The other pretty plant that has taken over large areas of the Oyster Pond shoreline is purple loosestrife. You can see the forward march of this plant in progress in the marsh along Oyster Pond Rd between Surf Dr and Fells Rd. This marsh featured mainly cat tails years ago. Now, less than half of the marsh is cat tail territory, the rest having been taken over by purple loosestrife, a plant requiring higher levels of nutrients. The latter are supplied by us watershed residents via our septic systems and fertilizers. The third plant OPET worries about is the pond weed that grew so abundantly last summer, filling entire coves (see also story below). OPET has made some inquiries of whether and how this plant mass could be removed. OPET is waiting to see whether the increased salinity we are hoping for from the Trunk River repair will discourage its exuberant growth. The primary cause for its overabundance is, again, the high nutrient level in the pond. It always comes back to our septic systems: until we can control nutrient leakage from them, we will continue to face challenges to the pond's well-being.
Weed and Fish Tales This year we can't complain about drought during the summer. There was plenty of rain, but also plenty of nice weather to enjoy all sorts of activities on the pond. These included swimming, although in many portions of the pond one had to search for the water: pond weeds had grown so thick, it was like swimming in a pot of angel hair spaghetti! Long strands of green filaments trailed from head and hands, wrapped around the legs and softly stroked the body that plowed its way through them to reach a stretch of clearer water. Not that it was much easier for the boaters! Rowing or paddling out of a pond weed-choked cove definitely was a muscle-building pastime and an exercise in patience: not much headway there! There was no question about productivity of the pond this summer. Not only megatons of weeds grew from way deep down to all the way up to the surface. There was also an abundance of fish. In 
fact, some evenings it was a magical sight. The pond surface was alive with tiny silver flashes darting from and back into the water; it sounded and looked like big, big rain drops hiffing the pond and yet, the sky was clear, the sun just down and the moon promising to soon be on the scene. The silvery sounds came from a myriad of small fish --alewife most likely -- leaping for tiny insects on and above the calm water's surface. It was a special treat to get an otter's eye view of all this activity, by swimming in its midst. Then the silver flashes were tiny rockets shooting up from the water all around only to plunge back into it a fraction of a second later. So many fish! Indeed, one day, standing at my dock, I observed an unending stream of alewife passing by at the rate of about 10 per second (yes, I timed them, I counted them, timed and counted them again) for 15 minutes, at which time I, but not the fish got bored. That's about 9,000 of them having paraded by in 15 min. Yes, it's possible that they made a big, big circle and passed by me, laughing, several times! Thanks, thought of that myself! But, hey, why not be generous?) Another day, another count.
Standing by the weir in autumn, looking down into the swirming (that's a new, space-saving word, meaning squirming and swimming) mass of young alewife flitting back and forth across the boards of the weir, I made another estimate of the number of fish in that channel at that moment. Assume the channel to be 30 ft long, 5 ft wide and 2 fi deep, there'd be 300 cubic feet of water (an underestimate, I bet). As far as my eye could reach, I saw at least 50 fish/cubic foot, yielding 15,000 alewife/alehusband (let's be fair) in the channel just then, minus the few that were snapped up by eels right under my nose! --br
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