Pictured here is Peter Thoits, a volunteer water quality monitor for the Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program, conducting a water quality test on Crystal Lake. Peter measures lake water clarity with a Secchi disk, a simple device that is used to estimate algal concentrations based on the clarity of the water. These readings are done twice a month from May through September. Peter has performed Secchi disk monitoring on Crystal Lake for the past eight years.
The water quality of Crystal Lake is reported to be above average based on Secchi disk and total phosphorus monitoring. However, the dissolved oxygen monitoring indicates that there is a moderate risk for total phosphorus to leave the bottom sediments and become available to algae in the water column.
The Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program, through its volunteers, has been collecting water quality data for 37 years. This data is the foundation of state and local efforts to preserve the water quality of Crystal Lake, now and in the future. The Crystal Lake Association is proud to be a financial supporter of the work of the VLMP.
By Michael Hartwell
Slicing through Crystal Lake on his 14-foot boat with the outboard motor humming behind him just before 7 a.m. last weekend, John Welch of Mayberry Road said there’s a good reason he’s out of bed this early on a perfectly good Saturday morning while the clouds are threatening to drizzle.
“My wife got me involved,” said Welch. He was surveying the southern half of Crystal Lake and keeping an eye out for loons.
At the same time each year, the private conservation group Maine Wildlife hosts its Maine Loon Project, an annual count from 7 to 7:30 a.m. all across lakes in the southern half of Maine. Volunteers tally up the number of adult birds and chicks they spot in each lake and officials compare these results to ones from past years and estimate the total population.
Welch’s wife, Cheryl Welch, is the president of the Crystal Lake Association and during the count she was out of town in Augusta receiving an award for combating invasive lake plants.
He said they routinely see three adult loons together on their lake, which they suspect are a mated pair with an adult offspring that hasn’t moved out on its own yet.
Last Saturday, however, Welch only spotted a single adult loon while among the dock structures at the southern tip of Crystal Lake. Welch was in the middle of explaining how the signs of civilization will attract ducks but repel the loons.
“The ducks don’t mind going right along the side, but the loons,” he started and stopped when an adult surfaced next to a boat.
“I guess I spoke too soon.”
Welch pointed out that the loons dive underwater to feed and will stay submerged for a minute or two and can surface a few hundred yards away.
The estimate from the 2007 loon count was 2,432 adult loons and 422 chicks in the southern half of Maine, according to Susan Gallo, director of the Maine Loon Project. She said the number of chicks was the second highest on record, while adults were down for the second year in a row.
The final count for 2008 isn’t available at this time.
“We won’t have the final tally for a couple of months,” said Andrew Colvin, communications coordinator of Maine Audubon. “It takes a while for all the coordinators to send in their results and then for us to analyze them to come up with an overall estimate of the population.”
“The conditions this season have been a bit more favorable for loons than in the last couple of years,” Gallo said. “There have been periods of rain but no dramatic storms to flood nests. We’re coming into the busiest time of year on lakes, though, so it’s important for people to give loons room and keep boat wakes to a minimum when they are around.”
