UNB ecologist's dream: 18-month trip cruising waters of North America

Allen Curry woke up to the sound of Canadian geese arguing outside the porthole of his boat.

The 36-foot Cutwater cruiser rocked slightly as he lay in the double bed in the forward cabin. Outside, the water was calm, still like glass, he said.

On Monday morning, he was tied to a dock in Bruce Mines, Ont., on Lake Huron, about 70 kilometres southeast of Sault Ste. Marie.

He made an espresso on the propane stove. He has about two more weeks left of his Johnny Java, a favourite brand from Fredericton, before he runs out. By then, he'll be more than 1,500 kilometres away from his hometown, and he won't be back again for more than a year and a half.

Curry is on what he calls his Weaving Waters Expedition, his last formal adventure as a professor of biology at the University of New Brunswick. He's 62 years old and when he returns from the trip, he plans to retire.

He left from Hamilton, Ont., on July 16, and he'll live on his boat, the Water Weaver, as he travels thousands of kilometres to hear local stories from people on the Great Lakes, along the Mississippi River, down to the Gulf of Mexico, back up the coast to the St. Lawrence River and around the Maritimes. He'll finish the trip in Fredericton.

Although Curry has been an aquatic scientist for more than 40 years, he knows that to make an impact, he has to get out of the classroom.

"If you want to have an impact, that kind of science can only do so much. The real impact is going to have to come from the people. And it's going to have to come from the bottom up people, people who are, in this case, on the water every day," Curry said. 

"They know the issues. They know the problems and challenges that they have. They know what needs to be fixed."

People in and around the water, such as fishers, boaters, swimmers — know their waterways best. Some have to deal with flooding, invasive species, over fishing, pollution, blue-green algae and more, but at every dock, you discover a new story about the relationship between people and the water that you never expected, Curry said.

While travelling across Lake Erie, he planned a swim at Pelee Island, south of Windsor, Ont., but he didn't expect to see so much blue-green algae in the water, so he decided to pass, and it became a subject to write about on his blog.

Curry plans to chronicle this massive undertaking on the blog and to eventually publish a book. He hopes the collection will be "a water reconciliation message to inspire greater respect for water and build hope for our children," he said on his website.

Finding stories on the water

On Monday morning, Curry took his coffee outside of the cabin and sat at a table at the back of his boat.

The air was cool and damp. There's always moisture in the air, living on the water, Curry said. He grew up around boats, and as he travels south and it gets warmer, he'll sometimes sleep outside in a hammock.

Later on Monday, he traveled to Mackinac Island in Michigan, on the northeastern point of Lake Huron, and tied up to a dock in the harbour. In the afternoon, he planned to talk to a group of scientists on the island from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission about their sea lamprey control program.

The sea lamprey is a parasitic fish that attaches itself to other fish with its pointed teeth, rasps through the fish's scales with its sharp tongue and feeds on the fish's blood. Attacks from sea lampreys have reduced the population of lake trout, salmon, whitefish, cisco and burbot in the Great Lakes, according to the Government of Ontario.

"They got into the Great Lakes when we built all the canals [to the lakes]," Curry said. "Then they became self-sustaining. They don't have to go to sea anymore."

After he speaks with experts managing lamprey control programs, he'll chat with some locals. 

"You just get out on the dock and start walking down. There are people there who want to tell you what the fishery used to be like and what the water quality used to be like," Curry said.

"There's no shortage of stories at every dock."

Inspired by Rachel Carson

Curry decided to write a book about this expedition because he was inspired by Rachel Carson, the ecologist and writer of the groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962 and still in print.

Anyone his age, anyone who was in university from the 1970s to the 1990s knows Rachel Carson and the impact she had when the book came out in 1962, Curry said.

Carson wrote about the impact of pesticides on the environment and on people, and her work helped form the environmental movement. 

"She used her knowledge as a catalyst to tell the bigger story that things that we do to the environment, things that we are creating — we have to think more broadly about their impact across the environment," he said. "That was her story line. And that's the story line that I'm taking."

"We're doing things to the environment that we're not thinking about. We're not showing enough respect for the environment."

On Curry's expedition website, there's a map that tracks the location of Curry's boat. There's also a map of his planned journey across the U.S. and back to Canada.

While he was docked at Mackinac Island in Michigan on Monday, there were a lot of people, boats and ferries around, he said.

"They're putting up quite a swell here," he said. "Knocking all the boats around. It's going to be an interesting sleep tonight."

It got so bad that he had to go fix his bumper to protect the boat, and out on the water, there they were again — the Canadian geese.

"It's like they're following me around."