On a sunny morning in early June, NeighborSpace partnered with Blue Water Baltimore to host the Gwynn Oak Bug Blitz! Attendees, ranging from local neighborhood families to a fisherman all the way from Carroll County, joined Blue Water Baltimore’s John Marra to explore Gwynns Falls, searching for benthic macroinvertebrate species (also known as water bugs) and learning about the types of pollution that affect local waterways.

What were the findings? According to John, “Since we were only looking for benthic macroinvertebrate species in the Gwynns Falls and not taking samples, we can’t give you an exact and scientific measure of the water’s health from the June 3rd event. However, we did see a black-crowned night heron when we arrived at the site, as well as a few schools of small fish later on. Along with the number of insect species we found, this indicates that the water where we held our event is viable enough to support a healthy food web.”

Want to learn more about the health of Baltimore’s waterways, including Gwynns Falls? Blue Water Baltimore monitors and measures a number of health indicators at sites all throughout Baltimore, and posts them at the Baltimore Water Watch site at https://baltimorewaterwatch.org/.