Worms, food, and a wedding anniversary

Another week has begun after a peaceful weekend on the water.  Saturday was stormy, so we sat in the cockpit and watched the storm clouds gather. When the rain came down in a torrent, we moved below to the dry cabin, watched a movie, listened to music, read books.  We went to sleep with the rain hitting the hatch cover over our heads, and the boat gently moving in the small swells.

On Sunday,  the weather had turned around to a beautifully bright spring day.  We took a long walk on the beach, looked for shark's teeth,  and talked to a few families who were enjoying a picnic. Amelia enjoyed her time on the beach because she loves to greet people who pet her.  She says hello and then moves on, wagging her tail.  I like that she has the same manners as her mother, my old girl who died in November.

Beach combing for me is not so much about what I take but what I observe.  On Friday evening, we heard the sounds of thousands of mating bristle worms hitting the hull.  These polychaete worms swarm in a mating frenzy when the water temperature begins to warm.  Their tubes are so numerous that they cover the sand in many places.  Shining a light over the side of the boat at night reveals thousands of the red epitokes.  The epitoke is a portion of the bristleworm that  is packed with eggs or sperm and becomes highly specialised for swimming.  At mating time, the epitoke breaks off from the main worm and can move about on its own. Swimming to the surface, it is joined by the epitokes of other bristleworms. At the surface, the epitokes burst apart, releasing eggs and sperm for external fertilisation.  In this way, the worms can reproduce without exposing the rest of their bodies to danger.

Worm tubes on the beach

There is always something to talk about on the beach.  So many people don't seem to take the time to stop and wonder about what is right under their feet.  Maybe some don't want to know!

We had a foodie weekend too with snow crab and corn on the cob on Friday evening,  Szechuan flounder and crispy eggplant on Saturday, and linguine with white clam sauce on Sunday.  No bristle worms were added though! All the salt air and long walks builds up a healthy appetite.

This coming Friday will be the 70th wedding anniversary of my wife's parents.  We are planning to take them to lunch at a nice restaurant. I'm not sure how all this will go because Mom doesn't really remember who Pop is at times, thinking that he is her brother or father.  And Pop is frail but doing okay as long as the ammonia buildup on the brain is kept low due to laculose.  But then the laculose causes diarrhea which presents another set of problems.  Anyway, we are hoping that all will go well, and the parents will be healthy enough to go out.  I can tell that C. is a bit anxious over the whole thing.

I cannot imagine 70 years together.  I won't speculate on what that takes.  But it takes more than what most people can imagine.  

Pretty photos and a rant

I want to share a few of the sights of yesterday. The weather has been terrific! I need to focus on the pretty here because the not so pretty is bubbling up.


The dolphins are abundant this weekend. I watched them jumping out of the water and cruising by. They seem to find the boat interesting, often swimming right beside it.


The beach had its share of crazies but all were located in one area. Once the gauntlet is run, there is nothing but peace and quiet. The shrimp boats come near the beach, plying a nearly lost trade in this area. Foreign imports and fuel prices have made most go out of business.


The sand dollar is actually related to the sea stars. When alive, these critters move along the bottom feeding on algae and small invertebrates. Most of the ones I find are the shell. These are fragile and often broken by the waves.


The ghost crab is one of my favorite beach critters. It can see in all directions with those stalked eyes. Most are hiding out in their burrows during the day. At night, they run to the water to wet their gills.

I don't know how much longer I will be coming to this little island that I treasure. I have spent some wonderful days and nights here. It has been a place of peace. Summer though brings some fairly wild and crazy people with a lot of bad behavior. I have written about the stuff that happens here before: the drinking, unsafe boating, the loud profane music and the women that denigrate themselves by pandering to the sexist males on the power yachts.

Today, I am just fed up. I heard a fellow call a woman some terrible names yesterday. He was about to back into our boat, and she was scared. I have to say that one of the things that throws me into a rage is someone talking disrespectfully and rudely about women or to an individual who is doing no harm. It is hard, saddening, and frightening to watch real people in the real world say hateful things.

The woman was deflated and horrified. She evidently was a guest on his boat. Because his boat was caught up in an anchor line, our two boats were side by side. He eventually offered a kind of off hand apology after I said to knock it off. An apology is not a solution. The real solution is to to be aware and to change behavior.

Words do hurt, even if we are taught that they don't matter. If someone makes sexist jokes, says crude sexist things, and perpetuates sexist ideas that women don't have brains or that they are not valuable unless you think they are sexy, whatever that means, they are low lifes to me.

The gleeful skewering of another person, the disregard for their thoughts and opinions, and the total lack of respect for another person, whoever they are, leaves me sad. I know that this happens every day to all manner of people. And I know that we each have our moments of disregard for others. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t sad to see this happen up close.

And since this incident involved a woman, I want to note that the kind of sexism that places value on women’s appearance before anything else is rampant in our society. Flaws can and will be found with any person if hateful people need them to be there.

What I think this incident reveals is the degree to which hateful beliefs can become ingrained and invisible, and come out especially in moments in which a person feels threatened. When an instinctual, and later intentional response is predicated on racism or sexism or any kind of bigotry, we owe it to ourselves not to sweep our actions under the rug and say we are really a good or nice person, except this one time. Instead it is time to take an honest look at what the root of the issue is.

I needed to write about this because I sorely wanted to kick his ass. That is the instinct that I am inventorying.

Wild and free

We are anchored behind Kiawah Island which is one of the high end resorts. At one time, Kiawah was unspoiled and held in ownership by a pirate and a couple of other families, including the Vanderhorst family, who held ownership of the island for 200 years. A lumberman purchased the entire island for $125,000 in 1951. Just 23 years later, his heirs sold the property to a real estate developer for $18.2 million. And in 1988, the island's assets sold for $105 million.

The development is not badly done, nor is the island over developed at 3,300 homes. But I much prefer the idea of having just a few homes.

If it had been my island, I would have kept it as pristine as possible. I can't imagine what it must have been like to live on Kiawah when it was wild, to walk the dirt roads, and sit on the beach with no one else around.

But out here on the water, i don't see any lights. Once again, we are listening to the breath of the dolphins blowing out. I can't see them in the dark but can hear them. I lit a citronella candle to discourage the mosquitoes. The breeze is up now which helps to keep them away.

Some friends are bringing their boat through the inlet which has treacherous shoals and breakers. I hope that they don't run aground. We will stay up a bit longer to watch for them, although I am tired after the full day on the water. It is a good Friday night here. Hope that it is where you are as well.

Friday thoughts

Lots to do today.  We are going to the art walk tonight which happens on the first Friday of every month. Lots of local talent in various galleries.  Gas lit street lamps and cobblestones.

The heat wave continues.  Yesterday, the heat index was 122 F.  There was a breeze, but it was packed with heat and humidity.  Maybe the tropical storm will send some rain and cloud cover this way.

The meeting topic yesterday was on having a spiritual awakening.  Mine came gradually--no lightening bolt moments.  I do believe Step 12--"Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps....."  As a result of the steps, not as a result of going to meetings, reading books but actually doing the work with a sponsor who has a sponsor.  Now I know that the "Ah-hah" moments are not coincidence but my HP working.

Trying to figure out what to do during the day this weekend to beat the heat while staying on an un-airconditioned boat at the marina for the night.  Maybe Barnes and Noble or the public library to sit and read, or a movie.  I am sure that something will come up that will be a solution. 

Working on information on horseshoe crab to share in an article.  Fascinating critters that have been around for millions of years.  And we humans could not do without their blood from which is extracted cells that are used to test for bacterial contamination in medical devices and injectable drugs. Horseshoe crab blood coagulates in the presence of minute quantities of gram-negative bacterial endotoxins. Known as the LAL test, it is currently the worldwide standard for screening medical equipment for bacterial contamination.  No other known procedure has the same accuracy as the LAL test.  I hope that they remain with us in spite of our using their blood and messing with their habitat.


Have a good Friday.  I am off to start my day.

Confusion of puberty

The wind is still blowing a gale here.  Yesterday, the harbor was a froth as I did three boat tours with the coastal cruise company that hired me as the lecturer/scientist for their trips.  The only difference with today's weather is that it is raining as well as blowing.  It will be another interesting day on the water. 

I wish that I were totally enthralled with doing this job.  I give it my best but trying to reach the 8th graders this week is difficult.  Some seem to be interested so I focus on them.  Those who spend their time squealing and acting out are the ones that I don't focus on.  I am not a counselor.  And I am learning that I am not a teacher for those who don't want to be taught.  I have spent my career working with motivated people and have spent a lot of time writing papers and proposals in solitude.  I am affable but uncomfortable with large groups of disinterested people. One of my shortcomings, I suppose. 

I talked to a chaperon yesterday who happened to be a retired art teacher.  She said that in her 31 years of teaching, she has seen the kids change dramatically.  The eighth grade girls dress like hookers and yet will act like young girls with their squeals and games like "patty cake".  The boys dress and act like kids.  There is growing evidence that the onset of puberty in girls may be shifting earlier and earlier, possibly due to obesity or exposure to environmental chemicals.  This is obviously a difficult age. 

Yesterday,  a couple of the bigger boys were stomping on the clams, one broke a bottle on a rock and another was kicking a jellyfish.  I told the boys to not stomp on clams or kick jelly fish.  And I made the one that broke the bottle, pick up the pieces and put them in a plastic bag.  Where are the teachers? Well, there is only one per group of 50 students, and she was overwhelmed with so many kids to keep up with.   I know that I don't want to baby sit a group of kids, but also I can't let them be destructive. 

I don't remember much about 8th grade.  I thought much of early high school up to tenth grade was pretty much a mess.  There were social cliques, lots of hormonal changes, and emotional confusion.  Maybe not much has changed. Male aggression starts coming out which may explain the need to kick or break something.  Females are still girls but are learning to be women.  Lots of confusion for all concerned.

I will give it my best today.  There will be over 125 students going out on the water.  I keep telling myself that if just one or two come away with an appreciation for the ocean and its critters, then I am doing some good.  I will see what I can do today.  Hope that you have a good day. 

No child left indoors

When I was growing up there were no video games, no computers, no cell phones, and in the early years no TV.   Instead, there was the outdoors which was the best entertainment ever. 

My father would take me fishing when he was off work.  I've written before about how he taught me to read the water, drive a boat,  and to catch trout, croaker, and spot.  My mother though was the main force behind the then unheard of philosophy of "No child left indoors" (see note below).  From the time that I got off school for summer vacation,  she would take me for treks through the woods and fields to identify plants, collect insects, and bring back pond water to look at under the microscope. 

Our field trips were the source of delight because we would always find something strange.  She would delight in finding shelf fungi on trees, mats of algae in a pond, and the occasional horned caterpillar of a favorite moth. On more than one occasion, I would bring home a cocoon or an egg case to be placed in a hatching cage that my father built.  Every day, I would check to see what progress was being made until eventually a moth would emerge from the cocoon or beetles would hatch from the egg case.  Even having a thousand tiny praying mantis escape from the hatching cage and invade the kitchen wasn't much of a problem for my mother.  It was all part of the adventure. 

The old Hepplewhite dining room table that has been around for over a hundred years became my laboratory bench.  There were snakes, frogs, and many species of insect that were examined, identified and labeled.  It was really through my mother's efforts that I developed such an interest in science, especially natural history. 

But being outside was the best laboratory of all. When I think about what so many children are missing today because they are stuck inside playing video games, or endlessly texting their friends, it makes me wonder who they will be tomorrow.  Maybe they will be the computer gurus of the future.  Or perhaps the next software developers.  Or maybe the text messaging will spark an interest in writing a book.  The possibilities are endless.  I am simply grateful for the outdoor time that I spent and how it shaped me.  I truly wasn't a child left indoors.

Note: In recent years, people around the country have been rallying behind a no-child-left-inside campaign, according to Richard Louv, the ground-breaking author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. In his book, he quotes James Sallis of the Active Living Research Program for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who says that “an indoor, sedentary childhood is linked to mental health problems.” It is also linked to problems with childhood obesity. 

The following statistics say a lot: (1) According to the Kaiser Foundation, in 2005 the average United States child spent six hours a day watching television and playing video games on a computer. (2) Most state and national parks report a ten to 20% drop in visitors over the past few years. (3) The organization “Playing for Keeps” says that 80% of children under age two and more than 60% of ages two to five have no access to daily outdoor play.

A human tidepool

One of my favorite books is Steinbeck and Rickett's Log from the Sea of Cortez. For a biologist, it's a wonderful book. Ed Rickett's was an interesting fellow. Steinbeck used a lot of who Rickett's was in his great book Cannery Row, another favorite. Ed Rickett's worked in a wooden building, positioned between canneries. He stored the specimens he sold to school labs -- frogs and cats and the tiny marine creatures he collected during hours spent in the tide pools off Monterey. Ricketts was a character who more or less lived in his lab and in the company of caged snakes. He liked wine, women and song and he liked to philosophize. Steinbeck said the novel should be read as if set in a human tidepool teaming with life, fascinating in all its aspects.

Ed Ricketts made his first appearance in Steinbeck's 1935 short story "The Snake": "It was almost dark when young Dr. Phillips swung his sack to his shoulder and left the tidepool. He climbed up over the rocks and squashed along the street in his rubber boots. The street lights were on by the time he arrived at his little commercial laboratory on cannery street in Monterey." When I visited the Monterey aquarium, I spent about an hour standing at the exhibit about Ed Ricketts.  It fascinated me to be able to see photos of this interesting larger-than-life character. 

Ricketts followed a live-in-the-moment philosophy and he viewed everything as interrelated parts of a whole. This worldview also set Ed Ricketts apart from his peers in the world of marine biology. He was an ecologist who placed the organism in its natural habitat and looked at the relationship with the habitat. In 1939, Ricketts published an elegantly written textbook called Between Pacific Tides.

Steinbeck and Ricketts were not only friends, they were collaborators. Steinbeck and Ricketts embarked on a six-week marine expedition to the Gulf of California. During the trip, which covered 4,000 miles of coastline, they discovered 35 new marine species. The following year, the book based on their expedition, Sea of Cortez, was published.

Tragically, Ricketts died at the age of 50 when his car was hit by a train. In Cannery Row, Steinbeck left behind a poignant epitaph: "Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and change it for you into a kind of wisdom. His mind had no horizon and his sympathy had no warp."

The quote that I put below sums up a great philosophy on life. It's about living life and not being afraid to venture forth, sometimes into unknown territory. I hadn't read the passage in several years and every time that I do, it resonates with me because I know and feel what they are writing about. Fear is an awful thing because it holds you back. It's a straight-jacket on the soul.

I guess that I'm in a great mood, albeit philosophical, because I've just gotten off the boat.  I seem to feel better when I've been out on the water.  And I walked several times on the beach each day, looking to see what had washed up.  There is usually something exciting about what the tide brings.

"We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world - temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Once in a while one comes on the other kind - what used in the university to be called a `dry-ball'- but such men are not really biologists. They are the embalmers of the field, the picklers who see only the preserved form of life without any of its principle. Out of their own crusted minds they create a

world wrinkled with formaldehyde. The true biologist deals with life, with teeming boisterous life, and learns something from it, learns that the first rule of life is living. The dry-balls cannot possibly learn a thing every starfish knows in the core of his soul and in the vesicles between his rays. He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities. And we have known biologists who did proliferate in all directions: one or two have had a little trouble about it. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does

not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.

-- J. Steinbeck & E.F. Ricketts,

Log from the Sea of Cortez.

Octopus and dolphins

It's a magnificent day here. Blue sky, light breeze, and warm temperatures are making it glorious. We came out on the boat yesterday and have been for a beach walk this morning. I spotted an octopus crawling up on shore. It was clutching a clam with one of it's tentacles. The porpoises were herding fish on low tide so perhaps the octopus' primal instinct urged it to come on shore rather than be eaten. I picked it up and placed it just at the edge of the water. It gradually began to siphon water and crawl among the clumps of algae at the edge. The dolphins prowled just beyond.

Earlier a sponsee called to say that he needed help. His wife is drinking and using opiates. He feels trapped, alone with his own killer. He told me "I had less than 24 hours with any semblance of sanity," I thought about how hard the disease is on families and how God presented us with choices. He didn't make those choices easy at times.

Sometimes it's a matter of whether I stay in safe waters or venture out of my comfort zone. By His grace today I can walk the beach on a beautiful day and muse about an isolated octopus, some dolphins, and choices.

Sea creatures, cooking and sex

It's a beautiful Friday here. I'm glad that it's almost the weekend. This afternoon I'm going to give a talk on one of my favorite critters, the horseshoe crab. Sharing information on marine organisms is something that I look forward to. If I can impart some information that will help people to consider the estuaries and oceans in a different way, as a home to some interesting and important creatures, then I consider that a success.

The horseshoe crab, a humble prehistoric looking critter, has been around since the Ordovician period, which was about 500 million years ago. That's a long time. What's really intriguing is that the blood of horseshoe crab is used by the biomedical industry to detect bacterial endotoxins in catheter tubes and injectable drugs. So this ancient creature provides a very real and valuable service for many people.

I had to laugh about Mary's cooking experience with octopus. I've read of many methods to tenderize the rubbery cephalopod. If you ask five different people what these measures are you are likely to get five different answers, all arcane - which goes a long way toward explaining why no one cooks octopus at home. A Greek cook may tell you to beat it against some rocks. A Spanish cook will dip it into boiling water three times, then cook it in a copper pot - only copper will do. An Italian might cook it with two corks. The Japanese rub it all over with salt, or knead it with grated daikon, then slice the meat at different angles, with varying strokes. I have used a wooden mallet to beat the rubber out of the octopus.

But I read up after Mary's adventure to find that the best method which is often the simplest (Occam's rasor) is to cook octopus and squid slowly. Cook for under five minutes or so for salad or sushi. For deep frying, it would be best to do long, slow cooking to get a tender texture. I read in one book that 30 minutes per kilo (two pounds) is a gauge. But much will depend on repeatedly testing the skin with a sharp knife. When the knife blade splits the skin with little resistance, then the octopus is done.

And if all that isn't gross enough, when eating calimari look for the long tentacle that extends beyond the others. That is the hectocotylized arm of the male. He uses that to place a sperm packet in the female and thereby inseminates her.

Bon appetit.