Swamp Pat’s Guided Photography Excursions

I’m back from San Juan Island! Life was good out there, but it’s also good to be back in the “big city” (not!). I’m living in Bellingham, and working in Mount Vernon with the great Pat Cole, doing my old weed killing work.

Pat’s been working on the beaches of Whidbey and Camano islands for over 20 years now, combating an invasive beach grass called Spartina (also called “Common Cordgrass”.) Spartina spreads over muddy lagoons and beaches, annihilating habitats where fish and birds would otherwise thrive. The private and public beaches of these islands were once totally overrun with the Spartina scourge, but Pat and his old crew took care of most of the hard work long before I started working for him. These days, most of what we do is monitoring work, meaning many sites have been almost clean or even on the “eradicated” list for some time. In other words, we do a lot of walkin’ and talkin’ in some beautiful spots! I’m pretty lucky to have this gig. That being said, the rainy season is right around the corner, and October has a high potential of sucking. After October, the season is over and I’ll have to find something else to do with myself to make a paycheck.

We do a combination of spraying and digging the Spartina, depending how much there is, the weather, and the location. There’s so little at many of our spots that we’re often out walking with pitchforks and bags.

source: https://www.nwcb.wa.gov/weeds/common-cordgrass

Spartina is distinct from common beach grasses like salt grass and arrowgrass in certain ways that can be hard to see at first. It has a lighter green color than many of the green-blues you see out in the field, it’s leaves are flat and pointy, and when you tear back it’s leaves, a small line of hairs can be found where the leaf connects to the stalk.

There’s some serious perks to this job - we get to walk places where people usually aren’t able to go unless you own the property, I get paid for our travel time in the truck, which can be 2 hours of time on the clock on our Camano Island days, and my boss and I have a great time at work! Sometimes we even find crazy stuff while we’re out in the field like this awesome driftwood mansion!

Thanks for stopping by! Steem on, folks <3