Pisaster Disaster

This starfish wasting syndrome is not funny folks. In case you haven’t heard the story, an epidemic of disease among Pacific starfish, specifically pisaster ochraceous, or Ocher Starfish, the big orange “stars” of beaches and tidepools, is causing them to waste away, fall apart and die in alarming numbers.

Humans have adored these strangely beautiful creatures for eons, and their popularity hasn’t waned one bit, but within the tidal ecosystem, the ocher starfish is a feared predator, at least to the degree that a bivalve mollusk can experience fear.

Frightening or not, the ocher starfish plays the same role in the intertidal zone as lions do on the Serengeti, or that wolves do in Yellowstone National Park. The ocher starfish is the apex predator of Pacific tide-pools. In fact, scientists have learned a lot of what they know about apex predators, like lions and wolves, from studying ocher starfish.

Ecology, especially ecosystem ecology, is a very new field of scientific inquiry. It seems hard to believe today, but before World War II, nobody really gave a rats ass about how ecosystems worked. The story of civilization has been one of “plunder first, ask questions later,” and so it goes that the science of studying ecosystems didn’t get under way until well after most of the world’s ecosystems had been severely impacted by industrial exploitation. As a result, we may never know how a healthy ecosystem operates. In a sense, studying ecosystem ecology today, must be a lot like trying to learn about antebellum life and culture by observing a confederate field hospital towards the end of the Civil War.

Still the nascent field of ecosystem ecology can teach us a few things about what happens to an ecosystem when you remove a keystone species. In fact, one of the landmark studies in the field of ecosystem ecology looked at the effects of removing just this particular species, pisaster ochraceous from a tide-pool ecosystem.

The scientist in this study, Robert T. Paine, marked off two equal sized patches of tide-pool habitat. A couple of times a month, Robert would go to one of those marked off areas, and within it he would meticulously remove every single ocher starfish from that area, and hurl them, as far as he could, into the surf. In the other marked-off area, he did nothing but observe.

Every two weeks or so, for a year, Robert went down to his little marked-off areas and began chucking starfish. Doesn’t this make “ecosystem ecologist” sound like a pretty sweet job? Spend your days splashing around on the beach skipping starfish across the water. How do I sign up? I guess his hands got pretty torn-up from the abrasive skin of starfish, but it still sounds like a pretty good job to me.

Over the course of the year, Paine observed the results of his strange new obsession. In the area where Paine had removed all of the ocher starfish, the ecosystem collapsed. Initially Paine observed dozens of different species living together in that area. Within a year, half of those species had disappeared completely, and those that remained, did so only tenuously. Before long, all but one species completely vanished from the experimental area.

The only species left inhabiting the area, had completely taken over. Every square inch of the marked off area was covered with large mussels, mytilus californianus, the ocher starfish’s favorite prey. In absence of starfish, nothing could stop the mussels from squeezing everyone else out of the picture, leaving a desolate monoculture where there was once a thriving, diverse ecosystem.

Paine published the results of his experiment in 1966 in the scientific journal American Naturalist, and it has become a foundational work in this emerging new field. Paine’s experiment revealed that certain species, specifically predators, have a greater effect on their ecosystem than their numbers suggest.

Paine’s work with starfish eventually led to federal protection of keystone predators like the spotted owl, and to the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park. Paine had demonstrated that predators are critical to maintaining healthy ecosystems, and that without them, complex and diverse ecosystems quickly collapse into desolate wastelands overrun with pests.

Like I said, ecosystem ecology is a new field, and its progress has been greatly compromised by the impacts of industrial exploitation. As a science, ecosystem ecology remains in its infancy, especially regarding marine ecosystems, but when it comes to the question “What happens to intertidal ecosystems when ocher starfish disappear?” thanks to Robert T Paine, science can give us a pretty good answer. Unfortunately the answer itself is neither pretty nor good.

Water Saving Tips to Help Survive the Drought

 

Water Saving Tips to Help Survive the Drought

Despite recent rains, people around here are freaking out about water. The condition is serious. The few inches of rain we got last week don’t come close to making up for all of the dry months we’ve endured so far.

Endangered salmon, all but wiped out by rapacious logging practices of the past, now face unseasonably low flows in all of our local rivers, and tributaries aggressively dewatered by pot farmers, squeezed between deflated marijuana prices and inflated lifestyle expectations.

You probably think, “So what? Go ahead and liquidate (pun intended) the last wild salmon habitat in the lower 48. See if I care.” You’re a red-blooded American. You know that capitalism is all about transforming the natural beauty and bounty of nature into money, and everyone wants more money, right?

We don’t need slimy fish getting jiggy in creeks in the middle of nowhere. We need more shitty customer service jobs where desperately poor people can learn to kiss ass. We don’t give a fuck about lazy, good for nuthin’, low-life salmon who swim around eatin’ free krill all day, and we don’t want to see them loitering on private property, looking for a fishy piece of tail.

So face facts. We can either write the salmon off, as part of the cost of doing business, or we can admit that capitalism was a stupid idea, that never worked, and abandon it. If you want to live under a system that treats human beings as worthless garbage, then don’t expect overworked, impoverished or homeless people to give fuck about salmon habitat, you bourgeois elitist egghead. If you want habitat, dump capitalism, if not, then stop whining about the disappearing wildlife and fix me a cappuccino, and make it snappy!

Really, most people I know are about one eviction, lay-off or diagnosis away from killing themselves. Some of them will probably take out as many other people as they possibly can, first. Don’t bother them with your concerns about a fucking fish they’ve never seen, and can’t afford to eat, if you know what’s good for you.

On the other hand, we all need marijuana. None of us could endure another day of capitalism without it. That’s why every one of us needs to step up to the plate, and do our part to conserve water. Unless we all do our part to save water, Humboldt County’s pot farmers won’t have enough water to produce that bumper crop of bloated, over-fertilized, overpriced buds that we’ve become accustomed to.

So, for what it’s worth, here’s a list of simple measures that you can take to conserve water, in hopes that we can save Humboldt County’s marijuana crop from the insatiable libido of freeloading fish.

This fist tip seems like a no-brainer to me, but it always amazes me how many people still don’t get it. Here in SoHum, this concept remains quite controversial and hotly debated. It seems simple to me: When confronted with a container of fresh, clean potable water, even if it is only half-full, DON’T SHIT IN IT! Don’t pee in it either. Does that sound controversial to you?

I know we have laws that require every home, and most businesses to provide a refillable bowl of clean water specifically for this purpose, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it. We have lots of stupid laws that we’ve all learned to ignore; just add those to the list. We can no longer afford to participate in this misguided, wasteful, antiquated tradition. It’s time to get your shit up to date. Compost it, incinerate it, bury it, or eat it, for all I care, just don’t contaminate our water with it.

Pee on a tree, or pee into a jar and leave it along side the highway. If you find yourself forced to use a public restroom, relieve yourself anywhere but into the water. Shit in the waste basket. Pee in the sink, or on the floor, or on the toilet paper rolls, just not into the water. Show some decency for God’s sake.

Here’s another no-brainer that has the potential to save millions of gallons of water: STOP WASHING YOUR TRUCK!. Look, it’s a fucking truck. It’s not a status symbol. It’s a work vehicle. I know half of you don’t know what work is, but work trucks get dirty, and working people have better things to do than spend their day off detailing them. A little mud and dust won’t hurt your precious truck, and if you don’t like the color of Humboldt County dirt, maybe you should move.

Guys around here buy trucks, not so much for work, but to compensate for, how shall I put this, shrunken masculinity. They buy the biggest trucks they can possibly find, which they then wash, bumper to bumper, at least once a week. To compensate for a shortage of an inch or two, Humboldt County men waste thousands of acre-feet of water every year by excessively washing their excessive trucks. So, I’ve come up with a media campaign to address this, water wasting, target demographic. I encourage everyone to purchase, and proudly display on the bumper of your own dusty vehicle, this bumper sticker:

Well that takes care of the low-hanging (or I suppose, the not-so-low hanging) fruit, when it comes to water conservation. The rest of these tips will take some getting used to, but believe me, they are all worth the effort.

ENJOY YOUR COFFEE DRY. Did you know that it takes 80 gallons of water to make one cup of coffee. I heard that on KMUD recently. That must make some pretty weak coffee. If that is KMUD’s recipe, I’m never buying their iced coffee again. You can save all of that water if, instead of grinding the beans, brewing the coffee, pouring it into a cup, and adding cream and sugar, just eat the coffee beans dry.

A few dry espresso beans will get you moving in the morning as well as any fancy coffee drink, and you’ll save a lot of time, effort and expense. Espresso beans are deliciously crunchy, and only a little will stick between your teeth.

AVOID WATERPIPES. Smoke joints instead of bongloads. Bongs and other waterpipes waste water by making it really funky and gross. By substituting joints for bongloads, you might save as much as a gallon of water per week, depending on how much you smoke and how often you clean your bong.

SNORT YOUR MEDS If you take prescription drugs of any kind, you can conserve water by grinding your pills into a fine powder and snorting them, rather than washing them down with an unnecessary and wasteful glass of water. By snorting your meds you’ll find that the medicine gets into your system faster, and you may even experience a pleasant “rush”, which means you’ll start feeling better, sooner than if you had simply followed your doctor’s instructions. This will give those aging boomers a good excuse to dust off their old grooved mirror and sterling silver razor blade from back in the “70s.

Finally, even hard drug users can help conserve water by:

REJECT INJECTION Injecting drugs intravenously may be the most efficient drug delivery system, but each syringe full of meth or heroin wastes at least one full tablespoon of water. Remember, we have plenty of hard drugs in Humboldt County, but water is scarce, so buy more drugs and use less water. Here’s a little rhyme to help you remember: Buy enough to smoke or snort so our water supply won’t run short.

There we have a few simple measures we can all take to prevent a bunch of horny fish from ruining Humboldt County’s marijuana crop. And if you really want to save the fish, work to legalize marijuana, because until we get the marijuana industry out of the hands of drug-dealing dope yuppies, hiding out in the hills, and put it into the hands of competent farmers, working land where all of the endangered species have already been annihilated, you can count the last wild salmon populations in the lower 48 as the latest casualties in the war on drugs.

SoHum Vactation Guide

SoHum Vacation Guide

 

I know you are planning your Summer vacation right now. I live in a very tourist dependent community, and we have a lot to offer the smart vacationer here in SoHum. Whether you like to hunt, fish, hike, backpack, camp, cycle, or just sit in a hotel room between a loaded gun and a pile of cash, I want you to enjoy your stay here in SoHum and hope that you return home with many fond memories, and a trunk full of marijuana.

 

We love tourists here in SoHum. We love the way you take up every last parking space in Garberville. We love waiting behind your enormous RVs at the gas pumps, and we especially enjoy fishing your bloated corpses out of the ocean, because it reminds us to stay out of the water, and keeps our rescue teams well trained in case of a real emergency.

 

Our local economy also depends on tourist dollars. Besides the fact that none of us stay at the hotels much, none of us eat at Sicilitos Pizza or Cadillac Wok either. Neither of those businesses would survive long without a steady supply of people who don’t already know better.

So, I want to encourage everyone to come to SoHum on vacation this Summer. Enjoy the scenic splendor. Relish in its rugged natural beauty, and experience first-hand, one of the last truly wild places in the lower 48 United States, but before you embark on your SoHum safari, you should know a few things about the native wildlife, and prepare yourself accordingly.

A Guide to Enjoying the Back-Country in SoHum

Skunks we have two kinds of skunks here in SoHum, the stripped skunk, common across most of the US, and a smaller, cuter spotted variety. These smaller cuter spotted skunks have a mellowing effect on the stripped skunks.  They now compete with each other for human attention. Yes both stripped and spotted skunks are extremely affectionate on the North Coast and most lack any fear of humans. If you see a skunk with its tail raised, that signals affiliative behavior and means that it wants to be petted.

Cute and friendly Western Spotted Skunk

Mountain Lions While mountain lions remain common in Humboldt County, most people don’t see them until its too late. Still rarer, are sightings of their oh so cuddly and playful cubs. If you happen upon mountain lion cubs in the back country, pet them, scratch their chins, get a few photos and stick close to them until their mother returns.

Cuddly Mountain Lion Cubs

Black Bear We have quite a few black bears in SoHum. Bears around here have had some bad experiences and shy away from tourists, as a result, but tourists often leave here unnecessarily disappointed that they didn’t see even one bear during their entire stay. While camping in the back-country, if you want to see a bear, just slather your entire body with bacon grease before you go to sleep. If you do that at nightfall, I guarantee that you will see a bear before sunup.

Black Bears Love Bacon Grease!

Yellow Jackets Yellow jackets produce the most delicious honey. You won’t find yellow jacket honey in stores because it naturally contains a chemical euphoriant almost identical to cocaine, so trade in yellow jacket honey is banned by federal law. People around here know that yellow jackets are extremely docile, and if you sing to them, you can just stick your hand right into the nest and grab a handful of delicious, euphoria producing honey.

Yellow Jackets Produce Delicious, Psychoactive Honey

Gray Squirrel- DANGER!!! Gray Squirrels should be avoided AT ALL COSTS!!!–  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come upon the partially decomposed body of a tourist in the back-country where victim’s mouth and eye sockets were stuffed with acorns. Only gray squirrels can do that to a man. Red squirrels just watch, and laugh.

Deadly Grey Squirrel AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!!!

Elk If you’ve never ridden an elk, you owe it to yourself to try. An elk-back ride from Bear Harbor to Jones Beach is the perfect way to see the Sinkyone Wilderness Area.

Everyone should try riding an elk at least once

Snakes most of the snakes on the North Coast are both venomous, and protected under the endangered species act, so don’t mess with them. However the western diamondback rattlesnake is exceptionally docile, and likes to be handled. Distinguished by the presence of a rattle on the end of its tail, which the rattlesnake uses to announce its presence, and attract friends. Many tourists find these snakes so cuddly and affectionate that they take them home where they become cherished household pets. Mothers find that their gentle rattling sound soothes restless babies, school children like to take them to school for show and tell, and teenagers like to show them off at parties. Rattlesnakes rarely grow longer than two to three feet in length, so they create far fewer problems in the long run than larger species commonly kept as pets, like boa constrictors and pythons.

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake in typical "friendship" pose

Blue Bellied Lizard, or Fence-Post Lizard –DANGER!!!!- The bright blue hue of of this lizard’s underside tells all of nature to “Back Off!” This diminutive reptile possesses the most deadly bite in the entire Western Hemisphere. Perhaps more frightening, the blue bellied lizard can spit venom accurately, up to 30 yards. One single drop of blue belly venom in a human eye, can cause permanent blindness. If you see a blue bellied lizard in the back-country, immediately drop to the ground, close your eyes, and cover your eyes with your hands. With your hands covering your eyes at all times, crawl, on your elbows and knees, to a safe distance (about 100′).

DANGER!!! Blue Bellied Lizards spit blinding venom and their bite CAN KILL!!!

Ticks Some ticks contain antibodies that impart to their host, and immunity to blue bellied lizard venom. Most of us locals have had so many tick bites that blue bellied lizards no longer concern us much. We all know that the best thing to do when a tick bites you is nothing. Just let it be, don’t disturb the tick, no matter how much it itches, until it bloats up and falls off on its own. That way, you can get the maximum immune boosting benefits from each tick.

Beneficial North Coast ticks boost immunity

Marijuana Forest rangers plant marijuana in remote parts of our National Forests to reward adventurous hikers. If you find marijuana plants while hiking on National Forest land, you’ve found a great place to camp. There’ll be water nearby, usually coming out of a pipe (you may have to cut the pipe to get it, that’s OK). Make yourself comfortable, and enjoy the free herb.

Forest Rangers plants marijuana in our National Forests to reward adventurous hikers

Mexican Hunters Many sportsmen from Mexico spend the entire summer in our National Forests. Most of them know the forest so well, that they know where to find all of the good marijuana patches. While they speak little, if any English, carry no hunting license, and usually hunt with automatic weapons, I’ve always found them friendly. As long as you understand that a barrage of gunfire aimed in your direction is the traditional way of saying “Welcome” in Mexico, you should have no problems with them

Mexican sportsmen enjoy hunting in our National Forests

If you just keep these simple suggestions in mind while you explore this this natural paradise, you should have a great time on your SoHum vacation.

Word Power, Bathypalagic

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One Word at a Time

Bathypalagic

 

Bathypalagic (bath ih peh laj ick) adj. Of or relating to living in the deep ocean.

 

Increasingly, as we wipe out the last of familiar species like blue-fin tuna, cod and salmon, the seafood industry has increasingly developed new tackle designed for fishing the deep canyons and trenches at the bottom of the ocean. From these previously unexploited habitats the seafood industry has brought some unfamiliar species to our dinner-tables in recent years,

like orange roughy,

monkfish

and Chilean sea bass, in apparent abundance.

 

These bathypalagic fish live in very deep, cold, oxygen deprived waters where sunlight never penetrates. As a result, the fish that inhabit these nether-worlds, move slowly, grow slowly, and reproduce exceptionally slowly. Even if the seafood industry stopped exploiting these deep water habitats today, it will take thousands of years, for populations of fish like orange roughy to recover, if they ever recover at all.

 

So, enjoy these rapidly disappearing delicacies while you while you have the chance, and look for more of these hideously toothy, but quickly disappearing, monstrosities from Poseidon’s hellish depths to show up on your plate in the future.