Can you see any structure of the dam to separate what is normally Ripley Creek from the marsh?
High Tide today (October 28th, 2019) was at 12:13 PM. Dylan measured the salinity of several locations at 12:41 PM. Here’s what data was collected:
Salinity Measurements:
From the dam/outlet, just inside the marsh: between 1 and 1.25 ppt. We wonder if this was because we were measuring at the surface.
From the upstream edge of the culvert in the stream: 10 ppt.
From the edge of of the ocean end of the culvert: 10 ppt. We wonder why this is so different than at the site of the dam structure, because the outlet was clearly under water. We actually watched the water flow in to the marsh, then change and flow out of the marsh.
These King Tides were actually predicted for the period of October 26th – 31st, 2019 by NOAA. From their “High Tide Bulletin” site they explain that these tides are because the moon is at its “new” phase (3% illumination at the time of our observations) and this creates an alignment of the sun and the moon and the Earth with greater gravitational pull in the same plane, and also because the distance between the moon and the Earth, is closer now than at other times in its orbit. Today, an app we looked at calculated the distance of the moon at 375,019 km (233030.974 miles).
Dylan is interested in how the American Eel, who lives in our marsh and whose elver run is harvested by local elver fishermen may be affected by the brackish waters of our “freshwater marsh”. We would like to find out more.
Salinity measurement of 10 PPT
Salinity measurement fluctuating between 1-1.25 PPT
