The Raritan Project Begins
There’s a lot to learn from a river. That’s what we intend to show you over the next few months, as our students in the Raritan River Watershed Project blog about their experiences on their learning excursions and in the monthly discussions with various experts. Our first post comes from Walker Finlay, a eighth grader from Mendham, giving us his impressions about the first learning excursion in which the participants traveled the length of the river, from its headwaters at Schiff to the Raritan Bay.
Johnson Park, New Brunswick. Photo by Walker Finlay
On November 20th, we took a trip around the Raritan River watershed.We stopped in Gladstone first and visited Natirar (Raritan spelled backwards), which is the former estate of the King of Morocco. We conducted some tests on the river there, measured the flow rate, the temperature, and marked our GPS coordinates. The river there was pretty small and we learned that the water flows faster where the stream is narrower, and that the temperature is coldest at the bottom.
We then drove down to The American Cyanamid site in Bound Brook where we learned a little bit about water pollution from factories. After lunch at Johnson Park near Rutgers University, we did more tests. The river was much wider there, so the flow rate was about half as fast as up at Natirar. We also recorded the elevation of our stops, because we learned that the water was flowing downwards due to gravitational force. We finished near Sandy Hook where the elevation was the lowest and we got a great view of Raritan Bay from the Twin Lights historic site.
Twin Lights, Sandy Hook. Photo by Walker Finlay
The Raritan River watershed has proven to be much more expansive than my impression of it before the trip. The biggest thing that stuck out to me was the size of the watershed, it is not just a backyard creek, but a huge river going all the way to the Atlantic Ocean! As a member of the Student Green Team at my school, the most interesting part for me was to learn about the pollution in the river.
I’m excited to learn more about the wildlife of the watershed in the future. I would really like to study more about the fish and birds that live in and around the water.
I live so close to the Raritan, and spend so much time in and around it, I’m looking forward to learning more about it. The most challenging part of this trip though, will be getting up in the morning! But seriously, the part that will challenge me is getting down and dirty to study the river. I usually do more fly fishing and swimming in my own part of the river, so I am really excited to continue the project and learn a lot more about the river that runs through my own backyard.
- Raritan Bay. Photo by Walker Finlay
