Herbst am See

"Herbst am See                                Autumn on the sea
Wetterwende, kalte Hände              Changing weather, cold hands
Als ich mit dir am Ufer steh'"         As I'm standing with you on the shore
- "Herbst am See" by The Wise Guys (translation mine)

Friends, it is officially autumn. There was about a week earlier this month when the weather forecast showed progressively cooler and cooler temperatures each night, and now, we've settled into a classic New England chill. I never used to notice the changing seasons, you know. I was always traveling to different climate zones and messing up my internal time-keeper. I'd go to the Arctic in summer, the tropics in winter, and half the time, when I got home, I'd have no idea what season it was at all. 

Covid took all of that away. The pandemic is the longest continuous time I've spent at home in 10 years, and I can feel it. There are changes in my mental state (not for the better), and I'm noticing seasonal patterns like never before. 

There's a pond close to my house where I like to go diving. It's actually a great spot for days when wind and waves prevent ocean diving, and a lot of divers use it for training or testing new gear. There's a sponge in the pond, Spongilla lacustris, which I find fascinating because freshwater sponges are pretty rare. It's green because of symbiotic algae that give the sponge its nutrition, and it reproduces by releasing large yellow gemmules into the water column. I had noticed copious Spongilla in the pond earlier this summer and even collected a few opportunistic samples.

Now that the weather is cooler, Spongilla have all but disappeared from the pond. I'm not sure if the species has a dormant stage for overwintering, but it's clearly not as abundant as it was a few months ago. What few patches remain are degraded, covered in mucus, and clinging to the stringy algae on the floor of the pond. 

Meanwhile, the fishes don't seem to care about the cooler temperatures. After a long summer spent feeding, the perch and sunfish are much larger than I remember from this spring. They are unperturbed as I silently swim past, and their scales shimmer in the waning sunlight. 

Friends, it is certainly a different world out there, but I relish the opportunity to experience nature, one changing season at a time.