Skates, jelly fish, and us

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

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

Fireworks

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!

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?

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

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

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

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

A few minutes later, the bay reclaimed the rose.

We found our pot of gold....

A storm preceded the solstice by a few hours.

New moon, west wind

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

Striper on!

Poverty Beach
Last day in May, 2009

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

Pssst...

Harpoon Henry's is opening April 17th.

Image from Cape May Restaurant Guide.

Bottling day

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

Oysters, comets, and sea urchins

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

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

(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)

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

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.