Please welcome and say “hi” to SRA’s new Field Investigator, Izzie Ketcham.

Izzie is a Chesapeake Conservation Corps member who is working with SRA for a year thanks to support from the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

She hails from Windsor, CO, near Ft. Collins, and earned her environmental sciences degree from Grand Canyon University.

Izzie packed her things, loaded up her car and headed east to find a whole new world where she’s discovering why we all celebrate life in the Chesapeake as the Land Of Pleasant Living!

Life on the Severn sure is different from Colorado, she says, where the view is unobstructed for 30 miles or more in all directions on the high plains on the Eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. Ya just can’t see that type of wide-open vista along the three-lined shores of the Severn River.

Izzie’s first assignment was to help run our water quality WQ monitoring program.

On day-one as Field Investigator, Izzie jumped right in, figuratively speaking, to the Severn River, learning to pilot the SRA’s Maritime Skiff, Sea Girl, assuming her role as Team Leader and crew organizer for our weekly WQ tours.

Each week Izzie organizes our teams of boat captains and WQ Crew to visit 41 locations throughout the entire Severn River watershed.

Izzie and SRA’s WQ Crew members are monitoring oxygen, salinity, pH, temperature and clarity in the river and creeks.

On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings, the WQ Crews visit Lake Ogleton and the Whitehall Bay creeks, check on our oyster reef restoration area and mid-river creeks, monitor through Round Bay and end up at the head of the river at Indian Landing. Check out the map.

Izzie’s also brought her own kayak along so she can intimately explore her new home in the Severn River watershed.

She’s now part of our famous SAV Navy that tracks all the magnificent submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in our river.

She’s already planning a cool new research project to study where SAV is flourishing and where it has yet to take root.

Stay tuned for details …