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River Snorkeling
Update: 2024-11-04
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You might think that snorkeling is just for coral reefs, but Keith Williams knows that we can see amazing wildlife when we snorkel in the rivers and streams near our homes! Get to know candy darters, salmon, and other interesting freshwater creatures.
Guest: Keith Williams, author of "Snorkeling Rivers and Streams: An Aquatic Guide to Underwater Discovery and Adventure" and guide at Freshwater Journeys
Guest: Keith Williams, author of "Snorkeling Rivers and Streams: An Aquatic Guide to Underwater Discovery and Adventure" and guide at Freshwater Journeys
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Transcript
00:00:00
(upbeat music)
00:00:02
- Constant Wonder Kids is a Constant Wonder Podcast.
00:00:05
- Hi Wonder Kids, it's Paige.
00:00:10
Have you ever heard of snorkeling?
00:00:12
It's kind of like swimming, but you get to see all the amazing things around you under the water.
00:00:18
When you go snorkeling, you wear a mask, kind of like goggles, and it covers your nose and eyes so that you can see clearly.
00:00:25
Then you have a tube or a snorkel in your mouth so that you can breathe in air while your face is in the water.
00:00:31
Once you're set with your mask and snorkel, you're ready to go.
00:00:35
A lot of the times, people snorkel in tropical oceans where there are coral reefs and hundreds of beautiful, brightly colored fish.
00:00:43
But today, we're going to talk to someone who snorkels somewhere different.
00:00:48
Rather than snorkeling in the ocean, Keith Williams chooses to snorkel in the rivers and streams here in North America.
00:00:55
Okay, Wonder Kids, I'd like for you to make a prediction.
00:01:00
What differences do you think there are between snorkeling in a river versus snorkeling in the ocean near a coral reef?
00:01:07
What kind of fish do you think you'd see in the rivers and streams near your house?
00:01:11
Do you think a river could be as cool as the ocean?
00:01:15
Keith's answer might surprise you.
00:01:18
Listen to what happened when he was snorkeling in a stream and not even a very big stream.
00:01:24
The creek is so small that I couldn't even get my whole body in the water.
00:01:26
Half it was beached on rocks.
00:01:28
It might be hard to believe that there could be anything interesting, swimming in such shallow water.
00:01:33
But Keith was about to see one of his favorite fish, the candy darder.
00:01:37
As soon as I stuck my face in water, there was this beautiful shot of color that went from one rock to another and I just kind of slowly followed it down the creek and sure enough,
00:01:47
that fish just stopped and posed and it was this beautiful male candy darder, just incredible fish.
00:01:52
And the beauty is a striking, but then the behavior is also striking.
00:01:55
This male just didn't care that I was there.
00:01:58
It was his turf.
00:01:59
And he let me hang out with him for a while and take pictures of him.
00:02:02
They're not huge fish, you know, a couple inches long.
00:02:04
And just unbelievable turquoise and orange and cream and red and fence, just unbelievable coloration.
00:02:14
I started out in my undergraduate degree in marine biology and spent some time on car reefs and the fish that I see in freshwater rivers and streams rival the colors that I see on car reefs.
00:02:23
Is that surprising to you wonder, kids?
00:02:27
And the rivers and streams near our homes, there are fish that are just as beautiful and interesting as the fish you might see snorkeling on a tropical vacation in Hawaii.
00:02:36
Keith knows that there's nothing boring about our freshwater streams and loves introducing people into this new world.
00:02:43
- You know, the difficulty for me is keeping my attention on one thing 'cause there's so much to see.
00:02:49
And so, you know, I'll watch the candy darder for a while and then there's to be something else over to the right and I'll go to there and something to the left.
00:02:55
But there's just something about all these animals that just kind of holds my attention and there's so much to learn.
00:03:00
I mean, they're not living on our terms.
00:03:01
They're living in a completely alien environment to us that those alien environments are right in our backyards.
00:03:07
- Keith first began to enjoy rivers and streams in his own backyard.
00:03:12
Growing up in New Jersey, he would go to the creek near his house every day after school.
00:03:17
- It was called the pumpkin patch creek.
00:03:20
I would go to the creek every day after school, every weekend and with my net.
00:03:25
And I would catch, you know, whoever was there, whatever I could find, crayfish and a bunch of different kinds of minnows and suckers.
00:03:31
And so I got to know that creek really, really well and that strongly influenced my choice to want to go to college for marine biology.
00:03:38
- Marine biology is the study of the ocean and all the amazing plants and animals you can find there.
00:03:44
As he explored the ocean, Keith kept thinking about the freshwater streams and rivers he had near his home.
00:03:50
He knew that there were many different species living in those bodies of water and wondered what would happen if he stuck his head into experience it.
00:03:58
So he gave it a try in a little stream by his house.
00:04:01
Now, this stream was kind of beat up.
00:04:04
There was a big man-made pipe to control water flow emptying into it and lots of litter.
00:04:09
Could there be life in a place like this?
00:04:12
- You know, from the surface, it didn't look like there was anything there.
00:04:16
And I really debated for a while whether I was going to put my face in water there because it's a pretty dilapidated stream at that point.
00:04:21
All the yuck that accumulates on our streams winds up in the river right there.
00:04:25
There's litter all over the place.
00:04:27
It doesn't look like a very healthy stream from the surface.
00:04:31
And so I debated for a while whether I was going to snorkel that or not.
00:04:35
And the other piece was I wasn't sure how it'd tell people if they saw me snorkeling.
00:04:39
I have a set response now, but at the time, I was kind of embarrassing.
00:04:42
It's kind of like wearing a life jacket and a bathtub kind of thing.
00:04:46
- Keith thought it might be embarrassing if someone saw him snorkeling in a dirty little stream.
00:04:51
But once he stuck his head in the water, he didn't care what other people thought.
00:04:56
- But I stuck my face in the first thing I saw were common shiners.
00:04:59
And as the name indicates, they're one of our most common fish in our rivers and streams.
00:05:02
And there was a huge school of them.
00:05:04
There were probably 50 fish, 50 common shiners right there that from the surface, you couldn't see them.
00:05:08
And so for starters, I was blowing away that there were even fish there to see because from the top their backs are all brown and so they blend in with the bottom perfectly.
00:05:16
But when you're looking from under the water, like Keith was.
00:05:19
- All of a sudden, you see all these gold and silver-sided fish.
00:05:23
And in the spring time, this was in the fall.
00:05:25
In the spring time, they are some of the most colorful fish that we have because all the males put on this amazing breeding card.
00:05:30
- When it's time to find a mate, male shiners get pinkish orange tips on their fins.
00:05:35
And their side scales turn to beautiful shades of blue, green, and yellow.
00:05:39
- So we were talking about, you know, candy-dark colors earlier.
00:05:43
These fish rival the colors of candy-darkers when they're in breeding color.
00:05:46
It's just unbelievable.
00:05:48
And so, you know, a school of 50 of these fish just zip and all over the place.
00:05:52
All the rocks were covered in rock weed.
00:05:55
So this really, really green kind of an alga, just like a moss that's covering, and it's just setting the whole river scape.
00:06:02
And that really a green color is growing on these clean orange cobbles.
00:06:09
And then we've got these Elvers, the small juvenile eel coming through.
00:06:14
- And then there were gardeners that were hopping over the bottom, and so in a short amount of time, I saw, you know, five, six different species of fish from a completely different perspective, too.
00:06:24
- Before he started snorkeling, Keith would take fish and bugs out of the water with a net to check them out.
00:06:30
With snorkeling, he could observe river wildlife under the water.
00:06:34
This gave Keith a completely new perspective on the creatures he was seeing.
00:06:39
Soon, Keith was snorkeling in rivers and streams all the time, taking pictures of the amazing wildlife he saw under the water.
00:06:46
When he was still gently floating down the river, he could observe all sorts of creatures.
00:06:52
Sometimes though, weird things would happen if he was too still.
00:06:56
- When people think of a river stream and activities that you can do in a river stream, snorkeling is not on their list.
00:07:00
It's not even registered.
00:07:01
So there have been multiple times when I've been mistaken as a body, 'cause I'm not very active, right?
00:07:07
I'm typically sitting in one's spot, just watching life emerge around me.
00:07:13
And if I had my camera, I'm even less active 'cause I'm just holding the camera out in front of me, taking pictures and just kind of blending, trying to blend into the river, into the background of the river.
00:07:22
So life just kind of comes out.
00:07:24
I was in the middle of a Piscan National Forest, snorkeling a creek.
00:07:28
And I hear this rustling through the leaves and I'm thinking that sounds really big.
00:07:33
Is that a bear or is that a deer?
00:07:34
What's going on?
00:07:35
And I look and here's this guy running down the bank, thinking I'm a body.
00:07:38
I scared him as much as he scared me.
00:07:41
I said, hey, sorry to scare you.
00:07:42
I'm just taking pictures of this beautiful brown trail over here.
00:07:46
Sometimes people think Keith is a dead body when he's floating face down in the stream, but he's just trying to stay really still to not scare the fish he's watching.
00:07:56
Even if he surprises people sometimes, Keith loves being on the river.
00:08:01
Sometimes when he's out on the water, it's to experience adventure.
00:08:04
He's been known to kayak and snorkel entire rivers, riding rapids and camping on little islands.
00:08:11
On big river trips like that, Keith has learned to pay attention to the wildlife around him and follow their lead.
00:08:17
- I kayak the length of the Susquehanna River and Mergansers guided me through the rapids.
00:08:23
They're kind of a duck, they're beautiful.
00:08:24
They have this orange crest.
00:08:27
So they've got this crazy looking hairdo, right?
00:08:29
The orange head with this, like a rust colored head with their feathers sticking straight back.
00:08:34
So they kind of look funny.
00:08:35
But huge families of these, I mean, it would be a mama duck, mama Merganser with 20 or 30 babies falling behind her.
00:08:43
And I learned if I follow the Mergansers, I'd find the water I needed.
00:08:47
And I snorkeled my whole way down.
00:08:49
So I would stop frequently in snorkel and then I would get back in the boat and paddle.
00:08:52
And I was taking in the people and the birds, eagles and herons and Mergansers.
00:08:59
As much as I was taking in the organisms beneath the surface, it's this reverence kind of thing where getting in the right frame of mind and just being grateful and appreciative of the experience and being able to be there.
00:09:13
Keith says that being out on the river allows him to feel a sense of a reverence.
00:09:19
Do you know the word reverence?
00:09:21
Being reverent means being extra careful and kind about something because you love and respect it a lot.
00:09:28
- Reverence is a really good word.
00:09:30
I have nothing but the most profound respect for the life that's there.
00:09:36
And I feel like that life is as valuable as my life, that we are all part of this system.
00:09:41
We're all part of this amazing planet that's been put here for us to take care of.
00:09:46
No, there are another being here.
00:09:48
Like we are human being, there are fish being, right?
00:09:50
They're beings.
00:09:50
They're more than just objects.
00:09:53
- Sometimes when he's on the river, Keith has special experiences that help to increase that sense of reverence.
00:09:59
This happened one time when he witnessed a salmon at the end of her life.
00:10:04
- That was one of the most profound experiences that I've had underwater.
00:10:07
A friend of mine, let me know that there were a bunch of Shunok salmon that were spawning in the Elk Creek tributary to the McKenzie River.
00:10:12
And we went out there to snorkel into video and take some still pictures.
00:10:17
- Spawning is when salmon lay and fertilize their eggs after making the long journey from the ocean where they live their lives to the streams where they were born.
00:10:27
In this case, that was a creek leading to the McKenzie River in Oregon.
00:10:31
- I'm just enjoying being in the moment and what I'm witnessing and knowing, you know, the incredible journey that these fish just went through in the course of their lifetime, being born in that spot,
00:10:42
you know, going out to sea, maturing, living out there for a couple of years and then coming back in again, despawning again.
00:10:47
And this one female was just done, you know, some laying in relatively shallow water about a foot.
00:10:52
And I've been watching this female and you know, these fish are like zombie fish at this point because their bodies are falling apart, fins are falling off.
00:11:00
The female tails are all beaten white because the females lay on their side and use their tail to beat the gravel into that, into that shallow nest.
00:11:07
Their last act is to have that next generation and this one female just, just downstream of my knee and dies right there and I could see it.
00:11:18
I witnessed the life go out of her eye, right?
00:11:22
But then there's more to that because that fish in her death is providing nutrition to the rest of the ecosystem.
00:11:31
So even in death, there's this hope that she was out at sea and in the process of being out at sea put on all this biomass and brings nutrients, all these nutrients into the freshwater ecosystem and into the freshwater ecosystem up in the cascade mountains.
00:11:46
When Keith saw that salmon die, he was sad, but he also felt hopeful because of the amazing life she had lived and because of her small but mighty contribution to the natural world.
00:11:57
An animal might come eat the salmon and then later when that animal poops, remember our poop episode?
00:12:03
That poop fertilizes trees with those same salmon nutrients.
00:12:08
These fish end up helping lots of other living things.
00:12:12
- A lot of people look at fish as these lowly beings and the eyes are emotionless, but I don't agree with that.
00:12:20
I've spent enough time watching all these different kinds of species of fish to recognize that there's so much more to them than just the emotionless eyes.
00:12:31
- Witnessing the salmon spawning was a special moment, a reverent moment for Keith.
00:12:38
And it all happened because he knew that the river was a place where he could feel connected to nature and experience that type of awe and wonder.
00:12:47
- Aw and wonder are all throughout that that's what keeps me going back into rivers.
00:12:51
That's what got me in rivers in the first place was this sense of every time I stick my face in a creek, even if it's something that's such a common water body that I see every day in my travels.
00:13:01
I'm always struck by something I didn't realize was there or something that I knew was there, but what's that behavior that's doing?
00:13:09
So awe and wonder are all throughout that.
00:13:11
It really keeps me motivated to keep going back.
00:13:13
- Keith is able to experience awe, wonder, and reverence and rivers and streams by being close to incredible fish and wildlife.
00:13:22
Can you think of a place in the natural world where you're able to feel reverent and have special experiences?
00:13:28
Is it in the mountains, maybe the beach?
00:13:31
Or do you have a special spot in your backyard or local park where you can see nature at work?
00:13:37
If you don't have a spot like that, I challenge you to find one.
00:13:41
Like Keith and his river snorkeling, we can have special experiences in the natural world, even right around where we live.
00:13:48
♪ In our local rivers and streams ♪ ♪ Our fish beyond our wildest dreams ♪ ♪ Snorkeling discovers more than meets the eye ♪ ♪ In reverence for our wild life ♪ (gentle music)
00:14:24
- A quick word for you, parents.
00:14:27
I'm Marcus Smith, host of Constant Wonder, which is the source of material for Constant Wonder Kids.
00:14:34
We made this episode because Constant Wonder has a whole lot of great stuff in it that kids will love, too.
00:14:40
But you may be wanting more.
00:14:43
We have a whole episode devoted to Keith Williams and his very unique river snorkeling adventures.
00:14:49
If you'd like to hear the full presentation, just go find Constant Wonder wherever you get your podcasts.
00:14:55
The episode is called snorkeling in your own backyard, practically.
00:14:59
We actually think you'll love more than just one episode of our podcast, which is an ongoing quest to find awe and wonder in all nature.
00:15:09
Human or wild, fast or small, the kinds of encounters that move us beyond words.
00:15:16
Remember when you had time for wonder?
00:15:18
Well, we think you probably still do.
00:15:21
Subscribe to Constant Wonder on your favorite platform.
00:15:25
Constant Wonder Kids was produced by Paige Crumperman Darington with sound designed by Mitchell Towsley.
00:15:31
Tenerid Taylor is the executive producer and Constant Wonder Kids is a production of BYU Radio.
00:15:37
(gentle music)
00:15:40