glob of dish soap into her goggles to prevent fogging, rubs it in and resubmerges. She turns over a rock to reveal a small insect larva, crawling along the underside.
“If people can get their heads underwater and look at all these beautiful species we have, they’re more likely to care about them and help support their restoration and help support their protection,” Dunn said.
The guided snorkel tour would get folks up close and personal with crawdads, fish and other critters like stonefly larvae — all signs that the river is healthy. She hopes that by getting more people under the water, they’ll see why protecting it is so important.
We saw many species clinging to the rocks, including the hellgrammite, a dobson fly larva with a maw as ferocious as its name. These many-legged insects prey upon whatever they can get their formidable jaws on, including small fish. They’re pretty hardy, but other, more sensitive species, such as stoneflies, can tell biologists like Dunn a lot about the health of the river.
“A lot of times, people don’t always care about the critters in their water because they never see them,” Dunn said. “It’s not like deer or other large mammals that they see out in the wild every day.”
Scientists collect bottom-dwelling creatures, called macroinvertebrates, like snails, worms and insect larvae, to infer water quality. Macroinvertebrate sampling is highly rigorous and exact — as Catawba Riverkeeper Brandon Jones put it, “If you’ve heard the expression canary in the coalmine, this is like having hundreds of canaries, each for a different contaminant.”
But you don’t have to be a microbiologist to put on a snorkel and get to know your aquatic neighbors. Whether that’s the colorful, fieryblack shiner or the menacing hellgrammite, their health depends on decisions we make on land.
“If people don’t know about it, they’re not going to care about it,” Dunn said. “They’re not going to protect it.”
