Diving for milfoil: Western Maine group says it had a successful summer

Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

Daniel Bishop of Denmark feeds the suction harvester hose to Christian Oren of Casco while clearing a patch of variable-leaf milfoil from the Songo River in Naples. Oren, a 2009 graduate of Lake Region High School, dives under the water, picks the invasive plants at the roots and feeds them into the hose. Bishop, the invasive coordinator for the Lakes Environmental Association, takes the milfoil that is sucked up from the lake and puts it into the bags at right.

Buy a print

- Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

Variable-leaf milfoil is native to the southwestern United States. The invasive plant has been identified in 28 lakes and ponds in Maine.

- dslover

Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

Christian Oren of Casco prepares to dive into the Songo River in search of variable-leaf milfoil. Oren is a 2009 graduate of Lake Region High School.

- dslover

Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

Daniel Bishop, left, and Christian Oren of Casco have helped bag 10,000 pounds of variable-leaf milfoil along the Songo River this summer.

- dslover

The plants didn't always cooperate. Ditto the water, the weather and a motor that operated the suction hose dangling from their pontoon boat.

But by the end of summer, success.

Dan Bishop and his three-person crew from the Lakes Environmental Association spent half of June, July and August in wet suits pulling up milfoil at the bottom of the Songo River and Brandy Pond in Western Maine.

They bagged close to 10,000 pounds of plants.

"It's surprisingly physically demanding," said Bishop, 25. "Sometimes I can just stick my hand in and it pulls right out."

Sometimes, it's harder, like weeding underwater.

"Sometimes it gets so sedimented you really can't see," Bishop said. "We've gotten so we can identify a plant by touch."

Three years ago when he and others first went out on the 24-foot boat with a special hose to "suction harvest," Brandy Pond and the Songo Lock (upper Songo) had several acres of visible milfoil.

Now, at least on the water's surface, no patches.

"We don't want to get cocky and think we've licked this thing. It's a tough plant to eradicate," LEA Executive Director Peter Lowell said Friday. "It feels like we're making progress."

Based in Bridgton, LEA watches over 37 lakes in Western Maine. Of those, only those two and Sebago Lake have milfoil, an invasive plant that can take over water beds and spread, choking off native life.

Bishop, who started volunteering with the nonprofit as a teenager at Lake Region High School, grew up in Bridgton a few hundred yards from a beach. He's visited friends in other states and seen and heard milfoil horror stories.

"They actually will mow paths on the lake so the boats can go through," Bishop said. "We're trying to stay ahead of that."

The water is important for tourists and recreation; he said he couldn't imagine that changing. He wrote his thesis at the University of Maine on the pros and cons of different removal approaches for the plant.

The pontoon boat set out three mornings a week all summer. Typically, two divers went in the water, at depths up to 20 feet, to pull milfoil up by its roots and feed the plant into a 4-inch-wide hose. On top of the boat, where that hose drained into onion bags, two crew members watched for other boats and stayed in touch with the divers, Bishop said.

At noon, everyone switched jobs.

"Some of the plants will regrow; what we're trying to do is knock them back during the boating season," Lowell said.

In the past, the group laid down in-water barriers — tarps up to 40- by 60-feet wide — to prevent growth.

The milfoil likely spread between those three bodies of water by boat, Lowell said. A goal is to keep it from spreading into Long Lake, a busy lake that connects to Brandy Pond.

Twenty-eight lakes and ponds in Maine have been identified as having invasive plants, according to the Department of Environmental Protection. That's out of thousands.

"(The public) might not have understood it, but they've heard about it, what it does to a lake and a town's economy," Lowell said. "It's amazing that it's limited to those few number of lakes. I think it's because everybody's been on their toes."

kskelton@sunjournal.com