Thoughtful Thursdays: Give a day for the Bay!

The National Aquarium has been engaging community volunteers and students in restoring a tidal marsh adjacent to Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine since 1999.  In that time, more than 4,000 citizens have planted more than 55,000 native wetland grasses and removed more than 500,000 pieces of debris! The wetland is also used as a living classroom for hundreds of local Baltimore City students each year, giving them an opportunity to see local wildlife flourishing in the middle of an urban environment and teaching them the importance of habitat conservation and clean water.

You can help continue this tradition by taking part in our upcoming Fort McHenry Field Day event!

Fort McHenry Field Day!

Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine
Saturday, October 6, 2012

Join the Aquarium Conservation Team (ACT!) for debris cleanup and garden and trail maintenance at Fort McHenry on October 6, 2012. Our fall field day is a part of National Public Lands Day and the International Coastal Cleanup.

Click here to register!

Our coastal wetlands need YOUR help!

Click here to find out more about upcoming conservation events! 

Pre-registration is required for all conservation events. Volunteers must be at least 14 years old. Please contact conserve@aqua.org if you have questions or would like additional details.

A Day at the Fort McHenry Wetland

Every spring and fall, the National Aquarium Conservation Team (ACT!) recruits volunteers to restore habitat for wildlife, remove debris, and maintain trails at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in Baltimore.

Recently, ACT! hosted a group of Patterson High School students and their mentors as a part of Legg Mason’s Workplace Mentoring Program. At the Fort McHenry wetland, they participated in a variety of environmental education activities and a debris cleanup over the course of the day.

The students’ excitement couldn’t be damped by the light rain as they seined for fish along the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River and caught a wide variety of critters including a blue crab, marsh crabs, Atlantic silversides, a northern pipefish, comb jellies, and grass shrimp.

A student sorts through the seine to find fish.
Photo by Shan Gordon, Waterfront Partnership Baltimore

On their nature walk in the 7-acre wetland, they encountered all sorts of wildlife that call the wetland home: an osprey, a snapping turtle, a box turtle, a pileated woodpecker, a common loon, and many more birds!

The students and their mentors also helped the National Aquarium team weed and plant a butterfly garden with native perennials like goldenrod, milkweed, mountain mint, and joe pye weed.

The students and their mentors cleaned up the wetland
Photo by Shan Gordon, Waterfront Partnership Baltimore

Since the National Aquarium took over stewardship of this marsh in 1999, volunteers have helped collect nearly 600,000 pieces of debris! Click here to learn more about the National Aquarium Fort McHenry conservation initiative.

Volunteers clean up Fort McHenry Wetland

Together, what can 83 volunteers accomplish on a Saturday morning?

In just four hours on Saturday, September 24, these volunteers, along with the Aquarium Conservation Team (ACT!), removed 23,839 pieces of debris from the Fort McHenry Wetland in support of National Public Lands Day and the International Coastal Cleanup.

“Before I went through this experience, I never knew there was so much trash out there,” was one volunteer’s response to the overwhelming sight of the Patapsco River shoreline.

Fort McHenry Before Cleanup

Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine is a well-visited piece of history for both Baltimore residents and out-of-town visitors. The Fort McHenry Wetland, located adjacent to the Fort, can be seen from the popular walking path. As one of the very few living shorelines in Baltimore City, the 8-acre Fort McHenry Wetland is well functioning, doing exactly what it’s meant to do: remove excess nutrients from the water; provide habitat for local wildlife; and filter the marine debris that is carried in from the tide. Since 1998, ACT! has hosted multiple community-supported debris cleanups here.

Fort McHenry After Cleanup

Volunteers have dedicated 250 hours to remove the urban debris (aka trash) and maintain the butterfly and rain gardens located on the site. Partners for this event included the Steinweg Baltimore, Maryland Port Administration, REI, Royal Bank of Canada, Constellation Energy, Maryland Environmental Trust, Toyota, and the National Park Service. To participate in a future Fort McHenry Field Day or another ACT! event, sign up to receive the Aquarium’s Conservation e-newsletter, and we’ll let you know about upcoming conservation events.

A day of cleanup

Last Saturday a dedicated group of community volunteers joined the Aquarium Conservation Team at Fort McHenry to clean up debris in honor of Earth Day. They worked until the dumpster was overflowing, removing 10,944 pieces of debris from the marsh! 

Each spring the marsh is transformed into a living classroom for hundreds of students from Baltimore City schools. The cleanup day came just in time to give the education areas a much-needed facelift before the Aquarium’s AquaPartners students arrived this week. New gravel was added to the walking areas, and the butterfly gardens were weeded and given new mulch!

Fort McHenry Field Days could not be successful without the volunteers who step up to spend a Saturday morning in the mud. A sincere thank you goes out to all of our volunteers. And judging from the pictures, it seems like everyone had an enjoyable day!  Click here to see for yourself!

Green Tip: Say no to styrofoam

Last week we explained how precipitation flows downstream. Keep in mind that as the snow in the Mid-Atlantic states begins to melt, trash that is on streets will be picked up with the water and flow downstream into the Chesapeake Bay.  In Baltimore, a lot of that trash washes into a 10 acre urban wetland at Fort McHenry.

A few times a year the Aquarium’s Conservation Team (ACT!) takes on the task of cleaning up the trash and debris that collects in the wetland. And at each event they can count on one thing – finding lots and lots of polystyrene (better known as Styrofoam, which is a trademarked material).