The Secchi Dip-In

 
  Dip-In Home

  What is the Dip-In?

  Results

  Participating Programs

  Enroll Your Program

  Monitoring Methods

  Dip-In Staff

Contact the Dip-In at:
    dipin@kent.edu

Web Site Updated: June 09, 2008

The Dip In the Cuyahoga River
	At the City of Kent Heritage Festival

For years, the Dip-In crew have been urging participants to have their own Dip-In day.   The Dip-In can be used to bring attention to a volunteer program, educate the public about volunteer monitoring and local environmental issues, and attract media attention.  All the while we have been urging others to produce events, we couldn't think of how we could apply the idea in our area.  It took Margaret Garmon, Kent State University's Coordinator of University Communications and Technology to remind us that our own town had a Heritage Festival on July 3, right on the banks of the Cuyahoga River.  How many times had we walked over that bridge over the Cuyahoga River during previous festivals without it registering that you could drop a Secchi disk into the pool behind the historic Pennsylvania-Ohio Canal dam.

With considerable help from KSU's Margaret Garmon and Carole Harwood we got permission to have a Dip-In event during the Festival.  The Festival Committee gave us a stage on the bridge with microphones.  Margaret wrote press releases and invitations to dignitaries.   Carole dealt with the Festival Committee and with the physical setup at the bridge.  The Dip-In group itself was busy plotting maps, acquiring poster boards, reducing 1999 data, and handling a million small, but important details.  We think the end result was well worth all the efforts.

Dip-In Day, July 3, 1999

Saturday dawned hot and just got hotter.  Fortunately during much of the day the weather threatened, but did not produce rain, but the clouds would periodically obscure the sun and give a few minutes of relief.  We set up a booth having a map of the 1998 Dip-In results and a blank map of the U.S. to fill in the 1999 results to date.  The idea was to give some activity in the booth as we slowly colored in the 1999 map.   Actually very few people looked at the new map.  Probably the hit of  the booth (especially with the kids) was the candy that Meredith Misner, our undergraduate assistant, thought of bringing to the Festival.  That quick dive for the candy did give us a chance to show them our Dip-In equipment.
 

At 12:30 P.M. we moved the 1998 map and a whiteboard onto the bridge, where a banner proclaimed to the curious the site of the 1999 Cuyahoga River Dip-In.  We had invited dignitaries to become Honorary Dippers.  We were honored to have Congressman Tom Sawyer, KSU President Carol Cartwright, Councilperson and former Kent mayor, Kathleen Chandler, and the Kent Environmental Council's Edith Chase as our 1999 Dippers.  The Dip-In began with some introductory remarks by Dr. Cartwright and Congressman Sawyer.   After a few Secchi instructions by Dipper Bob Carlson we strolled to the side of the bridge for this momentous event.

The Cuyahoga River

The Cuyahoga was the perfect candidate for a Dip-In event.  In 1968, this river actually caught fire in Cleveland, fueled by oily discharges from various refineries.   The river was virtually devoid on any higher plant or animal life for many of its 100 miles.  In Kent, the river also was devoid of fish, largely thanks to discharges of primary-treated effluent from sewage treatment plants (STP) from local municipalities.

The river was slowly transformed because of extensive and expensive updates to the STP's and the industries along the river.  Today portions of the river have been designated as a Scenic River, and, most recently, the Cuyahoga has been designated one of the Nation's first American Heritage Rivers.  Although the river has made an amazing recovery since 1969, the cleanup is not over.  The latest controversy concerns the dams such as the one in Kent.  Because of concerns of the low dissolved oxygen in the pools behind the dams, there is now an effort to lower or eliminate these dams on the river.  The subject is highly controversial if, for no other reason, than that the dams have now become historical scenic features in towns such as Kent.

The Dip-In wasn't meant to highlight this controversy, but did act as a focal point for citizen reaction and comment.  Meredith produced a questionnaire as a part of her KSU Honors research.  She hopes to discover whether location or age might affect a person's perception of the quality of the Cuyahoga.  Much to her surprise there were a number of pointed comments concerning the removal of the dam.  These comments, both verbal and written underscore the value of a local event such as the Dip-In in assessing citizen perceptions and in promoting education and discussion.

The Cuyahoga Dip-In

After our willing dippers reached the side of the bridge, they were again instructed in the use of the Secchi disk; "Lower the disk until you can't see it anymore."   After this careful instruction, each dipper lowered the disk.  Since the railing of the bridge was a good 20 feet above the water, clothes pins, calibrated to the bridge railing was used as the a constant marker of height.  A clothespin marked the point on the line where the reading began and where the dipper declared the disk disappeared.  The difference between the two clothes pins was declared the Secchi depth.  After determining the depth, each dipper was asked to sign their name in the Dip-In register and write the time and Secchi depth.  After the celebrities had finished, the other observers were invited to take a reading and to enter their name in the register.
 

    Our basic philosophy is that every opportunity should be taken to teach the Public about Science.  In this case, we told the citizen scientists that they were participating in an experiment to see whether they saw the same transparency or not.  Each could compare their results with the preceding dippers.  The results are published below.   Over a period of 20 minutes, 25 dippers ranging in age from children to seniors, all with no experience with a Secchi disk, did a little bit of Science.  They saw the effects of sun glare and of clouds covering the sun.  Some said they couldn't believe they could see that far into the Cuyahoga, while others were dismayed at the lack of transparency.
 

The Cuyahoga  that day was colored a light brown, reflecting the effects of two days of rain.  Two days before, in some preliminary readings we had found a transparency of 41 inches, a fact we mentioned to our Citizen Scientists.  It provided an excellent opportunity to discuss nonpoint source pollution and sources of erosion.

We were very pleased with the outcome of the first event.  We were able to provide a forum for Congressman Sawyer to talk about our Environment and the Clean Water Act.   We got to talk about volunteer monitoring and about the Cuyahoga.  We introduced 25 people to Secchi science and made them willing participants in a scientific experiment.  With the questionnaire, we obtained a measure of citizen perception of the Cuyahoga as well as the opportunity to explore some of the factors that affect that perception.  We recruited someone for our statewide volunteer monitoring program.   And, we gave interviews to two newspapers.

Dip-In 2000

In our event on July 3, 2000, several improvements were made.  We moved our booth as close to the river as we were allowed to do and we obtained a canopy to get us out of the sun.  We manned the dip in site through most of the day. As we did in 1999, we kept a record of who took the readings.  It was gratifying that we had people come back that had taken a reading in 1999 to see what reading they could obtain this year.  The Y2K results are shown below.

	The Secchi depths taken by participants in the Cuyahoga River Dip-In in 1999 and 2000.
	The percent deviation of individual readings from an average value of 6 readings taken around the individual point.  This method compares each reading with its nearest neighbor readings and minimizes any daily changes in Secchi depths as was apparent in the morning readings.

Except for a distinct increase in transparency in the morning, the readings taken by the participants were fairly constant throughout the day.  The morning differences seemed to be related to the bridge shadow being cast over the Dip-In site.  When the shadow disappeared, there was more glare on the water and the readings changed.

There is always a concern that unskilled personnel cannot take accurate Secchi depth readings.  In this Cuyahoga River experiment, we found that the median deviation of readings from a 6-point running average was only 0.17% and 50% of the values were less than plus or minus 5% of this average.  The evidence gathered in this study suggests that training other than simple instructions is not all that necessary to obtain consistent values.