Seabird ecology and herring recovery top the program of the fourth annual Day for the Bay celebration at Woodmen Hall on April 13.

Organized by Lopez conservation research nonprofit Kwiáht and the local volunteers of the Fisherman Bay Marine Health Observatory, the Day for the Bay offers field trips, slide shows, exhibits, and publications to inform good stewardship of San Juan County’s largest historical estuary.  This year’s theme is “a circus of biodiversity in our backyard.”

After an orientation at Woodmen Hall at 9:30 a.m., participants can visit three field stations devoted to seabirds, invertebrates, and changing coastal marshes and beaches.  There will also be exhibits on mooring buoys, algal blooms, bioswales, and adapting to climate change, and a special activity table and touch tank for children.  A slideshow on recent research, and light lunch by Vortex and Taste of Persia, will be provided at Woodmen Hall at 12:30 p.m.  All activities are free.  Donations for seabird research will be welcome, however, and a new Fisherman Bay seabird-identification chart will be for sale together with bird-and- bay themed gift cards.

A special attraction this year is release of Kwiáht’s new Identification Guide to Marine Fish of the San Juan Islands, a full-color bound book illustrated with photographs  of juvenile and adult fish and original drawings by artist Julia Loyd.  Copies will be available at the event for sale at the event and at Islehaven Books.

This year’s event introduces several new research and conservation initiatives in Fisherman Bay such as monitoring plankton diversity, plankton blooms, and the diversity and health of animals such as sea anemones, sea slugs and sea cucumbers that live under the docks.  Lopez High School chemistry students are mapping accumulations of copper and other toxics in Weeks Wetland, and Kwiaht is planning the first of a number of small demonstration bio-remedial gardens along Lopez Village streets and parking areas.

The Fisherman Bay Marine Health Observatory (www. fishermanbayproject.org) was organized in 2009 as a joint program of Kwiáht and WSU Beach Watchers. Since then, Lopezians have volunteered thousands of hours monitoring seabirds, water quality and shoreline processes around the bay. Sustaining bird diversity was an original goal of the program. Bird diversity depends to a great extent on healthy fish populations in the bay, which in turn rely on clean water and aquatic vegetation. Volunteers were excited to see herring eggs on eelgrass floating in Fisherman Bay in 2012, and juvenile fish hiding under the docks.  Local herring should spawn in April, and anyone seeing milky water in Fisherman Bay (or other Lopez bays) is encouraged to leave a message on 468-4869 for follow-up by Kwiaht scientists.

Tour guides and exhibitors for this year’s Day for the Bay include Charlie Behnke and Amanda Wedow, Tim Clark, Dr. Peter Cavanagh, Jim Falconer, Nathan Hodges, Pat Johnson, and Madrona Murphy.  For more info, visit Kwiáht’s facebook page or write kwiaht@gmail.com.