Hello there! This is Ashley-Rose here to tell you about the
Tucker River Fellow’s recent trip to the Living Lands and Waters (LL&W)
Barge. So, what in the world is a Living Lands and Water’s Barge? LL&W is
an organization established in 1998 by Chad Pregracke that works keep
watersheds along the Mississippi River clean, spreads awareness of the
importance of river conservation, and build a desire to keep our rivers clean
amongst communities.
The LL&W is a house barge that travels up and down the
Mississippi River cleaning up trash and giving educational tours to school
groups. The crew, including its canine members Pork Chop and Travis, lives on
the barge for 6 to 7 months out of the year, constantly cleaning and educating!
In the past 5 years, LL&W has collected over approximately 415 pounds of debris, some
of which includes 20 tractors, 13 prosthetic limbs, a Ronald McDonald shoe, an
electric guitar, 4 pianos, 3 sunken barges, 13 hot tubs, 77 messages in bottles,
and 264 duck decoys. They give classes on the importance of recycling,
sustainable fishing, macroinvertebrates, the effect of pollution on the entire
food chain, and invasive species. We participated in the sustainable fishing
and invasive species class. Both of these classes started with hands on
activities and were followed by a powerpoint presentation and lecture
explaining the activity we had just participated in and its relevance towards
the topic. For sustainable seafood, the room was split up into “fisheries” or
groups of 4 people around a cup of “fish” (a.k.a. goldfish and m&m’s). The
job was to, as a fishery, make the most money at the end of five “seasons” (or
20 second rounds). To fish, you had to use a straw as your fishing pole and use
suction to carry fish from the fishery cup into your own paper cup. Easy,
right? Here’s the catch: you can’t catch to many fish all at once. At the end
of each season your fishery receives one fish for every two of that kind. For
example, to receive another two new m&m fish, you had to have four m&m
fish left at the end of the season. The other captains in my fishery as well as
myself were very ambitious, and made lots of money on our first season, however
by our second season, all of our fish had been removed and our fishery was
empty. This demonstrates the importance of monitoring fisheries, and to consume
sustainably. You may be thinking “I’m not a commercial fisherman, this has
nothing to do with me”, however there is something you can do. Whenever you are
at the grocery store or at a restaurant, make sure the fish you buy is MSC
certified. MSC certified fish is fished sustainably, and easy to identify by
the MSC logo, which will most likely be on the front of the package. Use the
power of your dollar and tell the suppliers that you want sustainably attained
food! Also, in our class on invasive species, we learned how foreign species
that are introduced can dominate native species and almost eradicate them if
nothing is done. Often times these species have a wide range of diet, reproduce
quickly, and can live through various conditions. Some examples of invasive
species in Tennessee and along the Mississippi River are Honeysuckle and Asian
Carp.
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| An invasive plant- Honeysuckle |
So what can you do? Look up some plants that are native to your area and
plant them. You can start a native plant garden either at your school or work
(with permission, of course) or even in your own backyard. Also, you can
participate in an Invasive Species Removal with the LL&W crew yourself! To
learn more about LL&W, participate in an upcoming event, or plan a school
trip or river cleanup project, check out their website at http://livinglandsandwaters.org.
Thanks
for reading!
-Tucker
River Fellows
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