Thirty days after starting to track this lake with eOceans, we helped save it!
Where the kids are standing, that’s where the water line was 30 days earlier. By tracking the lake daily with the eOceans app, we were able to demonstrate to decision makers that the lake was draining at an alarming rate. Photo: C Ward-Paige
Around the world, nature and people depend on lakes and other freshwater and coastal ecosystems. This is especially true in urban areas where land has been paved and waterways have been buried. The water that remains plays an integral roll in nature and human wellbeing.
Maynard Lake in Nova Scotia, Canada, is one such lake.
Thirty days ago, I started using the eOceans mobile app to track this lake.
I did this for three main reasons.
As the founder of eOceans, I wanted to test different features of the eOceans app for collecting data offline in the field. The lake is closer than the ocean, so that would allow me to test in real life many times a day.
Many people have enquired about using eOceans to track freshwater ecosystems — including fish, invasive species, pollution, and socio-economic values. I wanted to know how well it does and where the limitations might be.
My community loves this lake and I thought it would be great to get a baseline of the animals and people that use it. It might come in handy in the case of something bad happening to it in the future (e.g., development, pollution, climate change, water extraction).
I set up a project on the eOceans platform called “We Love Maynard Lake”. I created my own “standardized sampling strategy” that would simply include sitting on a log and taking a “sample” in the same location “often”.
A sample takes about 15 seconds using eOceans and includes capturing a location and timestamped picture and adding observations of animals, humans, threats, and the weather.
I didn’t specify how often I would sample, just aiming for weekly. I would also add opportunistic observations of anything interesting on the fly.
“We Love Maynard Lake” project found in the eOceans dashboard. Photo: eOceans.
🗓Week 1: Everything seemed normal. I really only expected to find seasonal changes, so I wasn’t surprised. However, I did find it interesting that all the excess rainwater we received during Hurricane Fiona was gone already and the water was now about ‘normal’. I assumed evaporation and refilling the water table had taken the excess.
🗓Week 2: I noticed the lake level was lower than I’d ever seen before in the 7 years of living here. Even though it was only about 5" lower than “normal”, since it followed being exceptionally high after the rains that came with Hurricane Fiona, it was a total loss of 10" compared to the week before. This raised my suspicion.
I posted my observation in a local FaceBook group. One person suggested that was the reason they had observed a “bunch of dead fish” along the shoreline.
So, I called the water utility corporation to let them know — they control the water level.
I also increased the sampling interval — sampling daily or twice daily in the eOceans app.
🗓Week 3: I documented the lake level continuing to fall. By this stage it was about 1.5 feet lower than normal. By this time, all the wetland habitats that surround the perimeter of the lake had nearly dried out. I called the water utility again to see if an investigation had been done and to remind them to do so.
🗓Week 4 — By this time, I had documented a 2.5 ft loss in water level in just 22 days. It was falling about 5" per day. The water level had fallen well below the wetland areas, they were totally dried out, and the other side of the lake was eerily close.
The lake was losing about 8.3 million litres of water per day. No one knew this was happening. By logging in the eOceans app, we were able to document the loss and convince decision makers to take action. Photo: eOceans.
I estimate that we were losing about 8.3 million litres of water per day. That’s the equivalent of about 21 olympic pools of water in 22 days.
🦆🦅🐠🐟🐢 The birds were no longer bathing or feeding along the shoreline as they had done before — ducks were now out in the deeper parts of the lake and would be having a hard time feeding. There were no more fish, frogs, or turtles to be seen, but that could be seasonal.
I was not only concerned for the wildlife and wetland ecosystems that surround the lake, but I was also, selfishly, concerned that we’d lose the lake for winter skating or summer swimming. This would require a lot of rain to refill.
I alerted a few other people in the community, two of which had already reached out to the city councillor and the water utility. They again jumped on the horn with the water utility and added federal, provincial, and municipal government representatives.
We included images of my timestamped, standardized eOceans logs of the lake that clearly documented the very low water level.
One official said “it must be natural in origin” because the water utility said their equipment was all operating as expected.
A few hours later, however, THE ACTION BEGAN!
By logging the shoreline of the lake everyday, I was able to visually document that it was rapidly draining when no one in charge knew there was a problem. They were able to find and fix a broken dam and stop it from draining. Now it needs to refill. Photo: eOceans 2022
Thanks to the efforts of Halifax Water, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Sam Austin, they found that a faulty dam was responsible and quickly made the move to fix it.
It’s now 5 days later and the lake has stopped draining!
We love Maynard Lake for swimming, fishing, skating, paddle boarding, sailing, nature rejuvenation, and more. So, now, we’ll anxiously wait for rain to refill it — for nature, cleaning the lake, and for our winter skating or summer swimming activities.
I am so glad that I just happened to start logging the lake when I did.
And, it was a valuable demonstration of the importance of Tracking What You Love using the eOceans platform!
For the ocean. For us.
**Watch a video description of this project on the eOceans YouTube channel.