Guppy trail

One of my biggest "pet-peeves" is mis-information. The internet is thus somewhat of a thorn to me as there is very little if any fact-checking on things which get posted. If that wasn't bad enough, people then find this incorrect information and then perpetuate it further and are often adamant that they have the right information. Drives me nuts. Here is an example. I was recently told (by several people) that there was a new trail on the island. Great. I thought it strange that working for the National Park (that maintains most of the trails) I had not heard of this new trail. I love to hike, so I was intrigued. I asked where had these people heard of this "new trail" So and so's blog, they said. Really. So I looked. Turns out this "new trail" had been established only recently.... 1942. By the U.S. Army. In addition to being the National Park marine biologist I am also the park GIS specialist/ cartographer. Here then is the trail map I made about 6 months ago (before said blog post).

This trail is part of the Department of Interior's National Historic Site for the Blunt's Point Cannons. As a National Historic Site this area is administered by... yup, the National Park Service. I requested that the area be cleaned up and revitalized about a year ago during one of our weekly staff meetings. We then sent out our trail crew to clear the area and restore the guns. Ah.... a "new trail".

Incidentally, the second cannon up the hill which is still partially flooded has a freshwater fish species that nobody knew was here. Everyone has been "rubber-stamping" along that our streams had Mexican mollies, Poecillia mexicana. Well, Emma and I went and collected some for an aquarium I built a few weeks ago. I immediately recognized that these were not the Mexican mollies that were supposed to be there. More samples were collected and sent off to North Carolina and the Netherlands (museums that have the leading world experts on Poecillidae- the molly/guppy family). Turns out our fish are Gill's Mollies, Poecillia gillii. So no new trail, but we did get a new fish.