Natural Perspectives -- Vic Leipzig and Lou Murray

Vic Leipzig and Lou Murray

Seeing seawater flow into an area that has been dry for at least 100

years is a real rush. Maybe you have to be a biologist to really

appreciate the thrill of seeing a degraded habitat enhanced, but I don’t

think so.

I spent most of last week hovering over the Bolsa Chica restoration

project at Warner Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway like a mother hen

watching over her chicks. I took pictures at high and low tide every day,

recording it for posterity. Poor Vic was stuck teaching classes and

missed most of the fun, but he managed to sneak a peek now and then.

If you’ve ever driven by a construction site, you’ve probably noticed

that one or two guys work while the rest stand around drinking coffee,

talking on cell phones or kibbitzing. That’s pretty much what I did last

week. No, not the work part, the other stuff. I spent a lot of time

talking with Adrianne Morrison, executive director of the Bolsa Chica

Conservancy, and Fernando Pages, principal engineer with Tetra Tech Inc.,

the company doing the restoration project. While we discussed restoration

philosophies, a couple of guys relentlessly scraped away dry uplands,

carving out future mudflats. This part of the project is actually

creating wetlands from uplands.

I was amazed at the care the Tetra Tech workers took. Prior to

starting the project, they identified the native pickleweed that grew in

the way of the bulldozers. They dug it up, set it aside and carefully

transplanted it at the edge of the new channels once they were contoured.

They found old shells of Pismo clams and California mussels, species that

probably haven’t been seen in Bolsa Bay since the inlet silted over

around 1900, and donated them to the Conservancy Interpretive Center

display. When they were finished, they hand-raked the entire site to

eliminate compaction of the dirt.

In addition to wetlands creation, this project is enhancing existing

wetlands by increasing tidal flow through larger pipes. The Tetra Tech

workers laid riprap around the base of the new pipes to help stop erosion

and to help crawling invertebrates find the pipes. The area had been

devoid of most marsh fauna because the old outfall pipe had eroded away

so badly that it was sticking out into air most of the time, or just

hanging in the water, with no way for the “crawlies” to get into it.

Pages even hand-built a small catch basin to help trap silt to give the

invertebrates easier access to the wetlands.

Under the supervision of Department of Fish and Game biologist Brian

Shelton, volunteers raked excess algae from the main mudflat channel to

speed water flow through the wetlands. Too much algae can smother clams

and worms. But some is necessary because it provides hiding places for

fish and small shrimp-like animals called copepods. In fact, I saw a

small fish called a bay blennie dash under the mat in the newly enhanced

wetlands and was able to get good photographs of a couple of copepods in

the shallow water.

One thing that disappointed us all was that the wetlands creation

project is creating mostly upper tidal mudflat, which is not as

biologically productive as the mid-tidal zone. This is a doubly muted

system, water must pass through two pipes to get to the mudflats closest

to Warner Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway, so water will reach the new

area only at the very highest tides. Thus it will be wet only about four

days a month. I had hoped the project would create more habitat for

marine worms to feed shorebirds. The existing mudflat, the part that was

restored in 1978, will be enhanced for this purpose because it now will

get more water. But the new area is going to be good mostly for insects,

which were swarming on the newly wet mudflats.

It was precisely when I was commenting to Morrison and Pages that the

primary beneficiary of this project would be insects that the most

surprising thing happened.

An endangered Belding’s savannah sparrow began singing from a

pickleweed island in the middle of the newly enhanced mudflat. Males

begin staking out their nesting territories in early March by singing.

This was the first one that we’d ever seen or heard in this corner of the

Bolsa Chica. It must have recognized that the newly enhanced area with

its greater volume of seawater now will make fine habitat. Insects are

its primary food source and it saw plenty to eat.

I was so excited that I dragged Vic down to the wetlands to confirm

the identification. He checked with his binoculars and said I was wrong.

I was crestfallen. I was sure it was a male Belding’s because it had been

singing on territory. He said, “No, it isn’t just one Belding’s, it’s

two.” One was singing, one wasn’t. That’s a pretty good sign that a mated

pair has moved in.

The next day, the sparrows were still there. A couple of rough-winged

swallows, also insect feeders, swooped over the marsh while two

shorebirds -- a willet and a greater yellowlegs-foraged for food along

the mudflats. It’s going to be a great spring in this little corner of

the Bolsa Chica, probably the best one in a hundred years.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at o7 [email protected] .