Cape May Naturalist

Skates, jelly fish, and us

2010-07-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

I was eye to eye with a clear nose skate yesterday. I was disappointed it was not a fluke, but the skate's distress outweighed mine.

Its rough skin brushed against my hand I as unhooked it, apparently no worse for the wear, but the skate's starry, unblinking eyes continue to haunt me.

Look at the picture. We share a planet, but not a universe.

***

Last night we paddled under a fading evening sky--the water was flat, and the dusk dissolved the division between air and water.

Thousands of jellies floated around us, like clouds under our kayaks, now sailing on air. The undulating bells spoke to purpose, their herd spoke to community.

We stared at their beauty, but know nothing of them, and they know nothing of us.
We share a planet, but not a universe.

The skate eyes photo is courtesy of Dr. Mark Terasaki, used with permission.
He has lots of great shots on his website.

Leslie took the other one--and part of the paddle is in the water--it really felt like flying....

Kayaking into the sunset

2010-07-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

While Cape May island gets most of the press, we get the sunsets.

Fireworks

2010-07-06T16:44:00.001-07:00

We live in North Cape May. An osprey flew over our home yesterday, I caught a few fluke from the kayak today.

Don't tell anyone, but we live in a natural paradise.

The fireworks are a (wonderful) bonus. What a show last night!

2010-07-05T13:42:00.000-07:00

The new water tower leading into town proclaims that Lower Township is "home to the best sunsets."

After the last few nights, who could argue?

Ambergris?

2010-02-27T13:54:00.001-08:00

Leslie and I took a walk along the edge of our world, as we do most Saturdays. The tide was out.

At the edge of our universe, we witness miracles. Today we saw a 1" horseshoe crab the color of sand, not quite a yearling, making the universal horseshoe crab tracking pattern. I rescued an older one, at least a decade old, flipped upside down, a gull nearby eying its gills.

The beach is littered with blue crabs recently dead, their murderers betrayed by the tracks of webbed feet.

The February wind whipped through our coats. It's still winter here.

And then I stumbled on this:

It's earthy marine aroma seduces me, and repulses Leslie.

I think I've found a good chunk of ambergris, worth something back in the days before chemists played gods. A decade or two ago, a sperm whale wrestled with a giant squid, perhaps a mile deep, and won. The squid's beak took one last stab at the whale's gut, which formed a protective coating of, well, whale excrement around the squid's last charge.

The beak was eventually expelled, either as poop or vomit, neither method particularly charming, and after years in the sea was tossed up on our beach.

If anyone wants to buy it, let me know. In the meantime, I'll keep sniffing it, drawing up images of death and delight in the deepest recesses of my hind brain.

Last day in January, 2010

2010-01-31T09:44:00.001-08:00

North Cape May beach, off Roslyn.
Despite the cold and the slushy waters, the ferry (off to the right) still runs.

We saw a few sand pipers, one of them missing a leg, hopping as madly as its fellows.

Cape May is lovely in January....but don't tell anyone.

January thaw, blue claw

2010-01-18T18:28:00.000-08:00

We just went through a patch of cold that left us chilled and the bay's edge frozen. We warmed up a bit, though banks of ice still lined the beaches Saturday.

We found clumps of blue crabs huddled together next to the jetties. A few were still alive, though chilled enough to pick up without getting pinched. We found a couple of live horseshoe crabs as well. I suspect the ice pushed some of the critters up from the mud below.

No sign of the sandhill crane at Beerworld (Ponderlodge) this week.

(And for those of you not fortunate enough to see blue crabs on their walks, they really are that blue.)

January sunset

2010-01-09T16:34:00.000-08:00

January 9, 2010.

It's a bit chilly today, with the breeze gusting to 25 knots, but more than a handful of folks found time to walk along the edge of the bay.

Hard to believe we were just swimming here 3 months ago.

Delaware Bay

2009-10-03T15:01:00.001-07:00

A few minutes later, the bay reclaimed the rose.

We found our pot of gold....

2009-06-27T14:55:00.000-07:00

A storm preceded the solstice by a few hours.

New moon, west wind

2009-06-23T08:48:00.001-07:00

Ferry jetty.
New moon, west wind, high tide, near solstice.

Striper on!

2009-06-07T04:37:00.000-07:00

Poverty Beach
Last day in May, 2009

A short, 26 inches, back in the drink--maybe I'll get him in November.....

Pssst...

2009-04-12T03:59:00.000-07:00

Harpoon Henry's is opening April 17th.

Image from Cape May Restaurant Guide.

Bottling day

2009-04-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

Last summer's blueberries are now sitting in brown bottles, waiting for June. The blueberries are in communion with nectar collected by bees.

If you ever think you know anything, think about mead.

Honey, fruit, water, yeast, and time.

It takes about two million flowers to make a pound of honey. 5 gallons of mead takes about 15 million flowers. A bee makes about 50 to 100 trips each time she wanders away from the hive collecting nectar.

150,000 bees collected nectar and converted it to honey. Millions upon millions of yeast converted the honey to ethanol and carbon dioxide.

My job? Just make sure the honey and the water and the blueberries and the yeast end up together in the same bucket, and once started, keep oxygen out.

Pretty simple, very good.

***

I got my first quahogs of the season yesterday. A quahog leaves a keyhole--one siphon in, one siphon out. Last spring I could not tell a quahog hole from a skimmer hole--now I can. Good news for me, not so good news for the quahogs.

I wandered about the flats in Villas looking for a keyhole. I saw hundreds, maybe thousands, of holes left by jackknifes and razor clams, but no keyholes.

I wandered a couple hundred yards from the high tide detritus. Then I saw it. I jammed my hand into the sand, and my fingers recognized the firmness of the quahog. Spring has arrived.

Making mead is simple; eating clams more so. Open, then eat.

One was chowder sized, not much smaller than my fist, and not much younger than me. The other was somewhat younger, maybe 10 years old.

I took them home, put them in the fridge for a couple of hours, then tossed them back in the bay just after sunset. Won't be long before I get a mess of them for dinner.

Pretty simple, very good.

Somewhere in Cape May

2009-03-15T05:31:00.001-07:00

Oysters, comets, and sea urchins

2009-02-22T14:09:00.000-08:00

The bay receded at mid-day. The oysters were no faster than they were last week, and a couple dozen ended up in our pot of stew.

Leslie and I walked along Higbee's Beach on a gorgeous February afternoon. We found Auntie Beth walking along the edge of the bay, as good a place as any to find Auntie Beth, should you be fortunate enough to have an Auntie Beth.

We also founds scads of purple sea urchins and blue claw crabs tossed up on the beach. I suspect that they wiggled out of the mud when the shallows warmed up a bit a week ago, then found (too late) that February thaws are as fleeting as summer romance.

A loon greeted us form no more than 10 yards off shore. A dead scoter, its garish beak lit up by the February sun, lay on the edge of the high tide line as though sleeping.

This week's list:

*Sea urchins, sea urchins, and more sea urchins
*Blue claw crabs, with colors that rivaled those of our dead scoter's beak
*Razor clams
*Whelk egg cases
*A lady's slipper shell
*Oysters
*Quahog shells (but no live clams yet)
*Sand pipers and gulls of various persuasions
*Peter Dunne? (I was too shy to ask, but he had a kick-butt spotting scope at Sunset Beach)
*Horseshoe crabs, freshly dead
*A couple of dead mitten crabs (they're here)
*A Jonah crab
*Scattered carapaces of spider crabs
*A few angel wings
*More than a few live oysters tossed on the beach
*Mussels (alway, always mussels)
*The largest starfish I have seen in Jersey

No jellyfish this week. No purple sandpipers. No schools of fish on the surface.

March returns next weekend. The fish will be moving soon.

February oystering

2009-02-16T13:26:00.000-08:00

Still February, but the grackles have returned.
Still February, but a couple of blueclaw crabs wandered out of the mud a bit early.
Still February, but the sun is steep enough to warm the flats at low tide.

Saturday I got my nephew a shellfish license--$2/year for the peanut crowd.

I taught him the rules (hard clams got to be at least 1 1/2", no shellfishing on Sundays, and never clam when the sun is below the horizon).

We wandered over to the bay as the sun was setting on its edge--the tide was falling, but most of the oysters were still protected by the frigid waters. Keith wandered in for a moment, but just a moment. The oysters on the end of the jetty would live for another day.

We pried off a couple dozen oysters--one broke in half when we harvested it, so I sucked it down right at the jetty, warning Keith not to do the same (but wouldn't tell his mother if he did).

Yesterday we rolled them in corn meal, flour, and whatever spices we could find. I worried that he might not like them--I should have known better.

Fresh oysters are hard to beat.

Later in the evening, bellies full of oysters, we practiced for his vocabulary quiz. I'm a public school teacher, just so you know my biases. Still, I'd be the first to admit that nothing on his vocabulary list could match the education he got from the Delaware Bay.

A man could do worse than spend his days watching the tides rise and fall, eating oysters, clams, hake, and fluke.

Wild grapes border the path to the beach--I will show him where in August.

Look at an old man who's lived on the bay--he may be missing a tooth or two (or he may have every tooth in his 87 year old head), he may not have a diploma (or he may have a wall covered with degrees), but he will have this much--a twinkle in his eyes, and a quick smile.

This summer I may teach my nephew how to clean a skate--the key to a happy life is knowing what you want, and knowing what you like. I'm sure Chilean sea bass (the erstwhile Patagonian toothfish) tastes fine, but any around here had to travel a long way to get here--they only live in the southern hemisphere.

Skate tastes fine, too, especially if fresh.

Don't tell the people in suits, though--I want them to last.

A walk in February

2009-02-07T17:55:00.000-08:00

(Leslie and I took a wonderful walk today, February 6--this is more a straight journal entry for us, to remind us next winter that even February grants us a break now and then.)

The sun is coming back--today a southern breeze woke up some of the critters slumbering under the snow and the sand.

You think winter cannot end, then you get a day like today. We took our usual walk from Harpoon Henry's down to the ferry jetty, then back.

For now, a list of live critters we spotted:

*oysters
*mussels
*sand flea/mole crab (a huge one, skittering around on the flat like a drunken sailor)
*usual variety of sand pipers, gulls
*razorbills--first ones for us! (First thought they were seals)
*A jonah-like crab, but small and dark, almost black, green (not a mitten crab)
*Some type of worm attached to the edge of a horseshoe crab shell
*A beach fly feasting on a freshly dead oyster

A couple of dead:

*Small striped bass at the edge of a tidepool, mouth agape and body curled as though still chasing its prey
*A balled up jelly

The usual suspects:

*People lolling in the sun
*Bouncy dogs

The unexpected:

*A fisherman trying his luck on the ferry jetty

The high tide edge of the beach breaks through like a false floor--snow drifts remain under the sand. (It is startling to have the beach give way under you.)

The sunset tonight was spectacular--several pods of people watched. Except for the chill and the southern position of the setting sun, you could think it was June. I found a piece of driftwood perfect for a walking stick.

(Today we started a cold frame--an earthworm welcomed me as I dug out a tiny trench to lay the wood. It's like last week's freeze never happened.)

Ebb tide (fiction)

2009-01-21T16:29:00.000-08:00

Children learn the smell of decay from their grandparents. Grandma naps with her mouth open.
"Grandma smells...."

"Shhh...."

And death becomes scary.

A tottering gentleman walks near the edge, his shoes no longer sinking as they once did.

The bay pulls back. Low tide. A glimpse of mud flats reminds him of a thigh, of her. A quick flush, embarrassed by unshared thoughts.

On the jetty a few oysters and mussels gape like old folks sleeping. The sicksweet scent of death blends with the exuberant breath of critters who feast on the shore's edge, gorging on life before the tide returns.

The Delaware Bay etches the gray February skies. A single tern hovers a foot over a careless spearing, dives, then seemingly walks on water a moment as it swallows the writhing flash of silver, no longer alive, not yet dead.

The older man lifts a whelk shell, and sniffs. His nose knows before he does, and the still rotting corpse is tossed back to the water.

A grey shadow scuttles towards the whelk flesh.

The beach has shifted, he has grayed. He stands on the spot--almost sure. She showed him the sea monsters that grinned back at them when they arced underwater to stare at the August sun.

He trudges home.

The tide returns.

A Kinnellian oyster

2008-12-29T03:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Leslie and I wandered around Poverty Beach. The sun ducked and dodged occasionally threatening clouds until the mist closed up around us.

The ocean here spits up shells, lots of them. The ghosts of whelks mingle with their victims--oysters, quahogs, scallops, and surf clams.

While meandering around the mass of mollusks, I stumbled upon the largest oyster shell I've ever held.

What is the lifespan of Crassostrea viginica, the local oyster?
What is its maximum size?

Go ahead, look it up.

The experts will tell you it gets to 20 years old, and about 8" long.

I found the shell of one today that just misses 9 inches. Its shell tells a story about 40 years old.

"Awareness of ignorance is as devout
as knowledge of knowledge. Or more so. "
Galway Kinnell via Sean Nash.

We don't know nothing.
If you ever forget this, take a walk along the ocean's edge.

The image is from the NOAA collection, taken in 1895, back when an inch was still an inch.

Last weekend in December

2008-12-29T02:42:00.000-08:00

Solstice light.
Midday shadows are as long as they're going to get, at least according to my Farmer's Almanac.

Leslie and I walked to the ferry jetty and back Saturday, our favorite walk, one that is different every time. A southwest breeze warmed us up to the 50's--some folks wandered around in shorts and t-shirts.

The tide was out, and I wandered around keyholing, looking for quahogs. (The quahog's two-siphon system leaves an imprint in the sand that looks like a keyhole.)

Didn't find any keyholes, so dug at a random clam hole and got my hands on a razor clam. After a few minutes of a gentle tug of war (razor clams are fast but fragile), I lifted it out of the sand, its huge foot now grasping at the air.

I put it back in the hole. The exhausted clam did nothing. I debated taking it home for a snack, but there's not a whole lot of recipes calling for a single razor clam.

Not sure it ever recovered--ask the gulls glaring nearby.

***

I found the smallest living crab I've ever noticed. I was about to pocket a cockle shell when I saw a speck move on it.

A tiny, translucent critter with black pixels for eyes was busy waving its claws at us, defending its turf. Took me a moment to figure out what it was doing, but its tough guy stance earned it another shot at life. I put the shell back down.

Not sure it recovered--ask the sand pipers pecking nearby.

***

What else did we see?

A loon kept me company as I scouted the end of a jetty for a future mussel dinner.

A half-dozen purple sand pipers ignored us on the ferry jetty. (No, we don't get any shellfish here--the canal keeps these waters condemned.)

For those of you who walk to the end of the jetty, be aware that the large stone on the outside edge of the foghorn tower is loose. It's tucked in between other rocks, so it's not likely to go far, but feeling the world shift under your feet can be unnerving.

Photo by Leslie--it was much better before I butchered it to fit here.

Last weekend in November

2008-12-06T04:34:00.001-08:00

Clamming in late November is a bit chilly, but the clams don't seem to mind. Leslie and I weren't expecting any company for dinner, so I had plenty in a half hour.

Because we think in terms of increments of dozens, and because we figured we needed a "dozen and a half," and because this may be the last clamming trip of the season, the last clam, the 19th, was returned to the bed.

I scooped out a pocket of mud that quickly filled in with water, then gently dropped in the clam. Leslie noted I made a clam bed.

The clam was about 10 years old, it could live another 30 if it manages to escape starfish and me. I hope I'm still clamming then.

If not, I'm hoping someone else is, using the same rake I'm using now, occasionally thinking of the hands that used to hold the rake, using the same methods taught years before.

No better reason to be a teacher.

Photo of Irish clamdiggers, 1882, is from the National Archives.

Make a right at Exit Zero

2008-11-16T06:50:00.000-08:00

Windy, cool Sunday morning.

Clams are safe on Sundays--gummint says so, and it's getting too chilly to argue. Good day to hunker down.

I still have yet to here from Jack at Exit Zero --it's a fun magazine, dirt cheap, and available almost everywhere south of Rio Grande (the Cape May version, not Texas). It's as edgy as a magazine indebted to its advertisers can be. (Well, the staff members do make funny faces in their bios.)

In between my usual misinformation about the critters here in Cape May, I'll toss out thoughts on various activities around the area. Mostly the good, occasionally the ugly, and pretty much always the cheap.

Exit Zero bumped up their subscription to $40/year for those not fortunate enough to live close enough to pick up their free copies.

I'm still free.

Leslie took the picture.

News from the jetty

2008-11-15T12:24:00.001-08:00

Mid-November is here. The stiff southern breeze threatens to push the Delaware Bay over its banks.

The high tide edge is littered with horseshoe crab shells and whelk egg cases. The cases look like Japanese lanterns designed by Alexander Calder, but even he could not have captured the symmetry.

Life at the edge of the sea is good.

While tossing clams at spotted hake today, a bird came to visit. Unlike the old gull who sneaks into my bait bucket, this guy had no ulterior motives. He looked like an overgrown junco with bright yellow legs and a stretched out beak. In between stabs at tiny critters on the rocks, he'd eyeball me, more curious than fearful.

I saw my first purple sandpiper.

(I have no idea why they're called "purple"--not a blotch of violet seen, nor why they are sandpipers--this one obviously preferred rocks to sand.)

Just off the end of the jetty, easily flying into a 20+ knot south wind, were large birds that looked like geese designed for supersonic flight. The jet black wing tips gave them away--northern gannets.

Two more lifers for me. Plenty of others, too, if I had a clue had to identify them.

***

The spotted hake are still hanging by the jetty. I caught a couple today, both on the same cast. The striped bass fishermen use bigger fish for bait, true, but the ling are good, they're plentiful, and they fill up the belly as well as a bass steak.

The tide was ideal for clamming, the weather was not. A tornado watch kept the kayaks in the garage.

I did rake for a bit off Harpoon Henry's--we stumbled across a cherry stone quahog there last week. Perhaps another clammer tossed it there to throw me off the trail. Watching the sunset while chilling thigh deep in the bay mid-November is a Saturday well spent, even without clams.

***

The sun barely rises 30 degrees above the horizon now. The few basil plants left hold few leaves, even fewer after I grazed today. I plucked a gnarly red tomato off the vine, probably the last vine ripened mater of the season. Our last decent eggplant split this week.

The kale will be the last hurrah.

Winter is coming.

The purple sandpiper taken by Andrew Easton; the sunset by Leslie.

M & B Love 4ever

2008-11-08T14:02:00.000-08:00

Near the end of the north side of the ferry terminal is the only graffiti I see on the whole jetty.

M & B
Love
4 Ever
7-25-07

Are you still together?

Clamming in November

2008-11-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

I got a hankering for clams, and paddled over to Richardson Sound to one of my favorite place in the universe.

Slate gray sky above, slate gray water below. The water's still warm enough to wade in, and the tide was creeping in over the clam bed.

The few splashes of color--a jumping bluefish, a few scoters scooting by--looked pixellated against the dull light.

I was mostly alone, at least by human standards. A couple of turtles watched me paddle, and a couple of loons called to others, warning of my approach.

I am (finally) getting competent with the clam rake. My hands can now "feel" the texture of the mud as I comb the bottom. I still dredge up a stone now and then, but the ones that fool me now at least are shaped like clams.

I scratched up enough clams for dinner, and a few more for my Auntie Beth, then paddled home.

It was a gorgeous morning.

***

Clamming lets you see things you forget you care about. Clams are in no hurry to escape; the only urgency is the rising tide.

You can watch the tides rise and fall. Literally. If you take the time.

I clam at the edge of water. The edge rises perceptibly as I work. The edge's personality changes over the couple of hours I rake.

It creeps up stealthily, smoothly, for a few minutes, then takes tiny staccato steps for a few more. It pauses. It retreats for an instant, then surges a bit more.

The edge does not define the tide. It's jerky journey up towards the debris left by the last high tide reminds me what we cannot know.

***

Tonight we are eating red hake for dinner. My son and I caught a few yesterday on the ferry jetty.

Slaughtering fish is not easy for us, nor should it be. We can try to minimize slaughter by calling fish "lesser" animals. We can pretend no pain is involved. I did not raise my son to pretend.

Before we took the fish home, we made sure we had enough for dinner. If not, we release them.

Life is messy. We take great care in school where I teach to put things in boxes and categories, to feed into the great mythology we have created, a mythology that now precludes children from knowing where their food originates. We keep biology clean.

Life is messy. We're part of a huge morass of energetic goo that replicates and plays and consumes and replicates and plays and consumes some more. Life involves fluids and combustion and not just a little bit of mystery.

Time to roll up the sidewalks

2008-11-03T15:21:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention this last week.

We live in a town where they roll up the sidewalks. Literally.

Not the concrete ones, of course. The gray plastic slats that lead to the Delaware Bay from Beach Avenue are put away each winter.

Winter's coming. The dolphins are headed south. The sidewalks are tucked away.

I love summer in Cape May. I might like winter even more.

Another day in paradise

2008-11-02T06:52:00.000-08:00

Last night we watched the sun settle into the Delaware Bay from the deck of Harpoon Henry's. Back in June, we had to look to the right--now the sun sets to the left (perhaps foretelling this week's election).

Mr. Henry looked quite dapper, and quite happy. Our summer ends. His summer begins.

***

The very local fishing report

The lingcod (~~red~~ spotted hake) are still running by the ferry jetty. A few fisherman came by and tossed chunks of herring at the muddy water, trying to coax a striper, using bait not much smaller than the lingcod I caught, but left without a hit.

I landed a half-dozen lingcod using clam.

We did see some nice stripers brought in for the 8th Annual South Jersey Big Bass Open while kayaking by the marina. The weights were announced via a booming speaker system, and the South Jersey marina was draped with banners of all sorts.

I guess if you pay $300 to enter a contest, you want some fanfare.

Seems a shame folks need more than one fish if one weighs over 45#, but a $10,000 top prize can take the sport out of sportfishing. We did see one boat toss a live (we hope) striper back in the water after weighing.

***

The very local mucking report

At the end of the very short Harbor Lane (just off Texas Avenue as you hit the island) is a great mucking spot. Park in Harbor Cove, then jump off the bulkhead. Be wary of glass, and don't climb down if you don't think you can get back up.

Yesterday's prize find?
The Cheeseburger in Paradise, a sailboat hailing from Beaufort, North Carolina, was stuck in the mud, waiting for the next high tide.

Late October beach walks

2008-10-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

Today was lovely--mid 6o's with glorious sunshine, a soft autumn breeze, another day in paradise.

Leslie and I took our usual walk along the Delaware Bay. "Our" beach is in front of Harpoon Henry's. Sometimes we walk, sometimes we bike to the beach. My bike is the funny stretched red recumbent.

We then walk to the ferry jetty and back. It's a decent walk, we run into decent people, and even the portable potties in Douglass Park are in decent shape. (For those less adventurous, the ferry terminal has porcelain you could eat off of--not that I would, of course, but the ferry folks do a spectacular job keeping the bathrooms spic and span. There's a nice bar there, too. One of the McGlade clan 0f omelet fame mans the outdoor bar.)

Today was marked by hundreds of spider crab carcasses. We are used to the horseshoe crab molts--those shells have been abandoned by critters now bigger, now headed for deeper water. The spider crabs, however, seemed to have met a less fortunate end.

The seagulls waddled with bellies full of crab.

***

Some notes:

1) The dolphins are still here. We missed them, but as we were getting back on our bikes, a pair of motorcycle couples wandered over from Harpoon Henry's, and within 15 seconds spotted a pod of dolphins, a few no farther than 20 yards from the water's edge.

One of this same party had just managed to step on a dead squirrel squished on Beach Avenue in front of Henry's.

2) The monarchs are gone. We missed the peak this year. Last year mid-October we say hundreds in a single day. We saw quite a few two weeks ago, but we either missed the peak, or their numbers are down.

We did see a couple of cabbage moths, and a few admirals (I think--they refused to hold still)--but no monarchs.

3) We found a live quahog on our beach. I've been clamming in Richardson Sound. I may take a shot closer to home. Harpoon Henry's is still open weekends. Clamming requires sustenance.

4) Where are the skimmers?

5) Some large live oysters washed up in yesterday's blow. Today is Sunday, so I did not have a bottle of Tabasco in my pocket. Still, I know my oyster bed is out there somewhere--possibly off Roslyn Avenue.

6) I found a plastic dinosaur today. I left it on the bench in front of Harpoon Henry's. Let me know if you see it in town.

7) We saw a one-legged sand piper today. It didn't hop as fast as its two-legged brethren, but it still hopped faster than a scalded dog. It didn't ask for pity.

8) People keep confusing freighters for Delaware. "I see land!" No, you see freighters. That's why it looks like a boat with smoke coming out of its stack.

9) No jellyfish today. Saw two large cabbageheads last week.

10) Red hake are delicious. Really delicious. Fillet them, coat them in a mixture of corn meal, flour, salt, pepper, and a touch of Tabasco, and throw them in hot oil. (Olive oil if you're feeling rich.) Yum!

Red hake (er...spotted hake)

2008-10-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

Hake you may have when the cod failes in summer, if you will fish in the night.
John Smith (yes, that John Smith)

I should be clamming at the moment. I trusted the National Weather Service, though, and decided that lugging a bucket of clams in an open hatch on a kayak in a 20 knot breeze might not be wise.

I did, however, get a little bit of protein for dinner tonight. I tossed a few bits of clam out into the Delaware Bay, and exchanged them for a couple of ~~red~~ spotted hake (ling).

They are beautiful creatures, a muddy red, with dashing ventral fins now modified as whiskers tasting the bottom of the sea. The eyes are golden and sharp. Even in death, they look wise.

The books (always "the books") will tell you they forage at night. Three of us on the ferry jetty today can confirm that they feed during daylight as well.

***

We can also confirm that gulls are clever. A large gull ambled between us--if a gull is ambling by whistling Dixie, watch your bait.

Mr. Gull got a chunk of clam, but left the ling alone.

Later today I'll toss the guts and heads back into the bay. Mr. Gull can add ling to the stolen clams resting in his belly.

***

Leslie and I went back to toss the viscera, and to (perhaps) catch one more.

The water is an opaque green today--the light is a thousand shades of gray and green as a storm threatens in the southwest.

I get one more, and take him home, still very much alive.

I behead it in the sink, and the head still gasps, looking as surprised as I am that the body still flails.

Reflexes. Say it like a prayer. Reflexes.
I try to grab the tail, it flicks once more.
Reflexes.

A potato on the counter falls against my leg--I jump thinking the hake, now a ghost, has attacked me.

***

I forget things. Important things. Like how sweet fish flesh is when you eat it within two hours of its life.

Red hake, turns out, tastes real good.
Red hake with your lover's home made butternut squash soup is even better.

Thank you, Creator.

Note to self: running around a wet jetty in bare feet is fine; walking around the same wet jetty in sandals is treacherous.
I have a nice muddy red bruise on my rump to match the catch of the day.

Wharf roaches

2008-10-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

July on the jetty

The young man had the requisite tattoos and low hanging day-glo surfer trunks. His girlfriend looked bemused as he lifted a chunk of granite over his head.

"Got it!"

I figured he'd pegged a rat, he was so dang proud of himself.
Guess it doesn't take much to impress his girlfriend.

He had slaughtered a sea slater, an aquatic roly-poly. Sea slaters, alas, are also known as wharf roaches, a fatal misnomer for this particular critter now splattered on the jetty.

I'll give the guy's girlfriend this much credit--she wasn't half as impressed as he was.

***

When I think crustacean I think food: crabs and shrimp and lobster and crawfish! All crustaceans, all delicious.

While most of us think crustaceans live in the sea (and they are indeed the most numerous animals there), a few species have managed to poke their way out onto land. The roly-poly (pill bug, potato bug, woodlouse--all the same cute critter) is a crustacean in the isopod order. It needs moisture to breathe through their gills, which is why they tend to hang out in damp places.

The "wharf roach" is also an isopod, a cousin of the roly-poly. They can be found scampering around the jetties in Cape May, and except for the occasional H. sapiens impressing his girlfriend, their biggest concern is crabs munching on them.

***

The books will tell you that sea slaters are nocturnal. I will tell you that they are quite busy during the day as well, but are quick to scurry into crevices if they see you approaching.

If you sit still on the jetty for a few minutes, they will come out. A few may even wander over to your bare foot. I've never been bitten by one, can't imagine that they could bit if they wanted to.

They can be tough to see--they can change their coloration to match their background, and the experts will tell you they get paler at night. I have no idea. At night I am too busy trying not to fall off the jetty to concern myself with sea slaters.

***

One reason science has become so alien to most of us is that science is more about advancing careers than it is about advancing knowledge. If a species has no commercial value, little is known about it.

If you want to advance your science career, find an organism few folks write home about, kill it, and peek into its DNA.

I bet Lars Podsadlowski is a decent bloke. He writes papers about the DNA found in mitochondria of various critters. Here's an example of one of his articles:

The complete mitochondrial genome of the common sea slater, Ligia oceanica(Crustacea, Isopoda) bears a novel gene order and unusual control region features (2006)

He's also written about the mitochondrial DNA of mantis shrimp, sea spiders, and bristletails. My guess is he has access to a fancy genome sequencer somewhere in Berlin, and he's made a career out of it.

I am also guessing he's not spent a whole lot of time watching sea slaters wander around the tidal zone.

Or maybe he has. And maybe he's tried to publish articles about the meanderings of sea slaters. If he googles himself, maybe he'll see this and let me know. But I bet I've spent more time watching live sea slaters than he has.

Seems to me we ought to spend more time studying live sea slaters before we chop them up to study their DNA.

***

I am not likely to ever get a scientific paper published, and even less likely to get one published on the activities of a live sea slater. But here's something they can do that's pretty neat.

If you have the time (and too few of us do these days), go find a puddle on a jetty in Cape May. Set yourself down, dusk is a good time--the sun settles nicely over the Delaware Bay. You might even bring your favorite beverage.

After a few minutes, the slaters will accept you as part of the scenery, and go about their business.

Occasionally one will hit the edge of the puddle, and usually it will decide to walk around it.

Wait until a few are near the puddle's edge. Then scare them. (Doesn't take much, you don't even have to say "boo!" Just wave your arms over them. Or just put on your best crab face.)

Most will run away over the dry jetty. A few will run through the puddle, as though it's not there. I think they're actually running underwater, but I am still not sure. Maybe they're running on the surface.

Give me a few more sunsets, a few more ales, and I'll know enough to write my scientific paper.

***

If you've read this far, you have more than enough time to go find your own sea slaters. But one more sea slater story.

Sea slaters are sociable. (OK, to be more scientific, sea slaters exhibit behavior that shows some sort of communication between them.)

When one sea slater is near another, it will make an effort to touch it. They briefly meet, wiggle antennae, then part. I don't speak slaterese, so I've no idea what just happened.

But I know it happened.

***

OK, some folks actually do spend time with live sea slaters. Here's a video of work by Mersiha Niksic, who studies sea slaters while their still breathing. This is a fun video--she's busy chasing "bugs" while seals bark in the background. At least I think they're seals.

Anyone who can ignore seals for isopods is truly dedicated to her work.

Five Chinese brothers visit Cape May

2008-10-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

In The Five Chinese Brothers, one gets in trouble because of an act of kindness gone awry.

The first Chinese brother could swallow the sea. The second Chinese brother had an iron neck. The third Chinese brother could stretch and stretch and stretch his legs. The fourth Chinese brother could not be burned. The fifth Chinese brother could hold his breath indefinitely.

Claire Huchet Bishop

A boy asked the first brother to swallow the sea, in order to catch rare and valuable fish. The Chinese brother agreed, so long as the boy would obey him when he called him back.

Of course, just like so many little boys, the lure of treasures trumps thoughtfulness. The first Chinese brother grew tired.

It is very hard to hold the sea.

The boy drowned.

The story has a happy ending (except, of course, for the drowned boy, who would have died eventually anyway, as we all must, and his distraught family).

I loved the story as a child, and still do. It was written by an Claire Huchet Bishop, an American, in 1938. The pictures are considered by some to be racist--the mustard texture of the brothers' faces startles us now.

What does this have to do with Cape May?

Go to the ferry jetty at Douglass Park. Wait for a ferry to pull out. (Just listen for a long blast of a horn , followed by three quick toots.)

As the ferry meanders out of the canal, look on the opposite side of the jetty. In a moment or two, you will see the bay recede.

As the bay recedes, the bay's bottom is suddenly exposed.Shrimp bounce about, the crabs scamper every which way, the clams start to piss, and an occasional fish flops about on the exposed sand.

A few seconds later, the water rushes back in.

Words do not do justice to the spectacle.

Not sure this will ever make Exit Zero, the Cape May Herald, or the Gazette, but it catches my eyes every time.

You can check the ferry schedule for the next show. And you can't beat the price.

Mucking

2008-10-19T15:16:00.000-07:00

My 9 year old nephew, my 22 year old son and I figured to get some croakers. We grabbed some clams from Budd's Tackle and headed over to the ferry jetty.

While folks tucked a few miles inland enjoyed another lovely fall day, the bay front was a bit wild. A stiff northwest breeze pushed the Delaware up over jetty.

Keith has a bit more sense than I do. I asked if he wanted to go out to the end.

"No thank you. I don't want to die."

I went out there anyway, I managed to hook a kingfish on the second cast, but Keith still didn't want to die, so we decided to go mucking instead.

***

Mucking is a simple game. Put on your mucking clothes. Wait for low tide. Look for a mudflat. Wander.

We headed up to Villas--the best mucking days fall on a spring tide with a western breeze on a dog day in August, but we didn't want to wait for 10 months, so we mucked anyway.

Vast expanses of mud flats are exposed at low tide. Much of the mud is covered with just enough sand to get you in trouble. Breaking through the sand feels like breaking through ice. Black mud beneath the sand awaits unwary 9 year olds, waiting to eat their shoes.

The scientist will tell you that the mud is a nutrient rich environment; Keith will tell you, simply, "it stinks."

Bacteria break down proteins, releasing hydrogen sulfide, giving the mud the stench of rotten eggs. The hydrogen sulfide reacts with iron, giving the mud its rich color. After years of spending my best hours on flats, I've come to like rotten eggs.

Our finds?

A 2 foot long just dead dogfish
A smaller but significantly more dead clear nose skate
A gazillion horseshoe crab shells
One HUGE horseshoe crab tail (with the added bonus of rotten flesh still attached)
Two whelk egg case chains
Tons of snails
A hermit crab in a cracked shell
One softshell clam
Dolphins just beyond the breakers (in very shallow water)
A quahog shell
A pair of flip flops a hundred feet apart (and a li'l further than that now)
Black back gulls (and a whole lot of other plain ol' back gulls)
Black, thick, stinky sweet mud
A few razor clam shells
A HUGE (but dead) blue claw crab
A few lady crabs
Oyster shells
Bird poop
Two cabbage head jellies, one (sort of) alive

***

We never did make it to the Pumpkin Festival, and we missed the Lima Bean festival last week. Still, I think Keith would trade a wagon full of pumpkins for an afternoon on the Delaware flats.
I know I would.

The print is of a northern kingfish, courtesy of the US Dept of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service

Ghost crabs

2008-10-14T14:39:00.001-07:00

Ghost crabs know they're cool.

While walking along the beaches in Cape May, keep your eyes focused about 10 yards ahead. You may see a quick movement, a flurry of photons fluttering against your retina.

You're not sure you saw anything at all.

You stumble upon a hole in the sand a few steps later.

Ah, the ghost crab.

***

The Victorian Cape May likes to celebrate ghost stories. You can hear the jingle of ghosts on MAC tours. Others heard the jingle of money, and the ghost tours can now be found in West Cape May as well.

If you want the spectral kind of ghosts, go spend a few bucks and enjoy the show.

If you want to see the true ghosts of Cape May, save your change and meander over to the beach.

***

Some crabs earn the name "crabby"--a blue crab will take a nip out of your finger just for the sheer joy of it.

Ghost crabs have a less aggressive approach to life. They're more skittish than crabby, and I doubt there's any record of any human ever having been nipped by one. Like Greta Garbo, they "vant to be left alone."

They feast on sand crabs and other tiny critters, and despite their name, can be seen both day and night if you're looking for them.

If you want a picture of one, though, you're need to be quick. These li'l guys scoot up to 10 miles per hour, and quickly dive into their burrows when they see you coming. Sometime you can see their eyeballs peering over the edge of their hole while they ponder their next move. (Not sure why they ponder--inevitably, they dart into their hole.)

***

My nephew Keith is coming by next weekend. Maybe we'll stalk the wild ghost crab.

All you need is a flashlight.

Wander over to the bay as the sun sets. You might want to grab a bite at Harpoon Henry's beforehand to steel yourself for the expedition--they have Guinness there, too.

Walk along the water's edge with your flashlight, and shine your light at anything that moves. Chances are you'll spot a ghost crab before you get 20 yards.

Turns out ghost crabs freeze when the light hits them. Maybe it's stage fright, maybe they think you're an alien from Xenon, maybe it's a religious moment for them, but whatever the reason, this is a great opportunity to grab a photograph. I've never tried to pick one up, seems unsporting when they're paralyzed by the light, but if you do, let me know if you get nipped.

***

The "official" guidebooks will tell you ghost crabs are nocturnal, but that's only half the story. They are diurnal as well, just hard to see, especially if you're not looking for them.

It's a wonderful world out here--get off your duff and get outside!

(Both crab photos were lifted from gummint sites--the first one from the National Park Service, the second one from NOAA. Given the recent government giveaways while we nationalize our banks, seems only fair we can glom a few photons for our enjoyment.)

Welcome to the Cape May Naturalist

2008-10-12T18:54:00.000-07:00

I want to be in Exit Zero.

I also want to remember October weekends like this one--Saturday collecting quahogs in our sekrit clam bed, today watching dolphins round up bluefish like Wyatt Earp rustled horses.

I have spent hours watching sea slaters (OK, wharf roaches) on the ferry jetty, paddling with dolphins off Higbees Beach, and clamming in a variety of places around the Cape.

Now for the nitpicky:

1) Our home is in North Cape May, the Township of Lower, not in the Victorian village of Cape May City. Technically, we're not Cape May.

Technically, neither is the Lobster House, Sunset Beach, Schellengers landing (home of the Cape May Whale Watcher), the Lewes ferry, the Cape May lighthouse, and the Cape May Bird Observatory. All are part of our li'l town, the Township of Lower.

2) I'm not a naturalist (nor a naturist). I teach high school science. At Exit 148.

3) While my family has some roots in Cape May (my aunt and uncle owned the Sea Breeze Motel on Pittsburgh Avenue for years), and my uncle once guarded Cape May's fine beaches, I am aware that unless you are descended from a local whaler, you are forever an outsider.

4) We are not (yet) fulltimers here. We have a home. We need jobs. We can feed ourselves on clams and beach plums, but the town insists we pay our taxes in cash, not clams.

I am writing this (mostly) for myself. I'll be entering my 6th decade soon (already there if embryos count), and I want to remember when the monarchs cloud the skies, the horseshoe crabs flood the beaches, and the Philadelphians invade the bars.

I want to remember the sundog rainbows I saw yesterday over Richardson Sound. I want to anticipate when the skimmers crowd the beaches, and when the ghost crabs disappear for the winter.