Archive for the ‘whales’ Category
It’s impossible for me to believe scenes of great white sharks off Chatham, Massachusetts. That priceless working fishing port served as my essential haven throughout the 1970’s and 80’s. It was a place of weathered grey cottages with white shutters, pink roses on the picket fences. Its winding Oyster River used to be famous for that bivalve, possibly my favorite food. Anything in the waters there was food for us, not the other way ’round! Daily beach walks from our [Nantucket] Sound-side front door to Harding’s Beach Light revealed rarities, from the red-necked phalarope circling and circling in the Sound to the Hudsonian godwits who pranced around us as we set out. The morning I showed the girls the long-tailed jaeger in the Peterson’s Guide — hovering over a dune — we found one doing exactly that down by the Light. The morning after I read of crows mobbing eagles - to look for raptors when one hears that cacophony — I watched crows drive an American bald eagle all the way back from the Light to Harding’s Woods. I recall it only took the eagle 5 or 6 wingbeats to cover what stretched for us for an hour or more. Down on the hard sand at low tide, back on the high road with the heather and horned larks — all creatures were blessings in Chatham. Life in Chatham was simplicity itself, a barefoot existence, –full of sweetness in those who shared our cottage and the very local foods we ate, especially Nickerson’s Fisheries fish. In all our long restorative summers, I never recall the ‘S-word’. Even when we went whale-watching off Provincetown, I remember shearwaters as much as whales. But no sharks. Of any sort. Never, flying from “Chatham Municipal” to Nantucket or the Vineyard. No sharks in headlines, either. “Clam Wars” were all the rage in Chatham summers.
Great White Shark, David Watts, Seapics Let alone seals! How can seals have become the norm in Chatham on Cape Cod? How can it be that they lure great white sharks this often and this close to shore?
My NJ WILD readers know my stand on (the increasingly ignored, as increasingly experienced) climate change. So you know my theory - ocean currents changed by melting glaciers and altered temperatures bring sharks closer to shore, and not only in Chatham. And not only this summer… Change your carbon footprint before it is absolutely too late! What does it take to waken us? [The two nameless photos have no credits on Internet...] Meanwhile, here are two new poems triggered by shark news. The first one describes shark alerts along the Jersey Shore, when we summered at Normandy Beach. ** DIFFERENCE **
lifeguards taught us how to tell the difference between sharks and dolphins
** –bronzed gods high in their whitewashed towers they’d raise firm hands to replicate
** sinuous curls of dolphin fins beyond the ninth wave
** relentless cleave of shark fins –executioner’s blades
CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN June 21, 2012
VISITORS ** there are two great whites off the coast of Chatham ** coursing among infamous shoals which keep her fishermen shorebound but for one tide each day ** Chatham, haven in the grim years place of my poet love –sea-change –first outrageousness ** as essential as these behemoths foraging, frolicking ** beyond the ninth wave knowing they are somehow home
CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN June 24, 2012
NJ WILD readers know that my key hiking/birding/art companion, Janet Black, and I set out on Christmas Eve for old Cape May. Old as in sheltering and feeding Lenni Lenapes 10,000 years ago. Old as in welcoming whalers of Cape Cod in the 1600’s, some of which old New England seafaring names remain in the town today. Old as in still living by the seasons and the tides, as do so few places in our modern world. This Christmas Eve, however, there was more of a certain season - i.e., Old Man Winter, than we might have preferred, had we known. We traveled there to escape commercial frenzy - that we achieved. We traveled there to hike and to bird — that was another story. NJ WILD readers also know that I haven’t been able to insert many pictures since before that journey. Therefore, I may allow the pictures to speak, rather than words. These few, in this thin sun, were all we were granted. The trip held other gifts, the kindness of strangers, gastronomic surprises of the remarkable seafood variety, magical fogs that somehow brought all that Victorian architecture to life as though back in its time- another story, also. Here then, is Christmas Eve Cape May. Enjoy.
Jetty Motel Christmas
Winter Ocean and Cape May Light
Cold Shells, The Jetty
Gilded Grasses, Cape May Beach
Cape May Bird Observatory’s Hawk Watch Platform - Unshoveled, No Hawks
‘Rare Birds’ Takes on New Meaning: this was ‘It’!
Christmas Eve Last Light on Concrete Ship
Cape May Light from Beach near the Jetty
Christmas Eve Walk, Cape May
Christmas Eve Gifts Someone Had Arranged
Great Black-Backed and Other Gulls - Christmas Eve Congregation
Christmas Eve Church
‘Snice’ - Snow and Ice on Sand- Our Christmas Reality
Last Rays in The Shelter at The Jetty
Cape May Light from Hawk Watch Platform
Silent Night, Cape May
Christmas Eve Gifts - Waiting for Santa
UPDATED SHARK POST - COMMENT FROM MIDWESTERN FISHERMAN [see below] who sends fine motto new to me: Keep what you’ll use — use what you keep.
At the outset, I was caught off-guard. Except for having swum with them at Caneel and in Molokini Crater off Hawaii, –admittedly not on purpose–, I don’t think about sharks as a general practice. But recently, someone did think about sharks. Went hunting for them, in some sort of tournament. Successfully. I, whose poetry muse hath been in hiding for more than a year now, was compelled to write this poem, which I share with you. Remember the quixotic ending of “The Lady or the Tiger”, in my case read in high school? You might call this, “The Lady or the Shark.” Comments encouraged. If you ask, I might tell you the outcome…
DEPTHS
before setting out on his pelagic fishing trip he reassured us gently, “We don’t keep the sharks.”
“…20-30 miles off Montauk 5-foot, 6-foot swells …GPS not working …o.k., we had a compass.”
after the chumming, petrels and shearwaters plunged to strip shark bait
still they pulled in catch after catch keeping the promise, though, “…catch and release”
“rope around the tail another at the jaw –using the long pole, the one with a hook”
“the hook still in the shark who swam away will rust away”
tonight among the berries and bok choy from the garden rosy steaks of shark rest on ice glimmers
some of us consider recipes
CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN July 29, 2009
LEFTOVER SHARK OK, now there are four comments here, and others by e-mail. I promised to finish the story, if enough people responded Frankly, I expected hordes to accost me - “How DARE you call yourself a conservationist and cook/eat shark?!?” But no one has. I am severely disturbed, as NJ WILD readers know, by the loss of an acre of land, of every tree - especially Flemer trees of Princeton Nurseries recently slaughtered on Canal Pointe Boulevard. Let us return to the ice chest and the shark steaks, waiting there. Let us ‘revisit’ the moment of decision. This literal “gift from the sea” was a challenge to me. I’m known for urging people to adventures -here was one right in my lap –quite literally. Was I going to back away? After all, my stated motto for my 71st birthday last November was and is, “Do the New.” I cannot run from my new mantra. And it hasn’t been easy, doing the new, on the heels of the terrible fall of Fall on the curb after the curb in Frenchtown. I took that rosy glistening shark steak home, broiled it, served it with lime butter and capers. It was very like halibut, not quite so rich and meaty as swordfish. I ate half the steak, put the other half of that sacred food in a firm plastic container in the refrigerator for the next night. Then I was sent the pictures you see here. That handsome shark reminded me of whale encounters in Florida, in Maine; of wild dolphin dances in Calibogue Sound (Hilton Head). Of evening’s dolphins who came up-river and whooshed at me, night after night, as I sat reading on a dock on Savannah’s Skidaway River. Someone who’d cooked his own shark steak, asked our fisherman, “What was the little feller’s name?” I went home, chastened. I couldn’t fling leftover shark to my wild creatures here at Canal Pointe - not raccoons, the silken skunk, the red fox, the grey. For I would be rendering them complicit in what was feeling like failure on my part, –feeling like slaughter, frankly. Gastronome, yes — and yet? Then again, how is shark different from whale, from dolphin, from cow, from deer, from snail, from carrot? I’m more or less an omnivore, but no - not a sharkivore. Mea culpa Brother, forgive… Now, this wisdom from a thoughtful Midwestern fisherman, to whom I happen to be related, with his permission: ok now that I’ve seen the “rest of the story”, [re shark] Since he was taken, I’d certainly prefer he be fully used. That’s life. Frankly, I keep a lot fewer fish now when I go to MN — a couple for Keep what you’ll use — use what you keep. It’s a cycle-of-life thing. As for the writer re the hook — no worries. It’s gone in a
A Story of Seasons, at Sandy Hook - for the Dog Days of Summer
The Boathouse, The Base of Sandy Hook Light - America’s oldest continuously operating Lighthouse There’s a secret birders know: New Jersey Beaches hold gifts in all seasons. Sandy Hook is one of my favorite birding spots. There I have quested for Bohemian waxwings among the winter robins.
Bohemian Waxwing, Marie Read, for Cornell Lab of Ornithology There, also, Anne Zeman loaned me her Swarovski’s (Ur-binoculars) so I could focus on the impossible silhouette of the scissor-tailed flycatcher. There I have walked hot sands until my toes actually blistered, egrets to my left, tankers on the horizon to my right, impeccable shells on all sides, and silence, in August… There, Betty Lies, Janet Black and I withstood nearly gale-force winds to take winter’s drama fully into eyes, lungs and soul.
Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher, Brian Small for Cornel Lab of Ornithology Sandy Hook is one of the New Jersey nature sites that teaches me, repeatedly, “The Journey is the Destination.” Yes, we’re going for birds. But a major part of the joy is riding over and back through Lexington-like horse farms of Monmouth County, then over Swimming River Road (called that because the faithful swam that river to reach services on the Sabbath), and into true opulence just before coming upon rivers that nuzzle the sea. Birders are allowed into Sandy Hook without paying beach fees, because we truly are not interested in taking up beach or parking space in order to sizzle in the sun. For birders, it’s the back roadways, subtle bay beaches, the hawk watch platform at North Beach that lure. For birders, winter is NOT the empty time! Even ‘fruitless’ birdquest, such as mine at Island Beach and Sandy Hook for Bohemian Waxwings (Mark Peel ultimately teased me, “Carolyn, you are 0 for 5!”) brought enormous gifts. Island Beach granted me a Northern Shrike instead, my first ever accepted call-in to a Birders’ Hotline, with Scott Barnes. Sandy Hook gave me an enormous flock of robins and waxwings, all of them muffled in a fog as dense as Chatham, Cape Cod. I couldn’t even see the hood of my car - but I could feel the blessings of those avian silhouettes. Sandy Hook Dunes and Sea, from Inside Life-Saving Station
The first time I met Sandy Hook was nine years ago right now. From that platform, we marveled not only at a great egret wading in a tide pool in the dunes. This truly wild creature was feeding within binocular range of the Verrazano Bridge and the World Trade Center Towers. Their lack now is as palpable as their presence had been from those sands. I have literally been out there at Sandy Hook in all seasons. Especially memorable are Audubon birdwalks (A winter one met and left for the wild ones at 8 a.m. from Spermaceti Cove.) I’m sure that inlet was named because whales became confused and came ashore there in the centuries before there ever was a Sandy Hook Park. I’m betting the Indians named that cove. What I remember most of that birding dawn is February light trampolining off bay and wave-side, and (later) off grim grey military bunkers. What I cannot forget is that nearly 50 of us gathered that morning, at 20 degrees in the sea wind, ready for action.
Foul Weather Gear is in Order during Sandy Hook Winters Sandy Hook was a fort for much of its official life. The military presence remains. Sounds of nearby gunfire starle while we are searching from the North Beach platform for migrating raptors. People I take to Sandy Hook cannot believe it when I drive them alongside military dwellings. Long abandoned, the feel frankly haunted. One senses the tenseness of inhabitants, eternally vigilant, never really in combat… My every visitor wonders aloud why these houses haven’t been restored. Whether as residences or B&B’s or both, they could bring in significant revenue to NJ coffers. While I’m at it, let me propose Birders’ Rates…
FORMERLY OCCUPIED MILITARY HOUSING
Everyone I take to Sandy Hook is astonished at every turn; disbelieving from start to finish. Here, there is nothing boring. The word that comes to mind here, today, far from its beaches, is “pristine”. Within sight of Manhattan… Even here at my keyboard, I feel the elation of her high surf; the beauty of flotsam and jetsam on Sandy Hook’s quiet side; the nobility and serenity of the American Bald Eagle in the towering pine of Spermaceti Cove, and everything in between. Ospreys fight over a spring nest site. A green heron arrows across a marsh. Once, Janet and I quickly put down our binoculars, which had picked up rare species indeed - nude bathers. Scarce ruddy turnstones line up on dark rocks - resembling rocks in reality, as well as in my attempted photographs, which I’ll spare you. Midwesterners marvel at all that holly. Everyone shudders at the healthy poison ivy - but its berries are essential for fall migrants.
Sparkling Foam Among the Flotsam and Jetsam of the Quiet Side…
Among the joys of Sandy Hook are the people you meet there. Scott Barnes and Pete Bacinski are ideal birding companions, birding mentors, actually. Both are also ‘up’ on the multi-faceted history of ‘The Hook’, –from the fact that no shot has been fired from that fort in anger, to the fact its presence, right below the Verrazano Narrows, having saved Manhattan from our enemies in any number of wars. Others who preside at information desks, at Lifesaving Station/Museum and Audubon Center, are savvy about the entire process of using the cannon to fire the rope to which the breeches buoy was attached and flung onto sinking ships. If you’re lucky, you’ll get them started on tales of lighthousekeepers (including solo females). Ask about wreckers along our coast; about submarines in recent wars…
CANNON THAT PROPELLED ROPE FOR BREECHES BUOY When my sister, Marilyn, was here in May, the entire Audubon team worked to attach soft, comfortable Audubon neck straps to my sister’s and my binoculars, whose furnished string-straps had been cutting into our necks. We can bird longer now!
All are very helpful re plants, as well. I asked, but did not write down, the name of this vibrant native species, so it remains The Unknown (to me). Let me know, please, if YOU know. Or go out to Sandy Hook and ask. Yes, they are in among prickly pear cactus, a New Jersey native species, at Sandy Hook, at Island Beach and hither and yon in the Pine Barrens. No, the red plants are not salicornia - it was too early for that salty succulent. RED MYSTERY PLANT, GREEN PRICKLY PEAR - out of whose fruit the Indians made/make jam… Sandy Hook is a good place to take people who are grieving, as is my recently widowed sister. The limitlessness of the full ocean always makes its mark. The quiet side blesses with remnants of other eras, –from abandoned bunkers to weathered driftwood to the skeleton of a fish on the sparkling beach. Everything, even subtle tidal change reminds of cycles, of renewals. And, afterwards, over superb plain fresh seafood at Bahr’s Landing, on the water (obviously) one can stare out to sea, thinking long thoughts, letting the healing in. Finding out that one can be distracted from loss is a major part of the process, as I was forced to learn in Provence…
There Once Was a Fish - The Quiet Side… My sister, Marilyn, is pensive in this picture, because her late husband Bill so loved boats, especially pleasure boats. Many are in view from Bahr’s, tucked in among rough solid fishing craft that matter most to me. My sister still relishes her Bahr’s memories. We take Bill with us wherever we go.
A Good Day on the Bay
Fishing Boat From Bahr’s - Lunching, we watch cleaning of fish, feeding of gulls… VISUAL TOUR OF BAH’RS: http://www.bahrs.com/virtualtour.html
Here is Sandy Hook Light, Winter and Summer - we don’t have to choose!
Mariners’ Comfort
Dear NJ WILD Readers, I choose this picture, which I took above D&R Greenway Land Trust, where I work, to illustrate this gratifying letter just in from our Representative, Rush Holt. He is our steady partner in preservation in our own state. But, never provincial, Rush sees and saves ‘the big picture’. Rush is gratifyingly faithful in answering every preservation hot link message I send. [Even though I usually begin by saying, "Rush, I know I don't need to urge you in these matters, especially concerning our environment, about which you are always so strongly vigilant!"] See what Rush has to say about leading the charge to overturn toxic and destructive leases passed by the Bush Administration in frantic last hours. You know I’m eager to prove to NJ WILD readers that one person DOES make a difference — one legislator, one user of hot links!
This is why I consistently urge NJ WILD readers to join the e-notification processes for every group that fights your battles - beginning with Audubon and Sierra, Defenders of Wildlife and the like — locally and nationally; surging along to save salmon, save manatees, save polar bears, save whales and above all PRESERVE LAND, as with D&R Greenway Land Trust.
Without Rush Holt, our New Jersey would be far less green, far more Impervious Surface Central! Wherever you live, find your environmental champions, from legislators to non-profits, and do whatever it takes, by e-mail, letter, phone call and dollars to support their urgent missions.
Thank you, Rush! A very grateful Carolyn…
(bolds obviously mine!)
Dear Carolyn,
Thank you for contacting me to inform me of your opposition to oil and gas leasing in Utah’s Red Rocks Wilderness. I appreciate hearing from you.
I share your opposition to drilling in Utah’s Red Rock wilderness. Utah’s Colorado Plateau holds some of this nation’s most cherished, publicly-owned wild landscapes and unique ecosystems.
On December 19, 2008, despite widespread opposition of the public, environmental groups and Members of Congress, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began auctioning mineral extraction rights on more than 110,000 acres of sensitive public lands. More than half of the land placed on auction by BLM would have been protected by the America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act (H.R. 1919), legislation I supported in the 110th Congress that did not become law.
The auction was the result of six new land-use management plans finalized by the Bush administration in November 2008. The parcels of unspoiled public land that were available for lease are close to a variety of environmental treasures including Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Dinosaur National Monument, Desolation Canyon on the Green River, the remote Book Cliffs, and the archaeologically-rich Nine Mile Canyon.
I want you to know that I led 57 of my colleagues in writing a letter to then President-Elect Barack Obama’s Department of the Interior Transition Team advising the incoming Secretary of the Interior to rescind the December 19, 2008 lease sales. Our letter also asked that the Department of the Interior redraft the land-use management plans to forbid additional leasing on these lands. I have attached a copy of my letter for your review.
You may know that one of the first actions of President Obama’s Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, was to overturn these leases. I will continue to work with the President to protect and preserve our environment for future generations.
Again, thank your for contacting me. I look forward to hearing from you again about this and other issues. Sincerely, RUSH HOLT Member of Congress
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