When the team first began identifying Cape Ann vernal pools in the early 1990s in Rockport, Gloucester, Manchester, and Essex, we relied almost exclusively on local knowledge. If you were a woodsy, outdoorsy Cape Ann landowner, say, you’d probably noticed there were vernal pools on your property. And if you knew Rick Roth, you’d let him know about them.

If you were a hiker who’d been through Dogtown, Lanesville, Ravenswood Park and other wooded areas, and had an affinity for peering into pools of water, you probably knew what a vernal pool looked like. If you spotted one, you noted its location, contacted a team member, and returned in March or April to measure the pool’s width, length and depth, photograph its relevant egg masses, make note of what kind of vegetation you were in, and did your best to mark the pool’s location on a map. Note:  March and April are the only time you can find the egg masses in the pools.

Our efforts were very grassroots. There really wasn’t any other way to get the job done. We hiked around in the woods. We looked around. We made mental or handwritten notes, and simply passed the word.

Our efforts have changed a lot since. Thanks to the state’s comprehensive Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, and geographical information systems (GIS) and the availability of a variety of specialized online maps, we can work a lot faster.

How do we do it now? We download from the state’s helpful OLIVER website, predictions of the exact locations of hundreds of potential vernal pools in any area we choose, from Rockport to Lynnfield. We load the locations into our handheld GPS units, gather up our cameras and our field notebooks, and head out into the woods knowing exactly where to look. We start by looking at ones that lie close to public roads and well-marked hiking areas.

On the left you’ll see the map marking the locations of all the vernal pools we have certified since we began this work almost thirty years ago. In total, we’ve certified over two hundred: each dot on the map represents a pool we took samples from, and reported to the state through its observation portal.

Doesn’t look like there are a lot of dots on that map, does it? Well, as Hamlet said, There’s the rub. Vernal pools on Cape Ann are often so close to one another (sometimes just 10 or 15 feet apart) that a map small enough to fit in the newsletter piles dozens of those dots on top of one another!

The map on the top right shows how many more pools we need to investigate in the coming months. There’s a lot of dots there, aren’t there? To give you an idea of just how much more work we have left to do, the map doesn’t include the potential Cape Ann vernal pools lying west of Route 1A or north of Ipswich. Would you believe me if I told you we still have 466 pools to assess? Well, believe me. We do!

Consider this an invitation to join Nick Taormina, Rick Roth and me in March, when we head back into the woods. We’ll show you how to download potential pool locations into our GPS units from OLIVER, how to use the GPS route to find the pool, and finally how to examine, measure, and asses a vernal pool so it meets state re- porting requirements. A team can investigate a dozen pools a day using our new resources.