Beach report - St. George Island
 

Connie and I drove over to St. George Island yesterday, and miraculously we didn't get rain there. Kind of disappointed in the beach as it was pretty much covered with matts of unsightly brown and ratty looking seaweed. And we could see more coming in with every wave. The junk was literally everywhere. Would not have been very much fun trying to swim in those waters with all that junk in there.

I've been watching the beach lately just to see if that oil spill is having any effect, and I'm not sure I believe all the hype I read about everything being just honky dory. For one thing, this time if year I think the Gulf waters should be teeming with schools of small fish. Nothing. In areas where the ebbing tide was leaving pools of water on the beach, normally they would have small fish trapped there, but I saw NONE at all. Normally we would see zillions of coquinas digging down into the sand after being disturbed by every incoming wave. I saw NONE. Even sand crabs were not to be seen, but I did see a few of their burrows, so SOME must still be there. Birds were there on the beach, but nothing at all like I remember seeing in the past. No fish jumping in the water, and we only saw one spot where it appeared that birds were feasting on a small school of fish out past the sand bar.

Otherwise the water looks fine. Smells fine. No odor of oil or other chemicals that were used as dispersants that I could tell. But honestly, it just is not the same. Walking the beach I got the feeling of being at a funeral wake and not the Gulf of Mexico that should be teeming with life bursting at the seams this time of year. Heck, now that I think of it, we did not see one single solitary dead fish laying on the beach. Normally there should be some, but there were absolutely NONE anywhere. In my opinion, SOMETHING is going on, and I don't believe it is good at all.

Sigh......

Oh, there was one notable bright spot that day. In all the years Connie and I have been going to St. George Island, we have NEVER, EVER found a petrified shark's tooth. Until this trip. I was astonished! I've found plenty of them at Manasota Key Beach, Englewood, and Venice Beach, but NEVER found one in this area. And it is a pretty darn nice one, to boot.

http://www.corvetteflorida.com/pics/shark_tooth_01.jpg

But on the other hand, kind of sad that the highlight of the walk on the beach was finding something from an animal that has been dead for millions of years.

Sad, but maybe it's Mother Nature's way of taking a breather. Millions of years
of evolution and having things be perfect can be wiped out in a flash with one
oil spill. Lets hope "Mom" gets that breather and comes back to 100%.
Andy :wavey:
NICE sharks tooth by the way.......... :thumbsup:

Kind of interesting and coincidental that there is an article in the local newspaper today stating that the oyster population is WAY down lately. They also mentioned that the crab and shrimp populations are down as well. But they seem to be dancing on eggshells to keep from pointing the finger at BP dumping dispersants in the Gulf as being the likely cause, it seems. It looks to me that the bottom layers of the food chain have been severely damaged. And now it's starting to percolate upwards.

Yeah, the seafood market that Connie was helping out at part time has been having to run over to Amelia Island once or twice a week to get shrimp so they had some to sell to their customers.

Already been hearing rumors of shrimp without eyes and crabs without claws people are finding in the Gulf.

Yeah, something definitely is not right in the Gulf of Mexico lately.

Connie and I ran out to St. George Island again today sine the weather seems to have improved. Turned out to be a real nice day, even though it started out real cloudy and kind of cool.

Not as much seaweed on the beach, and the Gulf was a lot calmer. Still not as many birds as there used to be there.

Interestingly enough we ran into another couple walking the beach who were collecting tar balls they were finding. We hadn't even been paying attention to them, but they had picked up quite a few. I still don't think I'm going to plan on swimming in this part of the Gulf of Mexico anytime real soon. And I'm still not eating locally caught seafood, neither. Maybe I'm just being overly cautious, but......

Can't be too cautious when it comes to your health! I tell my wife to not buy the shrimp when it says product of Vietnam on it. I don't know how many TONS of Agent Orange they dropped on Vietnam, but we don't need to eat any of it in the shrimp that's raised there just in case........
Andy :wavey:

You pretty much don't want to eat any seafood listed as being "farm raised". Read up on what that phrase means sometime.

And I really don't want to eat any sort of food stuffs being imported from China at all.

The problem is that so much stuff just isn't labelled as to it's true origin. A lot of the stuff in the supermarkets will say something like "Packaged in USA", which doesn't really tell me a damned thing about where it actually CAME from.

I guess it's a good time in my life to go on a diet anyway.

Connie and I went to St. George Island again on Tuesday and it turned out to be a real nice day for a walk on the beach. You can definitely tell Winter is coming, though, as the mornings have been getting chilly.

Anyway, we were sitting in one of the pavilions in the park eating sandwiches that Connie had made up, and we were commenting on how there were NO seagulls at all anywhere to be seen. Normally they are everywhere, and would be mobbing us when they spotted food. But not lately.

About this time I was glancing out at the beach and suddenly noticed a fin right beyond where the waves were breaking on the beach. I'll be damned! A shark! Now I've seen plenty of movies and stuff depicting sharks swimming with the dorsal fin and tip of the tail sticking out of the water, but even with all the times I have been on the water in my lifetime, this was the very first time I ever saw this in real life with my own two eyes. I'm not really sure how big it was, but it had to be pretty big. There were some people on the beach near where the shark was, and I would say that the distance between the dorsal fin and the tail tip above water was about as long as one of the adults there was tall. The dorsal fin appeared to be as wide as a person's head. Fortunately no one was in the water then. Of course, my camcorder was in the trunk of the car over in the parking lot...

There seemed to be a fair number of schools of fish jumping in the water, especially on the bay side. We also saw several porpoises chasing their dinner in the bay, but we didn't see any actually out in the Gulf.

So bird populations seem to be down, at least directly on the beach of the Gulf itself, but it appears that small fish are getting to be in greater abundance. Saw a few small ghost crabs running on the beach, but still no coquinas nor sand crabs. So hopefully they will make a comeback sometime soon.