What a glorious day! It's one
of those days that the weatherman on channel 7, Todd
Gross (the guy who coined the term "perfect
storm" by the way), ranks
as a top 10 day. It's the kind of day I get that "this is
the last nice day there's ever going to be so I'd better
get outside immediately" feeling. On the beach I actually
overhear a young mother telling another young mother it's
the only nice day. Their kids are exclaiming
things like "I got seashell!" or "Umbrella!"
There are several guys fishing for
stripers in the surf. One guy has caught 10 already but
all too short. He reels one in and measures it-- a half
inch too short so back in the water it goes. He tells me
he's on his last piece of bait so he'd better catch
supper this time. We chat for a bit about the piping
plovers. He tells me he saw two chicks with an adult and
was amazed at the "tiny little fluff balls". It is
amazing. The first time I saw a plover chick I thought it
was some kind of windblown plant fragment. I tell him I
haven't seen any chicks yet this year but Jean did tell
me that the first two hatched this past
weekend.
A steady stream of visitors with
only one question, "When will the refuge beach be open?",
arrives, asks, turns north to walk on the town beach.
There's one of those yellow front end loaders on the town
beach again today (see May
28) looking far less
surreal without its lights on and without the fog. It
appears to be building a dune. You build dunes with front
end loaders?!? I thought you built them with beach grass!
It would take beach grass and rosa rugosa and beach peas
etc. on steroids to grow enough cover to hold the huge
sand pile that front end loader is pushing around once
the fall storms come around. I read somewhere that it
takes two years after you plant it for beach grass to
grow an erosion-proof cover on a dune. Don't quote me on
that. I should dig out my copious notes on beach grass
(compiled for the Salisbury Beach Betterment Association)
but not right now. Anyway, the whole dune stabilization
beach erosion whatchamacallit cuts both ways for piping
plover habitat. The
USFWS has a good summary of the habitat destruction thing
on its web site. All I know
is jetties and groins are evil, gaps in the foredune are
necessary, and piping plovers like the flat part between
the wrack line and the dunes.
Between visitors I watch the guys
and the terns fishing. It's not only people who are
interested in today's fish extravaganza. As the bait fish
flee the stripers they make good pickings for the common
and least terns plunge diving over the same area. At one
point way out by the marker buoy a few northern gannets
join the common terns. The gannets look like Godzilla
next to the terns. They're positively gargantuan. It's a
fish eat fish, birds eat fish, people eat fish world out
there. I start pondering the lives of bait fish. Are they
totallly suffused with cortisol when the
stripers/terns/gannets eat them? Do bait fish even have
cortisol? Do normal people sit on the beach wondering if
bait fish have cortisol?
For sure the thing the guy who took
the spot right in front of me when the 10 stripers no
dinner guy left without dinner after his last piece of
bait got eaten is not suffused with cortisol, nor is it
alive. He's baited his hook with this weird ghostly white
rubbery fish that looks for all the world like a big
gummy fish. If I were a striper I would not be fooled by
that fish. It's so weirdly unnatural it's creepy.
Apparently the stripers are not fooled because he doesn't
even get a nibble. Finally he opens the cooler he's been
sitting on and pulls out actual bait fish he's had on ice
the whole time. I never do see the guy catch anything
though.
By the end of the shift I've gotten
mystical about the lives of bait fish and sunburned my
right knee. Never wear black jeans on the beach. And it's
still the last nice day there's ever going to
be.
