Heading to Bioblitz I didn’t really know what to expect. The day started off quite stressfully because the group of people who I was planning going with decided to leave very late and so we ended up sprinting from the subway onto the Staten Island ferry but it all worked out in the end. Once we got on the bus my friends and I were all sporting our new bioblitz t-shirts and hats that we were all fans of and we were assigned different groups by being given numbers. I was given the same numbers as two of my other friends so I was happy and was hoping that I was going to be given the fishing group because I heard that it was best group. Unfortunately (or so it initially seemed) we were not the fishing group, instead we were assigned to the lichen group. My first though when they told me to report to the lichen group was “what is a lichen” because I had never heard of such a thing, but by the end of the day I would come out of bioblitz an expert on the subject.
Once my group and I all got together the first thing we did was walk up to the highest point in Freshkills to see if there were any lichens on the tree. They had a example on some bark about what a lichen was and I was surprised because I had previously thought that the thing that they were showing me was a sign that the tree was very sick, not an indicator of health. It was sort of hard to see what we were looking out for when we started hunting for lichens of our own because the examples were just some tiny black dots on some bark. Things then became even harder when our guides started saying that even they couldn’t find any on the trees so I started to lose hope that we were going to find any the whole day. The guides then started to tell us that lichens are good ways to judge air quality and that the fact that there weren’t any lichens up there was not the best sign for the ecosystem.
Later, as we had yet to find a lichen, I suggested that we should go down nearer the water (probably driven by the fact that it was such a hot day and I thought that down by the water might be cooler) and look for lichens there. To my surprise, when we were looking at the trees they were actually covered in lichens! The woman even told me that the tree that I had found was the tree covered in the most lichens that she had seen all weekend working at Freshkills. Our tree was so covered in lichens that they were able to use it as example for teaching us about different types of lichens. Each of them had very scientific names so I cannot remember what they were called specifically (folios, crustos, and something else I believe). While we were down there you could still sort of smell how Freshkills used to be a dump and around some of the trees that we were looking at, some of which were sort of off the designated walking trail you could see a lot of old garbage that was probably a few decades old. Additionally when we were looking at some small rocks in an area I pointed out some lichens I found on a rock and they said that they had never seen that lichen before in the area and one of the women actually took the rock so they she could bring to the lab that she was working in
Overall, it was cool to learn about something that I previously had known nothing about and it was amazing to know that there were people out there like out guides that dedicate ther whole lives to lichens and lichenography. The stories that they were telling us along the way were very interesting because they were not cooped up inside the lab all day much of the work that they were doing was hands on and they had traveled all over the country collecting samples and both of them were hoping to study lichens all across the globe very soon. I also think it is sort of amazing what they have done with Freshkills and while it is not Botanical Garden, I think the fact that they can restore some biodiversity to the area is very promising and something that we should try to do more and more across the nation. If we keep up initiatives like these in a few decades time there could actually be some really viable parks that are built out land that was once deemed unusable.
