Editor's Note: This is the second of two articles looking at marine life in the Long Island Sound.  The previous article can be found here.

After a week of rain and flooding, the bright sun made for the perfect late September day to boat along the Saugatuck Harbor. With a net cast behind it, the S.S. Annie rode down the river flanked by waterfront mansions.

As the net trawled for wildlife at the mouth of the Saugatuck River, Dick Harris, the captain of the 27-foot boat, had his suspicions about what he'd find. Blue crabs seemed to be the most likely catch, since he found an abundance of them in the Norwalk Harbor not long ago. It was a troubling sign of a change in the ecosystem, since few other species were caught.

After three minutes, the net was pulled back onto the boat and opened. Some seaweed and a couple twigs were inside.

"This is pretty depressing. This is nothing," said Penny Howell, a marine fisheries biologist for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), as she rifled through the empty net.

"Phew, that's scary," Harris said. "I'm not happy. I thought I'd see some life forms."

For about 20 years, Harris, the director of Harbor Watch and River Watch at the Earthplace nature center, has been monitoring waterways to check pollution levels and conduct surveys of the marine wildlife. Never before has he seen such an absolute lack of vibrancy and diversity as he did in the Saugatuck Harbor that day.

He has no explanation as to what exactly has happened to the ecosystem. Nobody does.

"I can't answer what is going on here," he said. "This is mind boggling."

Fisherman have reported decent, if unspectacular, catches this year, but Harris and his partners have no interest in the transient fish that live out in the Sound. They're solely focused on the marine life that are born, live and die in the harbors.

The trawl in the Saugatuck River, not far from Bridge Street, was the first of seven that day. The second one, further down the river, was equally alarming.

"Nothing. We got nothing. This is incredible. Not even seaweed," said Howell.

She continued to look through the net. "Wait a minute, we got a snail," she exclaimed.

A pitiful three mud snails were found in that haul. They used to be so abundant that they couldn't be counted. They were measured by volume in a jar.

A Numbers Game

When Harbor Watch trawled in the Norwalk Harbor, blue crabs were plentiful, but nothing else was. Harris said this could have something to do with rising temperatures and a lack of predators. He was concerned with the numbers, but said that crab fishermen would likely take care of the problem in due time.

"In years gone by there has been a balance, he said. "This is the only time I've seen this – boom – an explosion of one species."

In Norwalk, at least, creatures were regularly hauled up in the nets. In Westport, the hauls were meager. A couple blue crabs, a horseshoe crab, two shore shrimp and some mud snails was all that were caught. Fish, for some reason, have become rare.

This year in Norwalk, there was an average of .3 fish caught per haul. In the 90s, there were usually ten caught each time. In Westport, not one was caught.

"These harbors are the nurseries, so you shouldn't be catching big fish, but you should be catching something," Howell said.

A Lack of Data, a Plan of Action

At one point, the DEP monitored five different harbors and logged the species that were caught. Due to budget restraints, they stopped this at every harbor. Harbor Watch is apparently the only group still doing this, and they're limited to the Norwalk Harbor and occasionally Saugatuck. This was the first time in three of four years that such a survey has been conducted in Westport's harbor.

Have the number of blue crabs risen everywhere? Have the fish disappeared? With no other data, it's impossible to tell what is happening.

Some say that the reason for disappearing marine life is due to the hot summer. Water temperatures rose, which created less oxygen for fish to survive on. Harris doesn't necessarily dispute this, but he thinks there has to be more to the story.

"If it's a simple matter of that, then there should be an ecology coming in to replace it and I don't see that," he said.

Pollution could be a part of it, but that doesn't explain why Norwalk, which is much more industrialized than Westport, had more wildlife.

"The big question is whether it was a fragile system to begin with or a rugged system and we beat the hell out of it," he said.

As they day wore on, different parts of the Saugatuck Harbor were trawled. Some were soft, sandy areas. Others were hard rock. No matter where the net was cast, the findings were bleak. In the seventh and final haul that day, a horseshoe crab was caught.

"This is the cleanest net I've seen ever," said Howell. "It went out cleaner than it went in."

Next year, the Saugatuck Harbor will be monitored closely to see if there are any trends. Before then, Harbor Watch plans to turn all of that day's findings into a report for the local, state and federal authorities.

"We'll send it out to as many people we can and sound the alarm," he said. "It's all we can do."