(click on any pictures for a larger view)
"Photos Courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey." That doesn't mean I didn't take them... I did. I just took them while at work, in an airplane, 500 ft over the coast.
Last week I was in the Northeast. I started by calling this trip the "New England 2009" trip because it was a repeat of the Oct 2000 trip we took to photograph the New England coast. That didn't really seem to fit this trip in the end, as only about half of the survey was in New England. So it soon became the Northeast Trip 2009. Same initials "NE", larger area. 9,755 pictures later we had updated our data base for that area. No that's not a typo. 9,755 pictures... in three days. We averaged 3,250 pictures a day, but when you consider that the first day was shortened by equipment trouble and we only got 1,970 pictures the first day... it's a little more impressive. On the last day, slightly behind schedule, we pushed to finish the distance and took a record 4,676 in one day. We almost ran out of disk space.
In stead of basing out of a particular airport or Coast Guard Station each day, we flew until the light conditions deteriorated (which was about 3:00 in the afternoon, latest), found a place to stay for the night, then the next morning, got up and kept going. That had two distinct advantages. One, we didn't have much, if any, transit time during each days survey. We were near where we wanted to start each morning (at least in theory) and when we finished we didn't have to fly back to where we started. Two, we could go a lot further over all, since we didn't have to change our base of operations midway through the trip, like we did in 2000. We took everything we needed with us on the plane. Of course the plane had to ferry back home after we'd finished, but he could go straight and at speed, rather then along the coast and at 80 mph.
Knox County Airport, ME
On this trip we started at Rockland, Maine, flying in a Cessna Stationaire 207. The airport at Rockland has two runways. A commercial airline, Cape Air, flies into Rockland 3 times a day from Boston. They have a small building, one counter, a metal detector... and 12 full time TSA employees. Did I mention they get 3 flights from and to Boston a day. Now, I'm all for security, but 12 (!) full time TSA, standing around waiting for flights at 10:30 am, 3:30 pm and 7:30 pm. The people who fly out of Rockland end up in the secure areas of US air travel system. So, yeah, they need to be checked, but that seems a little like over kill. But I digress.
Cape Elizabeth, ME
We started the actual survey at Portland, Maine, flying south and shooting with a digital still camera out the copilots open window. The coast of Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts (north of Boston) is rocky and spotted with pocket beaches. South of Boston there are sandy beaches and tall bluffs.We went all the way down to the Cape Cod Canal and then flew out to Provincetown. We flew down the outer Cape to Monomoy Island, out to Nantucket and Martha's Vinyard, before returning to Chatham and flying the southern exposure of the Inner Cape. From there we headed across the south Massachusetts shore and across Rhode Island to the Connecticut border before turning south to Montauk Point on Long Island. The Long Island coast was nearly all sandy shore. Flying it became much easier then the curvy, rocky New England coast. We headed from the west end of Long Island to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, through Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, to the North Carolina border, where we had started our survey last May... And every day the weather was fantastic. The worst we had was high hazy clouds that softened the shadows and dimmed the sun, but only a little.
Truro, Cape Cod, MA
We used a brace to hold the window open. I was mostly out of the wind. Cheryl wasn't. She got the wind full force and full cold. The first day was the worst in terms of cold. When we landed for lunch Cheryl's fingers were numb. We landed in Falmouth on the first night, early, after loosing our GPS signal. We weren't able to get it back while in the air, but once on the ground we shut everything down and when we restarted it, the GPS was back. Cheryl and Emily were able to go home that night, sleep in their own beds and get more warm cloths, which they didn't need as much of on the last day. Each day was progressively warmer. On the second day of the survey we had lunch on Martha's Vinyard and spent the night in the Hamptons. Like Cheryl said, how many USGS geologists can make that claim? We got up early on Thursday and continued west along Long Island. Had lunch in Ocean City, NJ and finished at the North Carolina border around 3:00. We couldn't have gone much farther. We were very close to getting shadows on the beach. The only thing that saved us was that there was no water behind the beaches to reflect the sun back into the camera. Indian Point, ME
I love flying this part of the coast, it's so unlike the sandy southern US coastlines. Maine, New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts' coasts are alternately rocky, then sandy, then composted of high bluffs of glacial material. It's absolutely gorgeous. Cape Cod is the remains of a terminal glacial moraine. North to Race Point, Provincetown and south along the Monomy Islands, are all depositional sand spits. In the middle of that part of the Cape are tall bluffs of eroding material that are retreating steadily. It's my favorite part of the trip. I grew up going to the Cape every summer with my family. I did my senior research project as an undergraduate was on it's geologic history. Being able to fly over it, and this was the second time, is just gravy on this job. The Rhode Island coast is a lot like Maine; rocky, with large pocket beaches and mansions that make your typical "McMansion" look like a hovel. Long Island is also a terminal glacial moraine and began the long run of sandy shoreline toward the south. While I was able to comment on the geology of Cape Cod, Cheryl explained the history of Long Island. Long Island is Cheryl's forte. She was able to not only tell us about the erosional history and concerns, but a lot of the political controversies that rage on the island today. Much of her recent research has focused on Long Island. Since Cheryl grew up in New Jersey, we also heard the tales of her mischievous teenaged beach adventures.Humpback Whales, Provincetown, Cape Cod, MA
One of the best things about the trip was one sight that had nothing to do with coastal processes. I dubbed it a "non-coastal feature". Off the coast of Provincetown there was a small pod of Humpback whales, including calves. I'd been whale watching once from Provincetown. It was pretty neat. This beat that trip. We spotted the whales as we came around the northern curve of the Provincetown spit. In 17 years of flying in Maine from the mainland to the islands our pilot had never seen whales. We all looked at Cheryl. This was her gig. "Well, as long as we're here..." We took two loops around them. I think they were as curious about us as we were about them. The mother, more then once, turned her white belly up trying to get a look at us, while we took pictures of her.
It was an amazing trip. We only took still images. No video this time. Cheryl didn't see the need for video, and since this was her project, she made the call. It was the first time I'd worked with Cheryl, even though I've known her for 10 years. It was a hoot. It was great to meet Emily as well. We made up the first "all girl" flight crew from the USGS. Our pilot said he felt right at home. He and his wife raised two girls. So he was used to hanging around women. I'm hoping that it won't be another 9 years before we fly this area again. They don't get many hurricanes up there. They do get Nor'easters, which can be as devastating as a hurricane to both the beaches and the infrastructure. I do know one thing. If they get a storm this summer, or next winter, we're ready. And I'd be glad to go back and fly it again.
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