West coast moment ...

[Lin]

Saw this and wanted to share. How thrilling for those who witnessed our wild "friends", for the first time yesterday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9BKPv1aZh9c

[cap10ed]

Great video. Better to see them in the wild than at Sea World.Thanks Lin.

[Tucky]

I suspect the dolphins might not use the word "friends" here. As Woody Allen said "the lion will lay down with the lamb, but the lamb won't get much sleep".

[SloopJonB]

It's amazing how much healthier the water is around here compared to 40 years ago. When I started sailing in the early 70's you never saw anything like that - no porpoises, whales or seals. Eagles were a rare & special treat.

Now it's like a zoo every time we go out.

Much better this way.

[BeauV]

It's amazing how much healthier the water is around here compared to 40 years ago. When I started sailing in the early 70's you never saw anything like that - no porpoises, whales or seals. Eagles were a rare & special treat.

Now it's like a zoo every time we go out.

Much better this way.

A good friend of mine, who I taught to sail about 20 years ago, just got back from about 10 years "out there" cruising. He sailed in to San Francisco Bay and tied up in South Beach to a warm welcome from many of us. His FIRST comment after stepping off the boat was: "What happened to the water in the Bay? It is so CLEAN!" We who live in the muck all the time don't notice when it gets cleaner or dirtier, a side effect of our human ability to assume that whatever we've seen for the last year is "normal". Things are really quite a lot cleaner, at least where I sail.

[Brooke]

Ahh, good ol shifting baselines! It is nice to see at least some things heading in the right direction. When I was in college in Boston the Charles River was truly nasty. In my short stint on the sailing team (I really don't like dinghies) I went for several accidental swims and each time I had a scum line on me from where I floated. Boston harbor at that time (late 90s) was also really bad. When I was in grad school the project that provided most of my funding was monitoring the effects of moving the major sewage outfall from the harbor to offshore. The difference in water quality in the harbor in only a few years was dramatic. The river has also been significantly cleaned up; I took my paddleboard up there a year ago and while the water certainly wasn't pristine it was much better than it was when I was sailing in it.

[SloopJonB]

It's amazing how much healthier the water is around here compared to 40 years ago. When I started sailing in the early 70's you never saw anything like that - no porpoises, whales or seals. Eagles were a rare & special treat.

Now it's like a zoo every time we go out.

Much better this way.

A good friend of mine, who I taught to sail about 20 years ago, just got back from about 10 years "out there" cruising. He sailed in to San Francisco Bay and tied up in South Beach to a warm welcome from many of us. His FIRST comment after stepping off the boat was: "What happened to the water in the Bay? It is so CLEAN!" We who live in the muck all the time don't notice when it gets cleaner or dirtier, a side effect of our human ability to assume that whatever we've seen for the last year is "normal". Things are really quite a lot cleaner, at least where I sail.

I recently watched a documentary about SF Bay and a group of high powered women who led the charge to clean it up back in the late 50's - early 60's. It was incredible how people treated the bay - the end of every street on the bay was a garbage dump as recently as the early 60's. Just back the wagon or pickup to the waters edge and push all the crap in.

Hard to believe it was that primitive that recently.

Locally it was more or less restricted to False Creek which was heavy industry. My uncle owned a galvanizing plant there back then and they would just dump everything into the water. It was truly toxic because sewage also ran into it and there was a train trestle near the mouth that really blocked tide action.

Add to that the pulp mills that used to be near where I live dumping dioxin (agent orange) into Howe Sound until it was devoid of life and one wonders how ANY sea life survived to thrive now.

We ARE advancing.

[BeauV]

When I was a kid on my Dad's little tiny cutter, we didn't use bottom paint. We were moored in Wilmington right by the Henry Ford Bridge to Terminal Island and there was NOTHING growing in the water. Absolutely frigging NOTHING! Dad got really pissed off in the late '60s when he had to start using copper bottom paint. Up to the '69 haul out, we just used enamel on the bottom and the slum washed right off - nothing growing at all. Today, there are actually fish in that channel.

[Tigger]

The week before we were in Gorge Harbour (Cortes Island, BC) this summer ... apparently a pod of Killer Whales had herded a school of dolphins into Gorge, where they stayed for protection. From what I could get out of the locals, the whales did not come through the entrance--it is rather narrow:

Gorge.jpg

I bet that was the same group of whales that was involved in the Departure Bay 'feeding'.

Magnificent mammals--no wonder they figure so prominently in First Nations Art

Wha;e.jpg

[Lin]

Howe Sound, which is where I often sail, has benefited greatly by a water treatment facility. This has dramatically reduced the heavy metal damage done by years of copper mining at Britannia Beach and also helped mitigate the environmental effects of constructing the Sea To Sky Highway.

Our ecosystem has been beautifully resilient with resulting return of the herring population, pink salmon returning to spawn and the eagles, dolphins and whales were not far behind.

The days are few and far between when we do not see bald eagles, and porpoises when out on the water.

[BeauV]

Lin,

This year was a record for whales, dolphins, pelicans, anchovies, herring, sardines, all because of a massive increase in the upwelling of cold pyx rich water from the bottom of the Monterey trench and the decades old reduction in DDT and other bad stuff. I have never, in my entire life sailing, seen as many pelicans as we had. You literally couldn't see the water outside our harbor. It's great to see the sea come back to life again.

Sadly, without rain the streams and rivers have yet to breach the sand bars that build up at their mouths. As a result, the salmon run for Jan was a bust, despite the fish-n-game folks going out to net them and get their eggs in the hatchery. Some of us are thinking of pooling our resources to rent a big back hoe and open up some of the beaches. The local officials are ok with it, so we maybe passing the hat.

We don't seem to have Orca here, although there is supposed to be a pod in the middle (deep) part of Monterey Bay. I've never seen them. It would be great to find them. Next year we'll have to look harder.

Beau

[derekb]

Ahh, good ol shifting baselines! It is nice to see at least some things heading in the right direction. When I was in college in Boston the Charles River was truly nasty. In my short stint on the sailing team (I really don't like dinghies) I went for several accidental swims and each time I had a scum line on me from where I floated. Boston harbor at that time (late 90s) was also really bad. When I was in grad school the project that provided most of my funding was monitoring the effects of moving the major sewage outfall from the harbor to offshore. The difference in water quality in the harbor in only a few years was dramatic. The river has also been significantly cleaned up; I took my paddleboard up there a year ago and while the water certainly wasn't pristine it was much better than it was when I was sailing in it.

I sailed College Team Racing National Championships on the Charles in 1990 in Larks - 2cm of water in the bottom of the boat - you could not see the hull. We made a point not to capsize and luckily we were fairly good by then (we had to qualify for nationals after all). We watched in horror beginners in Tech Dinnghies out trying to learn and capsizing left and right- Ick.

[LarryHoward]

A lot of that around. Despite the dire pronouncements of those who benefit from "save the bay" cries, it is improving, albeit slowly. In the early 70's, the Chesapeake was pretty clean. I came and went over the years and it was pretty nasty in the late 80's. By the time I moved back in 2000, things were getting better. If we could control some of the runoff from the eastern shore chicken factories and upstream sources, it would get better faster.

We still have too many folks that do only the statutory minimum and don't apply common sense but we are making progress.

[Rob McAlpine]

In the late 1950's thru the 1960's, when I was growing up on Narragansett Bay, it was an open sewer. In boarding school I rowed a 4 on the Seekonk River in Providence, when it rained and the river got above our (poorly) floating dock, it would leave it covered with turds. Every session someone would pick up a "Seekonk Whitefish" (condom) on an oar. It was truly disgusting. Jewelry companies in Providence would dump heavy metals directly into the Providence river, and the city just dumped its sewage raw.

The upper bay still has problems with runoff, and it's just surrounded by tons of people, but in terms of crap in the water it's a million times better than it was when we were kids. Just because of the people and runoff, it will never be Penobscot Bay, but it does have wind.

I'm amazed when I hear people complain about holding tank regs on Narragansett Bay. That's a piece of water that truly does not need a single additional chunk of shit.