The WFSU Ecology Blog
  • Home
    • About
    • EcoAdventures
      • Kayak and Canoe Adventures
      • Hiking
      • Wildlife Watching
    • Observations From the Field
      • White Pelicans Visit Dr. Charles L. Evans Pond in Tallahassee
      • An April Walk at Ochlockonee River WMA
      • Nesting Raptors at Honeymoon Island State Park
    • WFSU Public Media Home
  • Documentaries
    • In Their Words: Black Legacy Communities in North Florida
    • EcoCitizen Show | Seasons in South Tallahassee
    • Red Wolf Family Celebrates First Year at the Tallahassee Museum
    • Roaming the Red Hills
    • Oyster Doctors
    • Testing the Ecology of Fear
    • EcoShakespeare
    • Stories from the Apalachicola
    • Classic WFSU Ecology Documentaries
  • Habitats
    • Estuaries
      • Oyster Reef
        • The Effects of Predators and Fear on Oyster Reefs
        • Apalachicola Oyster Research
        • Animal Species in a North Florida Intertidal Oyster Reef
        • Oyster Reef Ecology | On the Reef
      • Salt Marsh
        • In the Grass- Salt Marsh Biodiversity Study
        • Plants and Animals of a North Florida Salt Marsh
        • Salt Marsh Ecology | In the Grass
      • Seagrass Bed
        • Predatory Snails, and Prey, of the Bay Mouth Bar Seagrass Beds
      • In the Grass, On the Reef Glossary
    • Waterways Big and Small
      • Aucilla/ Wacissa Watershed
      • Apalachicola Basin
        • Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines | Virtual Field Trip
        • The Age of Nature Screening & Discussion | The Future of the Apalachicola
        • Apalachicola River and Bay
        • Apalachicola RiverTrek | Kayaking, Camping, & Hiking the River Basin
    • Longleaf Pine & Fire Ecology
  • Backyard Habitat
    • Backyard Blog
      • My Year in Bugs: the 2022 Backyard Blog
      • Backyard Ecology Blog | 2021
      • Backyard Blog November/ December 2020
      • Backyard Blog September/ October 2020
      • July and August 2020 Backyard Blog
      • Backyard Blog June 2020
      • Backyard Blog May 2020
      • Backyard Blog April 2020
      • Backyard Blog February and March 2020
      • Backyard Blog January 2020
      • Backyard Blog October through December 2019
      • Backyard Blog September 2019
      • Backyard Blog August 2019
      • Backyard Blog July 2019
      • Backyard Blog June 2019
      • Backyard Blog May 2019
      • Backyard Blog April 2019
      • Backyard Blog March 2019
      • Backyard Blog February 2019
      • Backyard Blog January 2019
      • The Backyard Bug Blog 2018
    • Backyard Flora and Fauna
      • Bees of North Florida and South Georgia
      • The Seasonality of Bees (and Bee Plants) in North Florida
      • Woody Vines of North Florida
      • Flies of North Florida are More Diverse than You’d Think
      • The Case for Weeds, Our Unsung Florida Native Plants
      • Devil’s Walkingstick: Your New Favorite Thorny Pollinator Plant?
      • Florida Native Milkweed | Tips for Growing Your Monarch Friendly Garden
      • Mistletoe | A Parasite for the Holidays (But Maybe We Like it Anyway?)
    • Florida Friendly Seasonal Planting Guide
    • Pollinator and Gardening Posts
    • Gardening Web Resources
Kayak and Canoe Adventures
RiverTrek 2021: Five Days on the Apalachicola River
Lower Lake Lafayette: Kayak Tallahassee’s Hidden Swamp
Chipola River Paddling Trail | The Ovens and...
Kayaking Bald Point | Adventure on a Living...
Wacissa Springs Adventure | Kayaking a Wild Florida...
A Geologist’s View of the Apalachicola River |...
Upper Chipola River Kayak Adventure | Ghosts &...
Tate’s Hell & the Apalachicola River Delta |...
Kayak Scouting Mission on the Ochlockonee Water Trail
Merritt’s Mill Pond | Kayaking and Spring Caves

The WFSU Ecology Blog

  • Home
    • About
    • EcoAdventures
      • Kayak and Canoe Adventures
      • Hiking
      • Wildlife Watching
    • Observations From the Field
      • White Pelicans Visit Dr. Charles L. Evans Pond in Tallahassee
      • An April Walk at Ochlockonee River WMA
      • Nesting Raptors at Honeymoon Island State Park
    • WFSU Public Media Home
  • Documentaries
    • In Their Words: Black Legacy Communities in North Florida
    • EcoCitizen Show | Seasons in South Tallahassee
    • Red Wolf Family Celebrates First Year at the Tallahassee Museum
    • Roaming the Red Hills
    • Oyster Doctors
    • Testing the Ecology of Fear
    • EcoShakespeare
    • Stories from the Apalachicola
    • Classic WFSU Ecology Documentaries
  • Habitats
    • Estuaries
      • Oyster Reef
        • The Effects of Predators and Fear on Oyster Reefs
        • Apalachicola Oyster Research
        • Animal Species in a North Florida Intertidal Oyster Reef
        • Oyster Reef Ecology | On the Reef
      • Salt Marsh
        • In the Grass- Salt Marsh Biodiversity Study
        • Plants and Animals of a North Florida Salt Marsh
        • Salt Marsh Ecology | In the Grass
      • Seagrass Bed
        • Predatory Snails, and Prey, of the Bay Mouth Bar Seagrass Beds
      • In the Grass, On the Reef Glossary
    • Waterways Big and Small
      • Aucilla/ Wacissa Watershed
      • Apalachicola Basin
        • Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines | Virtual Field Trip
        • The Age of Nature Screening & Discussion | The Future of the Apalachicola
        • Apalachicola River and Bay
        • Apalachicola RiverTrek | Kayaking, Camping, & Hiking the River Basin
    • Longleaf Pine & Fire Ecology
  • Backyard Habitat
    • Backyard Blog
      • My Year in Bugs: the 2022 Backyard Blog
      • Backyard Ecology Blog | 2021
      • Backyard Blog November/ December 2020
      • Backyard Blog September/ October 2020
      • July and August 2020 Backyard Blog
      • Backyard Blog June 2020
      • Backyard Blog May 2020
      • Backyard Blog April 2020
      • Backyard Blog February and March 2020
      • Backyard Blog January 2020
      • Backyard Blog October through December 2019
      • Backyard Blog September 2019
      • Backyard Blog August 2019
      • Backyard Blog July 2019
      • Backyard Blog June 2019
      • Backyard Blog May 2019
      • Backyard Blog April 2019
      • Backyard Blog March 2019
      • Backyard Blog February 2019
      • Backyard Blog January 2019
      • The Backyard Bug Blog 2018
    • Backyard Flora and Fauna
      • Bees of North Florida and South Georgia
      • The Seasonality of Bees (and Bee Plants) in North Florida
      • Woody Vines of North Florida
      • Flies of North Florida are More Diverse than You’d Think
      • The Case for Weeds, Our Unsung Florida Native Plants
      • Devil’s Walkingstick: Your New Favorite Thorny Pollinator Plant?
      • Florida Native Milkweed | Tips for Growing Your Monarch Friendly Garden
      • Mistletoe | A Parasite for the Holidays (But Maybe We Like it Anyway?)
    • Florida Friendly Seasonal Planting Guide
    • Pollinator and Gardening Posts
    • Gardening Web Resources
EcoAdventuresKayak and Canoe AdventuresRivers and StreamsThe Red Hills of Florida & Georgia

Kayak Scouting Mission on the Ochlockonee Water Trail

by Rob Diaz de Villegas April 6, 2016
by Rob Diaz de Villegas April 6, 2016 0 comment

Welcome to Part 5 (of 10) of Roaming the Red Hills, which originally aired on the April 7 episode of WFSU’s Local Routes.  Through ten 3-minute videos, we’ll explore the natural soul of the Red Hills of Florida and Georgia, from the pine uplands down to its rivers, lakes, and farms.  Thanks to Tracy Horenbein for creating original compositions for this video series, and to Gary Asbell for serenading us and giving us permission to include his song about the Ochlockonee River, “The River.”  The series is narrated by Jim McMurtry. 

Funding for Roaming the Red Hills was provided by Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy.

Rob Diaz de Villegas WFSU-TV

We’re only kayaking three or four miles.  How long could that take?  When I was planning these segments with Georgia Ackerman, then of Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy, she told me about a large, organized kayak trip down the Ochlockonee River in south Georgia planned for November.  Trips like that can be fun, but I like smaller, more adventurous excursions for these videos.  Then she asked if I’d want to go on the scouting mission for that trip, in September, with students at Thomas University marking and clearing impediments.  I liked the idea of a trip where we didn’t exactly know what we’d see.  The result is what you see above- one of the most rugged EcoAdventures I’ve ever produced.

Snags chocked this section of the Ochlockonee River, making for frequent stops and a little extra walking and climbing on riverbanks and sandbars.

Snags choked this section of the Ochlockonee River, making for frequent stops and a little extra walking and climbing on riverbanks and sandbars.

Unlike the Ochlockonee River in Florida, the Georgia Ochlockonee is not part of a formal paddling trail system.  Official trails have maps that show put-in and take-out spots, points of interest, and camping opportunities (Like this map for the Ochlockonee in Florida).  This makes them easier to advertise to potential ecotourists, and it offers resources to help those paddlers plan their adventure.  Margaret Tyson wants this for the Georgia Ochlockonee, and has been working to make it a Georgia Water Trail.  The state of Georgia currently lists it as a Developing Trail.

For help with that Developing, Margaret has found an invaluable partner in Thomas University Assistant Professor Dr. Christine Ambrose.  Christine is the Director of the Geospatial Analysis and Planning Lab at Thomas, teaching biology students to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS).  As someone who loves toiling on the map graphics you see in our videos, I have a huge respect for people trained in GIS.  It combines map making with data; they are often used in making trail maps, but can also be used by biologists to map information about specific species or ecosystems, or to track sources of pollution.  In our video, Thomas University student Braxton Hicks was tasked with using a GPS to mark potential trouble spots on the river.  He did not lack for work.

It makes for great video- obstacle after obstacle, each a little different than the last.  Sometimes we were dragged under a snag, or through leaves.  Often, we had to portage our kayaks around the blockage.  Other times, the axes and saws came out.  I worried about their trip in November.  Surely they wouldn’t go through with it, with this river being so difficult?

A good rain took care of that.  I got my adventure video, and the organized trip went smoothly.  Sometimes it works out like that.

Thomas University biology students on a sandbar break.

Thomas University biology students on a sandbar break.

Ochlockonee River Serenade

Our kayak had maybe moved 10 feet from the put in point when a man fishing under the old train bridge told us to “Hold on.”  He ran and grabbed a guitar.  After a little tuning, he belted out “The River,” a song about the Ochlockonee River.

That man is Gary Asbell, a Tallahassee attorney with south Georgia roots.  He had just purchased a new Taylor guitar, and when he saw the camera he knew he had to try this song out on it.  “The River is a song I had written for two friends with whom I used to camp on the Ochlockonee.” Gary wrote to me.  “One of them, who was Bernie Gandy, founder and owner of Gandy Printers on South Monroe Street in Tallahassee, never heard the  finished song. I actually played it in public for the first time in February 2007 at Bernie’s funeral.”  His other friend, Danny Ouzts, requested that the song be played at his funeral as well.  Gary did that in 2012.

I want to thank Gary for sharing and letting us use a song so personal to him, about a river that many of us enjoy.

Trouble Upstream

Once we passed the old train bridge, we didn’t see many manmade structures, aside from a  boat ramp or two.  And, as Christine points out in the video, we pass Red Hills plantations with conservation easements along the river.  It is, as she says, “Excellent.”

P1100935-smallIt’s a different story to the north.  The Ochlockonee and many of the streams that feed it have been classified as impaired using the standards set forth in the Clean Water Act.  The Georgia River Network has compiled a list of issues facing the river.  Among those are 19 facilities permitted to dump wastewater into the river (as of 2008), and 1,213 agricultural users allowed to pump water from it (as of 2012).  Up to 70% of the drainage basin in Georgia is planted with cotton, which is a water intensive crop.

A linked document pertaining to the fish consumption recommended a limit of 1 serving per month of fish from the Ochlockonee, as well as three other neighboring watersheds in the south of Georgia (including the Suwannee).  For the rest of the state, it recommends a limit of 1 serving a week.

You can read the EPA’s collected findings on the Ochlockonee in Georgia here.

Pollutants are carried along with the water as it flows in Florida.  An analysis by McGlynn Labs of data collected from two Leon County monitoring stations shows higher concentrations in Chloride (“an indicator of sewage’), nitrogen, phosphorous, nitrates, and chlorophyll were considerably higher in the north river than in the south.  Many of the pollutants seem to settle into Lake Talquin, behind the Jackson Bluff Dam, making the south river cleaner.  The report also notes low water conditions, especially during cotton growing season (late summer/ early fall- which is when we took our trip).

For our next adventure, we’re south of the dam as the river makes its way through the Apalachicola National Forest.  We’ll be looking for critters on the Ochlockonee Bio-Blitz.

Come adventure with us in the Red Hills, Apalachicola River and Bay, the Forgotten Coast, and More! Subscribe to the WFSU Ecology Blog by Email.

Facebook Comments
Ochlockonee RiverpaddlingRed Hillssouth Georgia
0 comment
0
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Rob Diaz de Villegas

Rob Diaz de Villegas is a senior producer for WFSU-TV, covering outdoors and ecology. After years of producing the music program OutLoud, Rob found himself in a salt marsh with a camera, and found a new professional calling as well. That project, the National Science Foundation funded "In the Grass, On the Reef," spawned the award winning WFSU Ecology Blog. Now he spends time exploring north Florida's forests, coasts, waterways, and the endlessly fascinating ecosystem that is the backyard garden. Rob is married with two young sons, who make a pretty fantastic adventure squad.

previous post
Peeking into Gopher Tortoise Burrows at Birdsong
next post
Ochlockonee Bio-Blitz | Kids Experience Florida River Wildlife

Related Posts

Jim McClellan’s “Life Along the Apalachicola River”

April 15, 2015

SUN Trail Legislation looks to Connect Florida’s Trails

July 15, 2015

Merritt’s Mill Pond | Kayaking and Spring Caves

December 17, 2015

RiverTrek 2012 Part 2 | Apalachicola River Delta

November 19, 2012

Canoeing the Aucilla: A Red Hills River Steeped...

May 27, 2015

(Video) RiverTrek Part 1: Garden of Eden, Apalachicola...

November 14, 2013

Video: Cycling North Florida’s Capital City to the...

December 19, 2013

Florida Trail: Shepherd Spring, Cathedral of Palms, Sopchoppy...

November 30, 2011

107 Miles to Go*

October 8, 2012

Aucilla Sinks: Hiking Where the Land Gets Swallowed

April 11, 2012

Search

Subscribe

Subscribe to receive more outdoor adventures, and an in depth look at our local forests and waterways by Email.

If you do not receive a verification e-mail, check your spam folder.

Category

WFSU-FM Environmental Stories

  • Tallahassee’s latest urban reforestation effort brings new trees to Governor’s Park
  • Hurricane Ian’s estimated damage to Florida agriculture tops $1B
  • America’s largest underground springs gets even bigger with the discovery of another cave connection
  • DeSantis outlines second-term environmental plans
  • Deep freeze breaks pipes, creates water crisis across South

Twitter

Tweets by wfsuIGOR

iNaturalist

iNaturalist became a part of the WFSU Ecology Blog during the EcoCitizen Project in 2019.  Since then, we’ve used it to help identify the many plants and animals we see on our shoots.  And on the Backyard Blog, we show how it can be used to identify weeds and garden insects, to help figure out what’s beneficial or a possible pest.  Below is the iNaturalist profile belonging to WFSU Ecology producer Rob Diaz de Villegas.

iNaturalist


View robdv’s observations »

Most Recent

  • The Wakulla Springs Wildlife Survey- a decades long look
  • Welcome Liesel Hamilton to the WFSU Ecology Blog!
  • My Year in Bugs: the 2022 Backyard Blog
  • Timberlane Ravine: learn to love dead trees (and trillium!)
  • The strange and dangerous love lives of zebra longwing butterflies

Archives

April 2016
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  
« Mar   May »

WFSU Ecology YouTube

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Flickr
  • Youtube

@2017 - PenciDesign. All Right Reserved. Designed and Developed by PenciDesign