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Monday, February 23, 2015
High for Today - 84 Degrees
Perfect beachcombing weather to make frozen landlubbers jealous. Remember, there are two zones on any given beach: The Swash Zone (where waves break upon the sand – the zone of turbulence and emergence) and the Wrack Line (where flotsam collects at the high tide line). Just in case any of you decide to head south and visit your intrepid Captain Fogg or your fishy and slimy cephalopod, here is a Wrack Line poster to keep you busy:
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-25F for the last two mornings. You're breaking my heart!
ReplyDeleteSignatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.
ReplyDeleteFlotsam and jetsam tell the story of the world. I like picking up pieces of Africa and South America, from ships at sea -- washed up like Odysseus on the Phaeacian beach, lost and far from home. Most of my local beaches are State or Federal and are left in the natural state, most of the time, but there's a perceived need to "nourish" the beach when storms erode it by pumping sand from elsewhere. Beaches are ephemeral and particularly those on barrier islands and people don't like ephemeral. They don't like natural either and reading beach reviews by vacationers, they tend to become irate when they find beaches "dirty" Our consumer society sees such places as something they pay for and they want nature held at bay.
Recently there was a bobcat sighted on Jupiter Island and the residents, down from some dark Northern hellhole demanded that it be killed. Same people who want to bring in foreign vegetation to make their little bits of paradise look like someplace else. They've damaged Florida beyond repair.
Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. I found the skull of a sea turtle once. There were bones sticking up from the sand. I left it there.
“Recently there was a bobcat sighted on Jupiter Island and the residents, down from some dark Northern hellhole, demanded that it be killed. Same people who want to bring in foreign vegetation to make their little bits of paradise look like someplace else. They've damaged Florida beyond repair.”
DeleteResidents of Florid-duh, like all too many voters of Florid-duh, are some of the dumbest, most thoughtless and most reckless deadbeats on the planet. Your comment recalls another experience: The residents of a gated community in Delray Beach who wanted to eliminate all limpkins from surrounding lakes and ponds.
What is a limpkin, you ask? An endangered bird that is singularly unique in the ornithology world: Part crane and part rail – the only one of its kind. Why did the old coots of Valencia Falls want to evict the endangered and magnificent limpkin?
Because they maketh a loud noise – a distinctive wail vocalized at dawn and dusk. The wail of a limpkin is well known even if you don’t live in Florid-duh. The wail of a limnpkin has been used as a sound effect in movies – jungle sounds in the original Tarzan films (filmed in Florid-duh) and the sound of the ‘hippogriff’ in Harry Potter films.
There are less than 2-dozen Florida panthers left in the wild. Years ago, a plan to enlarge their habitat with the acquisition of 4,000 acres and protect the species from certain extinction was shelved. Why? Because then-governor Jeb Bush granted the land to the CEO of Domino Pizza who wanted to build a religious community now known as Ave Maria Town. Damn Christian of them to further endanger a critically endangered species in an act of impious vainglory.
Shame about the panthers. Also many years ago now, perhaps about the same time frame you specify, I recall an effort to capture and release some panthers from Texas to improve their gene pool.
DeleteI think it should be the other way around. We should move all Florida panthers to Texas to improve THEIR gene pool.
Delete84 degrees sounds a little hot under the collar to me. Best seek refuge at the beach. How about 72 with a breeze? Bright and sunny with cumulus clouds. Nice cool nights and mornings.
ReplyDeleteI wish my Swash Zone were still alive. I suspect that everything was merely taken away by souvenir hunters over the last fifty years. It could be more sinister than that, such as an imbalance of nutrients caused by sewage outflow south of the border, (finally corrected this century.) Even storm drain run-off which involves automobile and fertilizer pollution as well as harmful bacteria. We used to have starfish, sand dollars, sea urchins, anemones, tidepool sculpin, sea hares, octopi, squids, shark eggs, great nuclei of hatching fish, wavy-top snails, scallops and oysters. I guess we still have fish and sharks in the waters. Rays and Guitarfish. But the tidepools are barren. Nothing but mussels, barnacles and a small handful of hermit crabs, green crabs and small snails. There aren't even shells on the beach anymore. There is an enlarged marine protection zone from the Windansea Surfing Beach all the way to Del Mar, but I fear it is too late. Abalones? Nada más.
“… an imbalance of nutrients caused by sewage outflow south of the border, (finally corrected this century.) Even storm drain run-off which involves automobile and fertilizer pollution as well as harmful bacteria.”
DeleteI’ve read about the Dead Zones of the Pacific surrounding Southern California. We have similar problems in Florida – aging sewer systems, storm water runoff carrying agricultural nutrients and pesticides into environmentally sensitive habitats, and fresh water discharges into our local estuary – resulting in massive fish kills and unimaginable stench. The Indian River Lagoon is one of the most important estuaries in North America, stretching 156 miles from Jupiter to Daytona. It serves as a nursery for over 4,000 species of fish – now critically endangered.
There are Dead Zones surrounding Florida too – mainly in the Gulf of Mexico – hundreds of square miles rendered lifeless from decades of renegade drilling and massive oil leaks like the BP disaster several years ago.
I remember the once-upon-a-time plentiful abalone stocks of Southern California – fried and served on a bun - now a distant memory.
Everywhere on this planet, massive destruction of the environment in search of energy for the sake of jobs, jobs jobs. It will never end until there is nothing left.
It all makes me so sad. The good thing is that I am old and don't have any children.
DeleteVery sad indeed. Aging cephalopod that I have become, I was hoping there would be 76 virgins waiting for me in Heaven. Does this mean I have to blow myself up first?
Delete72 degrees means one needs a jacket in Florida, but it's the humidity that makes all the difference. It was a very pleasant and beautiful day and living on the coast there's almost always a nice sea breeze. Only tourists go to the beach.
ReplyDeleteAs we suffer continued frigid weather in the NE. I'm anxiously awaiting 50+ degree weather so I can take my jacket off. And stop wearing my winter bathrobe to bed.
ReplyDelete