Every now and then you can go home again... at least, home to a better planet. Here is another story -- to add to the stories of new baby Mallards and other recent wonders -- from Mountain Lake in San Francisco's Presidio National Park.
Recently a few Mountain Lake Park regulars began to notice a strange and mysterious phenomenon: whirlpools in the lake! Mineral springs? Fresh water from the bowels of the earth bubbling up into this water-starved state? A submerged hot tub? As the King of Siam would have said, "It's a puzzlement."
Enter Jason Lisenby, Biological Science Technician with the Presidio Trust and a particular friend of Mountain Lake Park. It was Lisenby who intervened when this writer wanted to mount a campaign to find a mate for lonely Musco the Duck. "Wait, wait," he said. "You will wind up with a lake full of - non-native - Muscovy ducks and nothing else." Musco apparently got bored with being behind the giant dark fence while the non-native fish were being removed anyway, and has relocated to other waters. Where we hope he has found a family more appropriate if less devoted than the human admirers he had at Mountain Lake.
The whirls and bubbles, Lisenby explains, "are from a newly installed aeration and water-mixing system" recently turned on. "We are using a compressor to pump air through hoses to twelve locations around the bottom of the lake. The added oxygen and movement will help keep algae blooms at bay while we get the lake's aquatic plant communities restarted.
Limiting algae will keep the water more clear, and clear water is good for our newly reestablishing aquatic plants. In the long run, the aquatic plants will do the work the aeration system is currently doing, but this is a solution until then."
Who knew? Biological science knew. Already the lake is so clear it's possible to see eight feet down (don't try this yourself; the lake is not for swimming and diving), and this is a body of water so polluted by highway runoff, abandoned pets and assorted human detritus that only a few years ago you couldn't see your hand six inches below the surface. You wouldn't have wanted to get too near the water anyway.
All this, a little good news amidst the abundant smoldering global bad news, right here in the Presidio National Park. Your tax dollars, and biological science, at work.
Halleluia.