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NARRATOR: Coming up... Kites...as art...and adventure.

And... SCIENTIST: A Blackbanded!

NARRATOR: Bringing a tiny fish back from the brink.

Next.

Outdoors Maryland is produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

(intro music) Closed Captioning has been made possible by Maryland Relay, empowering those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or speech disabled to stay connected by phone.

(bird calls) ♪ ♪ JAY: You see a lot of exotic animals out there, a lot of characters.

PAUL: You have heart shaped kites, pigs that do fly.

JAY: Leg kites.

RICH: Different outfits, different things on their feet.

JAY: Whales and giant fish... Pretty much if you can imagine a shape, you can turn it into a kite.

And they're all up there in the sky today.

My name is Jay Knerr, I'm the owner of the Kite Loft.

We are in Ocean City, Maryland.

This is our 33rd annual Maryland International Kite Expo, one of the largest kite events in the entire United States.

So, people come and just spend the weekend enjoying flying kites.

CASSIE SHOOK: We travel from pretty far, like I came up from North Carolina.

And the kites that you see, I mean, we've got like four kite flyers worth of stuff back here.

We all bring way too many kites.

But if I don't have the kite with me, how can I fly it?

(laughs) (music) JIM KOSKA: This is a quad line kite which is not flying on one string but four strings.

My name is Jim Koska from Fort Washington, Maryland.

I was attempting to learn how to hang glide and that was a lot of fun.

Got to thinking, boy this is probably gonna be two things: very expensive and very dangerous.

And I looked over on the dune and there's a guy flying a stack of sport kites.

It was a really beautiful sight to see and I just became enamored with it and immediately started collecting and trying it out.

JIM: So, yeah, then the kite - being that it's a four line kite - you're controlling the angle of deflection off of that sail by how you have your hands positioned.

All the maneuvers are pretty much microscopic in their scope.

So right now, I'm going forward.

Right now, I'm stopping.

Now, I'm going backwards.

Now, I'm turning the kite to the right... or to the left.

And we're gonna line up as a group and try to fly several of these guys all at once.

PAUL: Here we go.

Up and to the right.

♪ ♪ My name is Paul Dugard.

I've been flying kites since the mid-80s.

All right, 180... ...but I've really excelled in the quad line kites.

It's like square dancing.

Swap with your partner.

You have a caller... Everyone come over, like that.

And we have different moves that we will perform in the air.

Team by team jokers, here we go.

It doesn't make any difference if you're 75 years old, hello!

Go!

PAUL: Or if you're ten.

You can stand on the line and fly with us, we're happy, and we will help you, we will teach you, we will show you.

This is my dance partner, isn't she beautiful?

(music winds down) JAY: The one thing that's consistent about the wind in Ocean City, it's always changing.

So, you can always expect one, maybe two wind shifts per day.

RICH: Stopped, dropped to probably three or four miles an hour.

Most of the kites came back down.

So now, we're just kind of waiting and hoping, and crossing our fingers that we'll get our wind back for the afternoon.

JAY: This is one of the oldest kite shops in America, the Kite Loft.

As you can see, there's a lot to see in this store.

We sell a huge variety of kites.

We have some unusual plane kites here.

JAY: When I first started back in the '80s, kites were very simplistic.

They were made out of wooden dowels and used plastic materials.

Now, we use high tech nylon, carbon fiber rods, very lightweight materials which allow the kite to fly in lighter winds.

The days of running with your kite and trying to get it in the air are gone.

Now, you just kinda launch it right out of your hand and it goes up.

CASSIE: Oh, it flies like a dream!

(laughs) I just made this in February, it's only her second flight.

Oh, but yeah look, Dave.

Even in low wind, she's overflying.

Sorry about that, darling.

My name is Cassie, I'm Cassie Shook.

Sometimes, a kite is just so light that it just keeps flying until it's no longer actually in the wind and then it goes down.

Okay, you ready?

And so, that's why today, I've got this super long tail on it 'cause it adds drag to the kite which literally just pulls it that way.

CASSIE: Today has been a typical day for a kite festival.

It started out bigger, right?

And now, it's so low that there's almost no kites in the air.

Up here, there's a blue and white kite.

That's called a glider, and those are really good for low wind.

In fact, you sometimes see those flown indoors.

And then, down there we've got some of those bow tie shaped kites and they're what we consider super ultra-light.

They're made in the lightest of materials.

You'll notice that those ones don't have much stitching in them.

But by taking out stitching, you've taken out a lot of weight from the kite.

CASSIE: This one is actually a prototype 'cause I needed to fly it to see how it looked in the air and basically the graphic itself is actually too small.

This is one of the kites that I've made with tie die fabric that I made.

I need to actually add better differentiation between my petals because up in the sky the petals all go away.

It just looks kind of like a pink blob.

I'm one of those people that I could have probably gone into the maths or sciences or I could have gone into the arts.

Like, either would have worked with my brain, and so it's fun because the artistic side of me is fed by the actual graphics, right?

But then the nerdy, like, physicist, like, how do I make it work?

That's the one who gets excited about like figuring out how the bridle is, 'cause it's not a foregone conclusion, "Oh, I've sown it, now it will fly."

(sewing machine sounds) JON: There are people who enjoy kites when they buy them and there are people who enjoy kites when they make them.

I enjoy the making and I love it when it flies (laughs).

♪ ♪ I'm Jon Burkhardt.

I've been making kites since before 1980 and kite world is a great place.

♪ ♪ I was interviewing old folks for the administration on aging, and we were looking about what made people happy as they aged.

My parents said, you need to meet this old man.

Ansel Toney started building kites when he's 89 years old.

He could run circles around any ten of us.

And so, I thought well, you know, let's try it.

JON: This is the kite studio, where the building and everything happens.

Lots of different fabric.

We're basically using spinnaker cloth.

It's ripstop nylon.

Here, we have books that are primarily for inspirations, like Alphonse Mucha.

This is a photo that inspired a kite.

I look for inspiration about kite making from any place.

I saw this, it's an image on a t-shirt - it is a manta ray - and then I started looking for other kinds of images.

We came up with tattoos, image after image.

And when you look at manta ray tattoos, you can see elements that might look good on a kite.

Well, would this work?

And then I start drawing.

So, what I did was...make a full-scale drawing of what I thought would be a really interesting design.

And then I said, well, let's test it out.

JON: This is the next step, done with magic marker.

After being flown a couple times it became obvious that we didn't want just black and white.

JON: I love color.

And one of the things that I do is I hang colors up in the window and see what the fabric looks like with the sun coming through because that's very important.

Yeah... In the right light, kites can look just like stained glass.

The colors sing.

Here's the way the manta ray worked out.

We've got a lot of black applique and pops of color.

The colors, for me, are very happy.

This really makes a statement in the sky.

It has a tail and an extra tail if we want to fly it in slightly higher winds.

A kite will have a sweet spot in a wind.

For many kites, you know, about 12 or 15 miles an hour is a limit.

(music transition) JAY: As you can see, the wind conditions have changed dramatically from yesterday but we're making the most of it.

Certain kites will fly better in stronger winds.

So, right now we have some giant parafoil kites.

We have some turbine kites, which are the giant spinning bowls.

We have lots of ground bouncer crabs and stuff like that.

JESSE: This is a fulcrum, it's a quad line kite.

This particular version of the fulcrum is what we call a super vent.

So, all this screen door mesh in it lets it bleed some extra air through, so it won't drag me around too bad.

So, the super vent is a really specific tool for very big wind like we've got today.

My name is Jesse, I'm down from the Boston area.

That buzzing is because it's in a good amount of tension but bleeding air and so it vibrates and makes that kind of roaring noise when the power and speed comes on.

That's also when it's pulling the hardest.

This beach is really special for kiting.

It's been a staple for my whole life.

CHRIS: Oh, it's windy now!

Ocean City, Maryland is a great place to enjoy kites.

The beach is very wide here and so it makes for lots of sky to paint.

Got a big canvas here in front of us.

My name's Chris Shultz.

If I was working at the kite store over there and somebody came in and then said, "Hey, I wanna fly kites," my first question to them is - are you looking for more of a Zen experience or are you looking for more action, adrenaline?

♪ ♪ CHRIS: Today, there's plenty of wind here to get your blood flowing.

This is traction kiting, it's where you're using the kite to achieve movement.

If you've got a big enough kite, you can use a vehicle like this and cruise along like, like you're in a little sailboat.

But on days like today when it's blowing 25 right off the ocean, you can really go fast.

In a buggy like this - not this exact model - but I've gone about 50 miles an hour.

Considering how low to the ground you are, it's a little terrifying.

CHRIS: What does it do for me?

Why I'm into kiting?

Um, you're in touch with things that you can't see, you know, like the wind.

You do sort of feel like you're flying, you know?

And I think, you know, that's probably man's dream - is to fly.

♪ ♪ JESSE: Flight is freeing.

The people are awesome.

I think the biggest thing is, there's no such thing as a kite emergency.

Nothing can be that big a deal when you're flying a kite.

JAY: It's the simplest thing, brings back a lot of childhood memories.

CASSIE: There's peace, there's serenity.

The act of flying a kite, to me, calms my soul.

JIM: And it's fun, it's funny.

JON: You can be an artist, you can be an engineer, you can be an athlete.

You can wrap it all together.

CASSIE: You can lose hours of your life just behind the string of a kite.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Summer sun glints off the mirror-dark surface of an Eastern shore pond, as wetsuit-clad scientists from Maryland's Department of Natural Resources work their way through the water... on the hunt for one of the state's rarest freshwater fish.

JAY K.: Over the years in searching for this very difficult to find species in very difficult habitats, we've tried a lot of things.

We've tried electro-fishing, we've set traps, we've done dip nets... NARRATOR: Finally, landing on this method, which has biologist Jay Kilian manning one end of a 10 foot net called a seine.

JAY K.: The water's relatively deep and so we use this kind of swim seining technique to move the seine into the shoreline.

That's where the species we're targeting, blackbanded sunfish, are predominantly associated.

SCIENTIST: You're good.

Hey, hold there... NARRATOR: Slowly, they ease in towards the tangle of roots and vegetation that lines the water's edge...and then... (splashing) NARRATOR: A sudden flurry of activity - to flush any lurking fish into the waiting net.

JAY K.: As we pull that seine up, it's loaded with debris, and so we pick through that to find the fish and take note of any species we collect.

This is a blue-spotted sunfish.

SCIENTIST: Swamp darter.

JAY K.: Of course, we're looking for that special one in the bunch.

SCIENTIST: A blackbanded!

And today, we've found it.

Our first seine hall we detected it.

So, it's very good news.

NARRATOR: This time last year, they would have come up empty - there were no blackbanded sunfish in this pond - or almost anywhere in Maryland.

A member of the sunfish family, like bluegills and largemouth bass, blackbandeds are much smaller than their better known cousins.

JAY K.: About two and a half inches max length, silvery body color, five to six vertical bars and they're really striking.

They're really a pretty, pretty fish.

NARRATOR: But what sets them apart most isn't what they look like.

It's where they live: blackwater swamps, where leaves and woody debris steep in slow-moving water, lending it a characteristic tea- or coffee-like appearance.

JAY K.: They tend to be high in organic matter and they tend to be between four and six pH, which is pretty acidic, low dissolved oxygen.

And so, the species that you find there are adapted for those rather harsh conditions.

NARRATOR: Conditions that have become increasingly rare over time, as forests were cleared and ditches dug to drain wetlands for agriculture.

By 2006, a DNR status survey found just one, small inbred population, in a single Maryland pond.

JAY: So, it was a little startling.

We uplisted the status of the species in Maryland to state endangered.

NARRATOR: And work began... (splash) Narrator: to bring it back.

SCIENTISTS: Ho hoooooooo!

JAY K.: Nice!

NARRATOR: These fish, in this pond, represent a milestone.

JAY K.: This is a pond where we released captively bred blackbanded sunfish for the first time in Maryland.

And we're here today to confirm that what we stocked in September of last year, survived the winter and are still persisting.

NARRATOR: Their life began in a small white building at DNR's Unicorn Lake hatchery in Queen Anne's County.

NARRATOR: Here, hatchery manager Jeff Dilling is trying to turn a few dozen out-of-state transplants... JEFF: These are the original fish brought back from New Jersey, the Pine Barrens.

NARRATOR: ...into a much larger population.

JEFF: These are the progeny of the adults that you see around the tank.

These were born around March.

NARRATOR: -their second successful cohort so far.

JEFF: We're still in the experimenting stages, seeing how everything works and whatnot.

NARRATOR: And he's not alone in the experiment.

At the National Aquarium's Animal Care and Rescue Center in Baltimore, Ashleigh Clews oversees a menagerie ranging from the colorful to the curious to the charismatic - and, of course, these finicky fish.

ASHLEIGH: The blackbanded sunfish is pretty particular about their water chemistry... Learning to recreate that in a spot like this in the middle of Baltimore City was a challenge, but we're getting better and better at it all the time.

NARRATOR: Aquarist Laura Abrams tends two tanks of broodstock.

LAURA: So, we're feeding them live black worms today for breakfast.

Other people who have spawned this species have said that feeding them blackworms really entices them to start their breeding process.

NARRATOR: And a bank of controls keeps the conditions dialed in.

LAURA: We keep the pH in this system much lower than we would in any other system with other fish.

And then, we have a heat exchanger here to control the temperature.

So, we put our broodstock through an overwintering period to replicate their natural environment and then as we warm them up in the spring, it simulates the breeding season.

NARRATOR: The aquarium's first successful spawn happened at about 68 degrees.

ASHLEIGH: So, we do have a group of juveniles right now, over 200.

NARRATOR: Just about ready for release.

ASHLEIGH: Being successful once, great.

Being successful enough to repopulate an animal like that is going to take many years and many efforts.

NARRATOR: And the fish themselves are just one piece of the puzzle.

On a spring morning at Nassawango Creek Preserve, home to one of the state's most intact blackwater habitats, Aquarium conservation project manager Hallie Carter helps unload trays of young trees from the back of a truck.

HALLIE: These are Atlantic white cedar saplings or tubelings and we brought them here to Nassawango Creek in order to plant them and bring them back to the habitat.

Atlantic white cedars are a tree that you can find all along the East Coast in these specific waterlogged swampy environments.

And in Maryland specifically the population has dwindled.

NARRATOR: The culprits may sound familiar: the draining of wetlands, and historic logging.

Nearby, a remnant stand preserves a glimpse of a landscape once far more common.

DEBORAH: Here, we have a really nice example of a mature Atlantic white cedar swamp.

We have big Atlantic white cedar aged at about 100 years.

NARRATOR: Deborah Landau directs ecological management for the Nature Conservancy's Maryland/DC chapter, which manages this 10,000 acre preserve.

DEBORAH: Atlantic white cedar are a marvelously distinctive tree.

They've got this really cool spiraling effect as they get big.

It's also got this really cool blue green algae and against the red bark of the cedar, it just makes a gorgeous contrast.

NARRATOR: And alongside bald cypress and black tupelo, these cedars help create the chemistry of the swamp.

DEBORAH: It essentially is a tea.

It's the tannins, the leaves falling down are leeching out into the water and that's how you end up with this really interesting blackwater effect that you get here in the swamp.

NARRATOR: Just the right habitat for blackbanded sunfish.

DEBORAH: But they've blinked out due to alterations and now they need a little extra help to come back.

(squelch) NARRATOR: And so, do the cedars.

DEBORAH: So, we've protected the swamp, we've restored the hydrology, we've plugged up a lot of those ditches.

But the majority of the cedar habitat has been removed.

NARRATOR: And what remains is reaching the end of its life.

HALLIE: We are planting this year along the adult swamp area.

This is the type of environment the tree likes to live in, so it's a more moist soil.

This sapling method works a little bit better than if seeds were to drop.

It just gives them that nice head start.

The goal is that by planting so many of them, we'll start to replenish that Atlantic white cedar species here in this particular area of the woods.

NARRATOR: With the help of volunteers, the aquarium has planted more than 55,000 Atlantic white cedar saplings here at Nassawango since 2009.

HALLIE: Helping to bring back the trees is one way to make sure that we can help keep those ponds in the condition they need to be in...in order to host the sunfish, who might support different species of birds and other larger fish.

That sort of food web, the intangible thing when you pick one species out might not seem that big, but the more and more pieces you layer together, it's like gears on a clock.

You remove one and you don't know the impact that it has until later.

LAURA: So, we have 97 of our juvenile blackbanded sunfish in this bag... NARRATOR: It's release day for more than 400 juvenile fish - the culmination of years of captive breeding work by both the National Aquarium and DNR.

JAY K.: They're very small at this point and we're here today to release them in two different locations on state lands in some isolated ponds that we have found to be seemingly suitable.

NARRATOR: First, a few buckets of pond water to ease the transition.

LAURA: So, we want to be able to get them kind of acclimated to that pond water as much as we can before we put them actually into the pond, so that they don't go into shock.

NARRATOR: And finally, the moment of truth.

ASHLEIGH: Eighty that were born in December.

Ready to see the real world NARRATOR: For now, releases are limited to self-contained ponds, like these, where DNR can keep tabs on the tiny fish.

JAY K.: The goal is to get them into our stream and river systems.

But it's not just dumping fish and walking away.

The intent with these introductions is to build the numbers and then take from there and move them into other suitable habitats because there's only so much capacity at the National Aquarium and at our hatchery.

ASHLEIGH: Hopefully, they do what they need to do, what we want them to do, and that's reproduce, grow up, reproduce.

We'll be back.

We'll be, you know, releasing as many as we can to really get these ponds back to a healthy population.

And then, hopefully one day we can film and say we did it, and the sunfish are back where they need to be in Maryland.

Closed Captioning has been made possible by Maryland Relay, empowering those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or speech disabled to stay connected by phone.

NARRATOR: To stream episodes of Outdoors Maryland , visit mpt.org/outdoors and don't forget to follow us on social media.

(owl hoots) Learn more about Maryland's diverse natural resources at dnr.maryland.gov, or download the official mobile app.

♪ ♪