Snow descends on mallards (anas platyrhynchos) swimming past a man-made Osprey nest platform near Harker's Island, NC (Click on image to enlarge)
Snow came down across Down-East North Carolina today, dropping one to two inches across the region, with up to one inch of accumulation in places. It was nice big fluffy snow, not like the minuscule flakes of the November flurries.
I know, I know, for all you folks with that "flinty Chicago toughness" our President so admires, it's no big deal... just like a mid-July day. But it is unusual around here, though it caused no problems along the coastal counties... some wimpier inland counties delayed school and government openings, but not the hearty down-easters.
This picture was taken near Harker's Island, along Core Sound, near Cape Lookout. I will be back and forth to the area over the next few days, and hope to get some good pictures in the area.
"Captain Cecil," tied up stern-to at the Garland Fulcher Seafood Co. docks on Raccoon Creek
Captain Cecil was tied stern-to the docks while crew pulled out, straightened and re-wound her warp cables this afternoon.
As you can see, all was calm in the creek, and yesterday's rain and clouds have departed.
Can anyone help me identify these birds?
Please drop me a comment or e-mail if you can help!
[OK, thanks to Keith Bruno and Raf for identifying this bird for me!]
I saw these two birds by the roadside in Minnessot Beach today, and was only able to grab about three drive-by shots of them...
One is seen flying away, while the other waited warily for me to pass by. I looked through my NatGeo Birds of North America guide, to no avail... (I need to find my Peterson's Guide)
[UPDATE: Keith Bruno dropped me a note identifying this as a "a flicker, possibly the yellow shafted variety"... Then, while I was writing this update, Raf from Port Townsend, WA dropped me a comment to the same effect... Yes indeedy, my NatGeo guide does have an illustration and description of the very bird as a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus), "Yellow-shafted" variety... I had not looked carefully through the Woodpecker section because I spotted these birds hanging out on the ground, which seemed unlikely woodpecker behavior... various internet sources confirm that the Flicker, unlike other woodpeckers, forages on the ground for ants and such...
As the NatGeo guide describes them: "Two distinct groups occur: "Yellow-shafted Flicker" in the east and far north, and "Red-shafted Flicker" in the west.... brown, barred back; spotted underparts, with black crescent bib. White rump is conspicuous in flight [see my flight photo below]... "Yellow-shafted Flicker" has yellow wing lining and undertail color..."
Another new one for my life list and my photo life list, Yay!]
Workers trenching and laying communications cable along Midyette St.
A crew was out laying cable in the misty rain on Midyette St. today... also a Bay River Sewer crew was working on a manhole nearby (more distant trucks).
The crews were pretty busy, so I did not find out any info on what they are doing... I'll ride by tomorrow and see if I can find out.
Also today the Pelicans were out again in full force (see yesterday's post)... So I decided to take some video to capture their frenetic feeding on the Neuse River just outside the Oriental Harbor breakwater:
My favorite animal subject is featured again today... the Brown Pelican. There were about six pelicans hunting over the Neuse near the South Avenue waterfront today, trailed by a few free-booting seagulls. Below is the rest of the dive:
A Great Blue Heron stands near the edge of Raccoon Creek
A gray misty day here in Oriental.
The portion of Raccoon Creek in today's photo is separated by the Hodges' Street causeway from the navigable area of the creek where sailboats tie up at Town Dock and Oriental Marina & Inn and shrimp boat/trawlers tie up alongside the Town's two fish-houses, Point Pride Seafood (on the left) and Garland Fulcher Seafood (right).
The causeway is partially obscured by reeds at the other end of the water in today's photo, but you can see part of the wooden railing along the street.
Originally, Hodges Street ended at the northwest bank of Raccoon Creek (on the right side of today's photo.)
In 1908, the John L. Roper Lumber Company (which owned a large lumber mill across town) offered to supply the Town with the required materials if the Town would build a
"bridge across Raccoon Creek at the foot of Hodges St. and... get a right of way from the foot of said bridge on the East side of the creek out to Factory Street." Minutes of Board of Commissioners of Town of Oriental, February 4, 1908)
The property over which such road would pass was at that time owned by the Oriental Manufacturing Company, and had been the site of lumber mills and manufacturing operations.
The Bank of Oriental foreclosed on the Oriental Manufacturing Company property, and sold it to H.A. Stephens by a February 6, 1911 deed which specifically reserved an easement for:
"... a strip on the Northernmost end of said land running from Hodges St. to a point on Wall St. the Southern line of which is forty feet distant & parallel with the present Bridge walk across said Raccoon Creek from Hodges St. to said Wall St."
(this is the earliest recordation of the easement, and earliest reference to any causeway across Raccoon Creek so far found in Pamlico County land records... no original easement has yet been found)
At some point the Town replaced the "Bridge walk" across the creek with a road-bearing causeway, allowing vehicular traffic across the creek, but blocking water and water traffic.
Before the causeway blocked water traffic, boats could come up the creek as far as Main Street, which also traverses the creek, and is where I stood to take today's picture. Town co-founder Louis B. Midyette built the road now known as Main St. across the creek some time prior to 1898 (some 1898 deeds for properties between Factory St. and Raccoon Creek describe land as bordering on the "New Road built by L.B. Midyette.)
Boats could come up to a store on the bank of the creek just opposite of where the heron appears in today's picture (just out of camera shot on the left.) L.B. Midyette was an owner and co-owner of the store for awhile.
There has been some discussion removing the Main St. crossing over the creek, and possibly re-engineering the Hodges St. causeway to return the creek to its more natural state as an actual flowing creek...
Many folks don't even realize the bodies of water east of Hodges are the now-blocked remnants of Raccoon Creek. Many refer to the bodies of water between Hodges and Main and east of Main as the "Duck Ponds," which I think is an unfortunate nick-name in that it devalues the waters' actual status as the artificially-blockaded Raccoon Creek.
A hungry squirrel approaches an ear of corn attached to the top of a pole
Yes, my photo today is of a squirrel... The ubiquitous, dirty, annoying squirrel.
And what squirrel doesn't like corn?
Problem is (for the squirrel), this corn is not just on the end of a pole... it is on the end of a pivoting pole:
I noticed this contraption spinning around on the side of the tree at the intersection of Second Avenue and Mildred Street here in Oriental and stopped to see what it could be...
This ingenious device not only tortures squirrels, but also provides humans with about the only amusing squirrel scenes I have ever encountered (not involving a moose, that is.) A squirrel will climb up to reach the corn, but the weight of the squirrel causes the pole to rotate around... the squirrel must then leap off or scramble back up the spinning platform to enjoy whatever kernels it was able to get and keep during the process:
I found this scene on "Teach's Cove Road," which runs the spit of land between Smith's Creek and Green's Creek to Dewey Point, right across the creek from Oriental.
The road is named for Captain Edward Teach, AKA "Blackbeard" the pirate.
Notorious buccaneer and frequent North Carolina resident Blackbeard, pictured with his trademark lighted fuses protruding from beneath his hat
Legend has it that Blackbeard would occasionally camp out the peninsula "for relaxation," and that he buried some treasure below a now-vanished tree on the point:
"Teach's Oak is located almost at the water's edge on a peninsula farm lying between the Neuse River and two creeks, Smith and Green. Large and ancient, and now gnarled and bent, the old tree was many years ago named after the infamous freebooter. Local tradition avers that Blackbeard posted a sentinel in its branches. There is evidence that the area has been dug up in the search for buried treasure, but none has been found."
- Blackbeard the Pirate - A Reappraisal of His Life and Times, Robert E. Lee (Blair, 1974), p. 172
The location of "Teach's Oak" and Oriental are shown on the map below:
A dog faces off with a North American River Otter in a drainage ditch along Kershaw Road
As I was driving along Kershaw Road between Arapahoe and Oriental, I saw two dogs running into the middle of the road ahead... as I slowed down and got closer, I saw a North American River Otter leaping around in the road between the dogs.
The otter ran off the road into the drainage ditch, with the two dogs on its' tail.
As I pulled over, a man came walking across the road from his home (obviously where the dogs and otter had come from) carrying a seven-foot long metal pole.
I got out of the car with my camera and started shooting... by this time the otter was in its' element, while the boxer and another dog were hesitant to step in the water, not knowing where the submerged otter was exactly.
The dogs would run back and forth along the water until the submerged otter lunged up from a hiding place under the water, snapping at the dogs faces... The dogs would jump back, the otter re-submerge, and the whole thing repeated. It kinda reminded me of the Trash Monster in Star Wars. (See posting on my other blog, "The Dinghy Dock" for additional photographs)
At one point, the boxer was scanning the water for the otter, with its front paw in the water... The dog gave a sudden yelp and leaped back, obviously having been bitten on the paw.
The man with the pole came up, and I thought he might use the pole to nudge his dogs away so the otter could escape... It would certainly have been foolish to try to get in between the animals.
Instead of using the pole to break up the dogs, however, the man raised it above his head and brought the pole down full force towards the otter's head! He missed, but I was flabbergasted, and a little fearful for myself and the nearby parked car.
The man tried a second time to hit the otter with the pole, but he slipped and landed rump-first in the mud next to the water... A little divine justice?
At that point the man's wife came walking across the road with a shotgun, saying "what do you want me to do with this? I don't know how to use this, you better come get it."
OK, I thought, time to move the car and get a little removed from the shotgun.
I jumped in the car, drove about 50 feet along the shoulder, then looked back to see the man shooting into the woods. His wife handed him a second shell, he loaded and fired again towards the woods, this time farther away...
His wife handed the man a third shell, but he did not shoot again...
The dogs meanwhile were running around the ditch and edge of the woods looking for the otter, apparently with no luck. Hopefully the otter escaped unharmed.
I'm not sure why the man wanted to kill that otter... He had a shotgun and a tracheotomy, though, so I decided against trying to ask him anything about it.
Otters do not seem to be known as farm pests, though they will eat small birds (including, I suppose, small chickens) and their cousins the weasels are widely regarded as farm pests.
Could be he wanted the otter pelt, which might explain why he tried braining the creature before shooting at it.
Maybe it was just afternoon entertainment.
Anyway, I was glad to see that the otter at least made it off into the woods.
An Oriental resident takes his dog for a walk along South Avenue
Golf carts and unleashed dogs are both common sights here in Oriental.
Dogs are not required to be leashed (unless they become "nuissance dogs" under a new ordinance passed this past year), and golf carts have been accepted street vehicles for a long time (and are now "legal" under recent state law and local Oriental ordinance, also passed this past year.)
I'm pretty sure I know who this guy is... I see him often with his golf cart and his dog... but since I am not 100% positive of his name, I'm not gonna say.
A male Belted Kingfisher perches on a mainmast spreader at Oriental Harbor Marina
"The only kingfisher in most of North America," according to the National Geographic Field Giude. "Common and conspicuous along rivers and brooks, ponds and lakes, estuaries..."
"Call is a loud, dry rattle"... The bird's call was what whaat brought my attention to its' presence, but I would describe it more as a repetitive chittering.
I have seen these birds hovering near the mouth of Whittaker Creek, but not gotten a picture before today.
Kingrishers "hover over water or watch from low perches, then plunge headfirst to catch a fish."
Very cool. Now added to my photographic life-list.
A Great Blue Heron comes in for a landing on the Lou-Mac Park Fishing Pier as the sun sets and the Hunter's Moon prepares to rise.
I had planned on bringing you Part Two of "Endurance," a feature essay about Capt. Bruno (see prior post, below), today, but I have a bit more work to do on that one, so it's not quite ready yet.
Instead I am posting a picture I caught today - a Great Blue Heron that was hanging out on the Lou-Mac Fishing Pier.
The bird was very stoically and majestically perched on the pier when I arrived on the scene riding my bike down South Ave., so I pulled over at a discrete distance and pulled out the little Kodak.
I had taken a couple of OK pictures of him standing straight and tall on the pier, silhouetted against the southern sunset sky, but was still waiting for the perfect pose when a couple came walking past the pier with their dog, and my Heron flew away (most birds, even the intrepid seagulls, flee their roosts at the sight of even the smallest of dogs in the vicinity).
As I reviewed the few pics I had already taken, all of which were out of focus or badly exposed, I cursed the little dog and its' humans for disturbing my photo shoot...
I resigned myself to the missed shot, and sat down to read my current book ("The Rescue," Joseph Conrad) as the sunlight continued to fade... After a few paragraphs, I caught the Heron in the corner of my eye circling the pier, and grabbed the Kodak just in time for this landing.
Sorry little dog and humans for my hasty curses... I already have plenty of pictures of Herons standing up straight and tall, and thanks to y'all I caught this action shot! Thanks little dog.
"Endurance," the Capt. Bruno essay (see prior post, below) will continue... It should be up tomorrow, but I'm not yet sure, since I normally post my "Skywatch Friday" entry on Thursday afternoons (go figure)... but my planned SWF posting is related to Capt. Bruno, so I may continue the story tomorrow... If not, it will be on Friday... TUNE IN TO FIND OUT!
Captain Keith Bruno is pleased with this Atlantic Tripletail (Lobotes surinamensis) he pulled from one of his gill-nets along the Neuse River near Pierce Creek
Bruno, a commercial fisherman, does his own catching and his own retail selling of many fruits of the local waters... But after removing the rare Tripletail catch from his net, he proclaimed "you can't buy this one from me!"
Today and tomorrow, I will be bending the "City Daily Photo" rules to introduce you to Captain Bruno.
I hope you enjoy meeting him as I did...
Today I had the pleasure of accompanying Endurance Seafood owner Capt. Keith Bruno as he pulled his gill-nets set the previous night along the banks of the Neuse River and Smith's Creek. Bruno's prize catch of the day was the handsome Tripletail featured in today's photo.
Like not a few of Oriental's residents, Bruno has long experience working on water, and more than a few tales to tell about it...
From blood-curdling terror in the "Perfect Storm" of the North Atlantic to karmic respite along the sun-drenched beaches and ports of the Mediterranean... from a penniless vagabond sleeping under the docks of Bermuda to successful lobster baron... from cut-throat competition and anti-viral devastation of the New York lobster fishery to a happy family home in the welcoming world and diverse fisheries of Down East North Carolina...
Endurance:
en-dur-ance... n 1: PERMANENCE, DURATION 2: the ability to withstand hardship or adversity...
en-dure... vb 1: to undergo (as a hardship) especially without giving in...
Bred for Water:
Bruno, now 40, began his lifetime of working the waters as a 5 year-old, apprenticing with his father fishing lobsters out of Smithtown, N.Y., on Long Island Sound.
From 1989 to 1991, Bruno worked on lobster boats, first working the inshore fishery, then moving up to the tougher world and better money of offshore lobstering.
The Perfect Storm:
In 1991, as a weakening hurricane Grace was working her way into the North Atlantic, the offshore lobster boat which was Bruno's workplace and home for 7 of every 10 days, began heading back to port.
Before making it back, however, the boat was overtaken by the infamous "Perfect Storm" of 1991 (the one that killed the captain and 5 crew of the Andrea Gail, as fictionalized in the George Clooney movie)...
As the lobster boat struggled through the heavy storm-torn seas, Bruno was on deck when the boat broached to in the trough of mountainous waves. Lying parallel to the waves in the trough, the boat was helpless as the towering following wave crashed on top of her. Bruno was crushed against the bulwark by the deck-load of lobster traps and tons of water enveloping the boat as the wave tore abrest.
Being so pinned down by the weight and pressure of the traps and water may well have saved Bruno from being immediately washed over the open transom or out of a scupper to certain death in the stormy seas, but Bruno's legs were injured and his body heat had been sucked out by the mass of chilly water that flooded his protective oilskin foul-weather gear.
As Bruno struggled to re-orient himself on the open deck of the still-broached vessel, a crewmate grabbed him by the collar, hauled him into the cabin, unceremoniously dumped him on the floor where he lay alone as the crewmate returned to the danger on deck.
Sometime later, perhaps an hour or so, Bruno regained his senses enough to begin removing the soaked clothing from his chilled and battered body in an attempt to begin raising his body temperature.
While Bruno struggled to remove his upper garments, the boat's Captain entered the cabin, saw Bruno moving and growled that it looked like he was ready to go back to work. When Bruno understandably indicated that indeed he was not so ready, the Captain expressed his great displeasure at the news, and added some comments to the effect that Bruno seemed to lack certain traits of male anatomy.
Again later, as Bruno continued to struggle removing his dangerously cold and wet clothing, and as he realized his legs had been so injured as to prevent him from walking, much less assisting the crew on the heaving deck in the storm, the Captain returned to ask Bruno if he was finished with his beauty rest and ready to return to the world of working men, only to be dissapointed again by Bruno's negative response.
The next day, the storm abated but Bruno still battered, the Captain again asked if Bruno were ready to go back to work. While Bruno understood and expected that the boat would not discontinue further lobster fishing to take his injured self back to port, he knew he was not able to return to the physical work of the crew.
The Captain informed Bruno that he would not rate any pay for the remaining days at sea, and that Bruno was welcome to return to crying like a girl in his berth until the boat returned to port.
The Shore of Refuge:
Back ashore and out of the lobstering business, Bruno began recovering from his injuries.
Bruno received a call from an old friend who asked him if he was available for work. Bruno explained that he was not fit for the work of commercial lobster fishing...
"But do you think you could sail?" he was asked. Bruno had sailed on a shooner one summer in his youth - just day-sailing, no cruising or ocean voyages, but Bruno knew the fundamentals of sailing.
"Sure, I can sail."
"Well, I need a boat delivered to Bermuda... I can offer you all your provisions for the trip, of course, and a return plane ticket plus a little pocket money... at least think about it."
Bruno thought about it, and two days later had consented to the job.
Bruno sailed the boat to Bermuda, still in pain and limited by his injury on the voyage. Upon his arrival, where he was required to stay aboard the fully-provisioned boat for a time, Bruno discovered his pain and injuries were nothing that all the rum in Bermuda couldn't cure.
When his pocket money ran out, Bruno cashed in his plane ticket. When vacated from the boat by the arrival of the boat's owner, Bruno's employer offered to loan Bruno money for a new plane ticket. Bruno decided not to accept the loan, and to stay in Bermuda.
Out of cash, with no family or friends and few acquaintances on the island, Bruno found serviceable accommodations underneath a dock on the beach...
Red-bellied woodpecker hunts for bugs in a Persimmon tree next to Oriental Harbor.
I heard a very noisy bird call as I was riding past the Dinghy Dock this afternoon (returning home from sailing in the Bauer 10)...
I stopped and listened until I finally spotted the source up in a Persimmon tree.
I got a few pictures of the bird, which I did not recognize, but suspected was a woodpecker due to its' behavior (pecking at the tree bark and pulling bugs out).
Back at home I found the bird, officially Melanerpes carolinus in one of my bird guides. The bird in today's picture is a male.
I'm not sure where the "carolinus" in the latin name comes from, but this bird's habitat extends across the U.S. from Atlantic Ocean into the Great Plains (excluding most of New England)...
It is a fairly common bird, but it is a brand new addition to my own life-list.
As in the Oct. 1 photo, I took this from about 15 to 20 feet away from the bird while sailing the Bauer dinghy back into the harbor after a brief sail out to Oriental marker #1.
A Brown Pelican surveys the Neuse River from its' perch at the end of the Oriental Harbor breakwater
I photographed this brown pelican (one of my favorite subjects) from about twenty feet away as I was sailing around the breakwater in the Bauer dinghy.
Usually birds perching on the breakwater fly away as I sail closer, but this one stayed put, keeping one eye on me and the other on the river.
Dolphins (probably bottlenose) surface while hunting in Camp Creek.
While out sailing in the Bauer dinghy, I found these guys swimming in circles around the mouth of Green's Creek, where it merges with Smith Creek before flowing out into the Neuse River. I am guessing they were hunting... the creeks are full of shrimp and minnows of all sorts.
The dolphins were swimming in a wide circle around the entire mouth of Green's Creek, and I had little luck keeping up with them in some fickle and weak winds. I also had little luck with the camera, as it is a tad difficult to get decent shots while trying to hold the tiller and the mainsheet at the same time.
After doing my best with the camera for a while I set it aside and relaxed into the boat, sailing around and listening for the dolphins blowing as they surfaced...
"poof... poof... poof" would alert me to their surfacing, and I could turn my head in time to see them arching back down into the waters, and others coming to the surface behind them... just like in this short video I was also able to capture:
Menhaden (a type of fish) schooling next to the Hodges Street causeway over Raccoon Creek (next to Town Dock).
The menhaden invasion continues... Untold millions of menhaden minnows have thronged area creeks this summer, thriving in their estuaries.
The enormous schools of menhaden minnows create "boiling" effects along creek shores and docks. Especially on calm days, when the wind is not creating waves, the water everywhere seems to shimmer as the never-ending schools of tightly packed menhaden create surface turbulence.
I did take a video of the menhaden, since the still picture does not quite capture their frenetic nature:
All I Know About Menhaden (at least I think it's interesting):
Local crabbers (recreational and commercial) and recreational fishers use menhaden for bait. It is extremely easy to catch many hundreds of the 1 to 2 inch minnows simply by tossing a cast net from the shore.
People don't eat menhaden in their natural fish form, but commercial menhaden fisheries produce commercially successful proteins and oils extracted from the fish, as I learned last summer when I visited Reedville, Virginia.
Reedville, VA is home to the only menhaden fishing fleet on the Atlantic Ocean, and to a large processing plant that converts about 200,000 Tons of menhaden (over 500 Million individuals) a year into fishmeal and oil for use in a wide variety of products.
Like Oriental, Reedville is a small town dominated by a large commercial fishing fleet. Unlike the Oriental fleet, which concentrates on shrimping and some scalloping, the Reedville fleet is 100% dedicated to menhaden, which it harvests in enormous quantities.
While there, I spent a couple of hours at the Reedville Fisherman's Museum, which is essentially a propaganda outlet for the commercial menhaden industry (though they do also have an impressive floating collection of wooden boats, including one of about 30 surviving Chesapeake Bay "Skipjack" sailing oyster boats, which the museum continues to operate for charters and tours... all in all, well worth visiting.)
When you enter the museum, the docent immediately shunts you into a small room to watch a ten minute video about commercial menhaden fishing (the museum has now posted the video on YouTube, so I have embedded it below in this post)
Once properly indoctrinated, you are allowed wander the halls of the museum, which feature a pretty amazing photographic history of the industry in action, as well as scale models depicting key technological developments that have led to today's frighteningly large catches of the fish.
The modern menhaden fleet consists of about 10 "steamer" ships, each of which carries two smaller "purse-seine boats"...
When one of the fleet's associated airplanes spots one of the gigantic menhaden schools from the air, the steamer heads that way and launches the purse seine boats.
The purse seine boats each take one end of a 1500-foot purse seine net and encircle a portion of the school then close the bottom of the net, trapping the fish... The area within the net may only be a tiny piece of the overall school, but will result in a catch of up to 300,000 menhaden.
The fish are then pumped out of the nets by the steamers (using giant vacuum tubes that are lowered into the trapped mass.) When their holds are filled, the purse seine boats are brought back aboard and the steamers head back to the processing plant at Reedville.
At the plant, the fish is "cooked" and pressed, separating it into "liquor" (water and oil) and "cake" (solid fish meal). If you are ever in Reedville, you will immediately know if the plant is cooking, as an odor-you-would-not-believe pervades the air downwind of the plant... make sure to anchor or tie up on the windward side of the stacks! (Crazy Crab Restaurant and Marina is recommended, so long as the wind is not out of the south)
The dry meal is used, among other things, as a protein for livestock and pet foods. (take a deep whiff of a can of fish food flakes, or while in the cat food aisle at Pet Smart and you will have a small clue as to the odor that emanates from the processing plant)
The oil is mostly exported to Europe for use as cooking oil/margarine/shortening for human foods (as the Reedville Fisherman's Museum film points out, if you've ever been to France and enjoyed their croissants, likely cooked with menhaden oil), but because the American market has so far not embraced menhaden as a food oil it is instead used here for industrial products like paint and cosmetics.
If you only watch the Reedville Museum's film (embedded below) you might think, as the narrator asserts, that it is indeed:
"the perfect commercial fish... fishermen don't value them except as bait [not good eating, plus they are toothless phytoplankton eaters not catchable with hook and line so sports fishers don't care about them]... they are plentiful, self-renewing, usable in a variety of ways and catchable in large quantities without accidentally killing other valuable fish that people want to eat or catch for sport."
(Video from the Reedville Fisherman's Museum, Reedville, VA)
Some conservationists and sports fishers, however, complain that because menhaden are a significant link between plankton and larger predatory marine and avian life, the large-scale removal of their protein from the ecosystem can only have damaging effects on predator populations such as striped bass, bluefish, mackerel, flounder, tuna, drum , sharks, egrets, ospreys, seagulls, northern gannets, pelicans, herons, etc... Some allege that commercial menhaden fishing has even led or contributed to an alarming increase in appearances of lesion-causing mycobacteriosis and Pfiesteria among menhaden predators such as bass and rockfish.
The U.S. Dept. of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects that this year the 10 steamers of the Reedville-based Atlantic menhaden fleet will bring in close to 200,000 Tons of menhaden! (see NOAA report)
According to NOAA, the combined Gulf and Atlantic menhaden fleets landed 454,000 metric tons (1.39 BILLION pounds) of the fish last year.
I won't bother linking to the multitude of sources discussing the debate over whether menhaden are being over-fished to the detriment of other species (and whether that is even possible)... if you are interested, you can google and find tons of discussion on the subject, most of which appears in the form of defensive discussions from the commercial fishing interests.
I found another menhaden fishing video on YouTube, very different from the pre-packaged corporate promo like the video from the Reedville museum... This vedeo was apparently made by one or more commercial menhaden fishermen (accompanied by Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing")... Oddly, these guys are fishing off Cape May, NJ, and the boats are not the large "steamers" of the Reedville fleet... not sure where they are from, but it looks like they use the two trawlers for the purse-seine operation... one of the trawlers carries a smaller boat (the loading-the-boat scene is my favorite part), but this is not like the huge Reedville steamers each carrying two 20 foot steel-hulled purse-seine boats.
These guys clearly enjoyed making the video for fun. It's also clear from the video that these guys work hard catching bunk/pogies/menhaden, and that they love being fishermen working the waters. Check it out:"bunker fishing cape may (atlantic menhaden)" video.
A mink (neovison vison) runs across the breakwater rip-rap.
This is one of the two young minks who regularly hunt for crabs and other meals in the breakwater along the South Avenue waterfront (next to Lou-Mac Park) here in Oriental.
The minks patrol this breakwater several times a day... they usually crawl under the rocks as much as possible, but occasionally must break out into the open to get where they need to go. When they know someone is watching, they won't sit still in the open, but will zip from one hidey-hole at full speed.
I know I have featured the "Lou-Mac Minks" before (see post of 7.16.08), but they are just too darn cute. I can't swear I won't feature them again in the future.
-30-
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Found this shore crab clinging to the Mimosa tree next to the dinghy dock... those are the handlebars of my bicycle, which means the crab is a good 3.5 feet up the tree.
It was difficult to get a picture of it because, like a squirrel, the crab scurried around to the other side of the tree every time I moved to take a picture of it.
I have never seen one of these tiny crabs outside of the rip-rap of breakwaters, so I was quite surprised to find one climbing a tree.
Some friends asked me to take some pictures of a stray kitten they rescued from the side of a highway... they needed pictures to give to the Pamlico Animal Welfare Society and local newspapers, etc., to try to find a permanent adopter (already have too many animals in their home).
They fed this kitten by hand for weeks until it could eat solid food on its own. Now it is an active, healthy and playful kitten who enjoys chasing beaded necklaces... If you can help, please drop me an e-mail.
Along the "Inner Banks" of North Carolina...where everyone lives at the end of the road, and every road ends at the water!
Humans: 875... Sailboats: 3,000 View Oriental, NC in a larger map
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Snow descends on mallards (anas platyrhynchos) swimming past a man-made Osprey nest platform near Harker's Island, NC
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