Rock Creek BioBlitz, 2007

"3..2..1..Go!" Boyd Matthessen, the ruggedly handsome host of National Geographic Explorer TV counting down the final seconds to the beginning of the Rock Creek Park BioBlitz. The BioBlitz was to be a 24-hour, noon to noon, snapshot of all the living things within the park, the nation's oldest urban national park. Established the same year as Yosemite, Rock Creek Park is in the heart of Washington, D.C. Teddy Roosevelt rode horseback on the trails and swam bareback in the creek. Generations of naturalists and biologists have studied it. This time, 200 or so assorted scientists, naturalists, and hangers-on would fan out over the core area in a combination invasion and scavenger hunt find out just what lives here. A crew from the University of Central Missouri was roping into the tree canopy, 150 feet up, to look for assorted arboreal algae, fungi, and slime molds. Another crew from the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation was sampling the soil for bacteria. Yet another crew was collecting and cataloging Tardigrades (commonly known as water bears); minuscule worm-like critters, that live in the water film surrounding sand grains in damp beaches. Micheal Fay, a National Geographic Explorer in Residence who walked the Mega-Transect across the African rain forest a couple of years ago, was making a mini-transect through the park. The rest of us arranged ourselves somewhere in between big and small, great and not so great, to pillage and plunder whatever we could. Everyone who signed up received an official packet of a water proof notebook and pen to record our findings, a water bottle, and official BioBlitz bandanna. Most people folded the bandannas over their heads, buccaneer style, giving the data teams a certain piratical raffish look that only true nerds can pull off.


Teams worked in 4-hour shifts to gather data and collate it, then the volunteers had the opportunity to move on to something else. My first team was freshwater fishes, lead by several stalwart fellows from the District of Colombia Department of Fish and Wildlife. They were loaded for bear in a piscatorial sense, packing an electroshocker and several dip nets. We drove to the dam just below Pierce Mill, an 18th century historical grist mill and went to work. Within five minutes, the first electro-stunned specimens began to be brought back for identification, recording and measuring. Large mouth bass; check. Small mouth bass; check. Yellow bullhead catfish; check. Green sunfish; check. All in all, the team picked up 20 species. Not a bad haul, considering we were too late for most of the anadromous fish - those species that migrate up from salt or brackish water to spawn in freshwater streams. Rock Creek receives American shad, stripped bass (rockfish), two different species of river herrings, and sea lampreys. (A newly opened fish ladder around the dam allows fish to travel more than 20 miles farther upstream.) We did, however, get one each of yellow and white perch which was surprising since these are among the early upstream migrants; maybe they were just hanging around waiting for us. A crayfish and one well and truly ticked-off snapping turtle were logged for other teams.



On to bugs; there were several teams assigned to insects and their ilk. You could choose ants, aquatic insects, caterpillars, and/or general stuff. The general stuff team was led by Gary Hevel, a Smithsonian entomologist who did a 4-year survey of the insects in his Silver Spring, Maryland backyard. He collected nearly 4,000 species - and is still identifying them. We swept a meadow using butterfly nets, in the accepted dotty entomologist fashion, coming up with huge numbers of plant bugs and a few others, all duly counted and cataloged. I hope someone remembered to run up to the Zoo (technically part of Rock Creek Park) and pry up the manhole cover on an old well to find and count Hay's Blind Spring Scud; a species of freshwater shrimp and the only endangered species endemic to the District.

The owl people and bat people (teams, not tribes from Survivor), picked up screech and barred owls, and eastern pipestrel and little brown bats in the course of the night... which I spent home in bed, to arrive next morning in time for the last birder shift before closing. Sixty-odd species in 4 hours work, not a bad morning. red-eyed and Philadelphia vireos, bay-breasted warblers, wood, grey-cheeked, and Swainson's thrushes and scarlet tanagers were among the highlights.

The goal for the 24-hours was 1,000 species. At the end, teams had identified 660 of everything, with the tree climbers, tardigrades, and micro-organisms teams still working. When they have finished counting the "little things that make the world turn", the thousand species goal will have been left far behind.