I was just down at Kah Tai Lagoon here in Port Townsend the other day and
while there remembered a bit of how it used to be.

You see, responding to my shorebird observations there a week or two ago, a
tweeter inquired whether the lagoon is affected by tides: it is not, but
some times the muddy verge gets more shorebirds at a very tide, being the
only beach available.Being a computer dimbo I mistakenly erased that
tweeters name, so I hope your'e reading this.Have seen no shorebirds down
there since, regardless of tides.

What I was trying to remember was what it was like back in the mid to late
60's. My family used to go camping at Fort Worden way back then during what
we romantically referred to as the "off season", winter, when nobody was
around. Their is no longer an off season in Port Townsend such as it was in
the past, C'est la vie.

Anyhoo, my earliest memory of Port Townsend was some when back there. Ever
the naturalist , I remember poking around the edge of the lagoon just off
Sims way. It was a wet and cold day and I was trying to get a good look at
the water but it was too dark to see much underwater life - I do remember
seeing a few unusual brackish water isopods swimming about.This was before
the boat haven expansion (the dredging of which was plopped into the
lagoon, the foundation of the future Safeway in 81.

But, apparently there never was a connection to the Bay - it was separated
by low sandy gravelly spit, as far back as the history I found goes (mid
1800's). So Kah Tai is not salt water nor fresh - kinda brackish. There are
a few brackish indicator species such as Ruppia (ditchgrass) and brass
buttons (Cotula) a little yellow-flower composite with succulent leaves,
from South Africa, which seems a bit unusual source, but it is found
worldwide along beaches and salt-marshes.

Another sorta indicator species is the only fish I've seen here - the 3
-Spine Stickleback. They live in ever thing from salt to fresh water, or
kinda brackish. I suspect this would be the only edible item in the lagoon
for a lurking Great Blue Heron to eat, suspicion partly confirmed by
watching one do just that near the shore. I haven't seen any aquatic
insects in the water there, but I have on the water - many little flies
perched on the surface tension in double-decker positions (a smaller male
atop a larger female, I presume), Also some sort of midge may have an
aquatic larvae here - after all this is the exact date of Port Townsend
Midge Fest which I stumbled upon in 2016 - thousand and thousands of midges
dancing in dense columns all around the Lagoon Park. Haven't seen that yet
this year.

Salinity could be proven by a quick taste test, but at the risk of croaking
from some bacterial disease via bird poop (herons, coots, ducks, geese,
etc. ) or getting a dose of the slimy pond scum on shore. Just believe the
Ruppia.

Jeff Gibson
Port Townsend Wa
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20180812/e5a693ef/attachment.html>