MASS MIGRATION

Looking like giant leaves floating in the sea thousands of Golden Rays are seen here gathering off the coast of Mexico.The spectacular scene was captured as the magnificent creatures made one of their biannual mass migrations to more agreeable waters. Gliding silently beneath the waves they turned vast areas of blue water to gold off the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula Sandra Critelli, an amateur photographer, stumbled across the phenomenon while looking for whale sharks. She said: 'It was an unreal image, very difficult to describe. The surface of the water was covered by warm and different shades of gold and looked like a bed of autumn leaves gently moved by the wind. It's hard to say exactly how many there were, but in the range of a few thousand. 'We were surrounded by them without seeing the edge of the school and we could see many under the water surface too. 'I feel very fortunate I was there in the right place at the right time to experience nature at her best.' Measuring up to 7ft (2.1 meters) from wing-tip to wing-tip, Golden rays are also more prosaically known as cow nose rays. They have long, pointed pectoral fins that separate into two lobes in front of their high-domed heads and give them a cow-like appearance.
Despite having poisonous stingers they are known to be shy and non-threatening when in large schools.
The population in the Gulf of Mexico migrates, in schools of as many as 10,000, from western Florida to the Yucatan .


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Sea Story by Carol Parker

The Old Man & The Sea

I was lucky to marry a man who shares my love for the sea. We pounded the waters in South Florida for many years while a dream lay submerged in my subconscious. In 1982 my father left me some shares in the company he’d retired from. I hung on to them for several years until that old dream resurfaced. What triggered it was something simple: a toilet – rather the lack of one – on our boat. The older I got, the more annoyed I became about the lack thereof.
“This is disgraceful and I will no longer be subjected to such an indignity,” I warned Joe in the middle of Blackwater Sound as he handed me the too-familiar plastic bucket.
That’s when we began searching for a boat with a toilet. We started small but each boat we looked at was larger than the last. Finally I found my dream in a boatyard on the St. John’s river: a thirty-two foot hefty little ship with the undeniable lines of a working trawler. Lots of beautiful teak inside. Heavy wooden doors with brass hinges. Best of all: the bathroom. Not just a toilet but a full shower, sink, large mirror and vanity. We made a ridiculously low offer on it. It must have been destiny because, to our astonishment, we became the proud owners of our own tiny ship.
I was so thrilled with the bathroom (Ahem! – the head), I wanted to rename the boat “Dear John.” But Joe said it’s unlucky to change the name. (Unlucky for him since he’d have to part with the extra hundred bucks it costs to change the name of a documented boat.)
When the “Odyssey” arrived at Manatee Bay Marina in Key Largo a year after we’d begun searching, I knew what it meant to have my ship come in. I wandered through it, marveling at the fully equipped galley, lying on the berths, and staring at my own brass portholes. I couldn’t stop fondling the wood, walking around the cabin to the bow, leaning over the rail. And it wasn’t even in the water yet.
That first day we painted the bottom. The next two days, I cleaned and polished and caulked while Joe installed the marine air conditioner. (I would nap in cool luxury while he trolled for dolphin on that stretch of liquid desert called the Gulf Stream where he’d tortured me for years. And I would delight in making frequent trips to the head.)
The day we launched “Odyssey” and began cruising south toward our dock in Key Largo, my dream shattered. We hadn’t been on the water for fifteen minutes when the boat stopped dead. Joe descended into the bowels of a nightmarish realm called the bilge. A perpetual stream of moans and grunts, clanks and clangs, preceded a sweaty, grease-smeared face that popped up like an evil Jack-in-the-box, sneering something about water in the fuel tanks. He descended again, swearing vengeance on the former owner.
Joe’s knack for fixing things got us underway in an hour or so and my dream revived quickly when I realized one of the select fantasies connected to it lay just around the next bend. There, a sweltering snake of cars would slither to a halt at Jewfish Creek while the bridge opened to let us through. We’d been a scale on that snake’s back for years. I’d watched with envy as the big graceful boats glided through, always wishing one of them was mine.
My heart thumped as I went below, got on the radio (Joe hadn’t installed one topside yet.) and requested a bridge opening.
“Which way are you headed, Captain?” the bridge tender asked, “North or south?”
At the word, “Captain,” my heart fluttered to a stop. So did my brain. I answered professionally as any good sailor would, “Uhhh.”
“Never mind. I see you,” he said, to my relief.
There is no way to describe my feelings, gliding through that bridge opening the first time, waving at all those poor scales in their cars.
We took turns at the helm, learning the feel of it. We arrived at our dock in approximately three hours, doing about seven knots. (Somewhere along the line, the word “trawler” must have evolved from “Crawler.”)
For the next two weeks we worked in anticipation of our weeklong shakedown cruise, one of the best weeks of my life – and one of the worst. “Shake-up” cruise would have been a more befitting word. But it taught us much.
One lesson only took a half an hour: always be sure the door to the main locker is shut before going into the head. The doors face opposite each other in the passageway with room enough to open only one at a time. The open one butts against the other, holding it shut. The locker door is apt to swing open while cruising if not shut properly. I learned this the hard way, in the head, while shouting through the porthole and banging on the overhead, trying to get Joe’s attention.
Another lesson: Never try to grab a mooring buoy while the boat is still moving. I learned this by watching Joe fall overboard while trying to retrieve the boat hook I dropped after it practically wrenched my arm from its socket. But nothing could mar my dream. Not even Joe’s falling overboard a second time for no apparent reason while I tried to untangle the rope from his foot.
We bobbed around in bays and sounds. We meandered through creeks in the backcountry. Schools of porpoise flanked our bow. I hung over the rail, thrilled down to my boat shoes, watching them arch out of the water and beam their fixed smiles at me. We fished. We swam. We watched the sun set from the fly bridge where we danced and toasted each other with champagne. We cooked fish dinners, played cards, and even watched a little TV.
Oh, those magic nights we spent anchored in secluded Tarpon Basin and Buttonwood Sound! I slept like a baby … waking every hour. Each time, I strained my eyes in the dark toward the black outline of islands that seemed to loom closer and closer. Joe was not pleased the few times I woke him to ask, “Wasn’t that boat over there much farther away the last time we looked?” But it wasn’t difficult to drift back to sleep, being rocked in a giant cradle, rippling water lapping a lullaby on the hull.
And those glorious mornings when seabirds called to wake me. We ate breakfast in wonder, gazing out at a paradise of islands where rosaries of ibis and egrets soared from their night roosts. Joe took the dinghy and shopped for supplies and the Sunday paper. I, of course, remained with my ship. By the end of the week, when Joe had exhausted every foul word in his vocabulary, we headed home.
After that week, we began venturing farther and farther away until recently we had the confidence to complete a two-week voyage to the Dry Tortugas. I felt as if I’d stowed away on a ship to exotic ports.
Occasionally a demon still possesses the engine or some other thing-a-ma-jig and Joe has to exorcize it. But when everything’s running smoothly, you’ll find me at the helm of my ship, nudging the islands along the Intracoastal Waterway. And every so often, I can’t resist cruising North to Jewfish Creek Bridge.
Someday if you happen to be waiting there, you might see a little trawler glide through. And waving from the helm, you’ll see a petite chaser of dreams who believes they do come true.

Sea Story by Carol Parker

Beauty And The Boat-Beast


The roar of the motor deafens me as the boat rears up on its prop. I am being hurled in darkness across Tarpon Basin toward Dusenbury Creek. Inertia glues me to my seat. I cast a sidelong glance at the beast that’s driving. He bears a striking resemblance to the loving husband I left at the dock.
A sense of impending doom settles over me as the beast tries to anchor in the creek. Only a numbskull like me couldn’t keep the fifteen-year-old motor from stalling while the beast sways on the
bow, trying to
untangle the anchor line.
“I’d like to get a hold of that ____of a ______ who sold me this ____ing piece of
line!””
I must be deaf too, or I’d be able to hear, and interpret, every vile curse shouted over the motor’s roar: “Throw it in reverse!” “Cut the damn motor!”
The beast is in his element now as he tromps about the boat. “Where the hell is my tackle box?”
I point to the bow.
“It shouldn’t be up there!” He grabs the rods. “Oh crap!” he says, pointing mine at me like a weapon. “I always have to tie your rigs. You should learn to do this yourself! Why do I have to do everything? Snarl!”
So, as always, I watch intently while he ties the leaders, and I say in a pacifying voice, “If you’d let me, I know I could do it.”
“Forget it! I have to do everything! Snarl! Where the hell are the new hooks I bought? They’re not in the tackle box!”
Searching the boat, hoping to calm the beast, I find the hooks in a bag, in the cuddy cabin where he put them last week. He snatches the bag from me like an osprey snatches a mullet.
Finally, the rods are ready. The beast ties the chum-bag and drops it over the side. Dipping into the bait bucket, he swears, “Damn it! That creep sold me half-dead shrimp again. Snarl!” Then, remembering that I won’t plunge my bare hand into a swarm of slithering, snapping sea-roaches, he dips out a sickly one and throws it on the deck. (He has some cut up mullet in the motor-well but I don’t relish its lingering bouquet.) I use a cloth to pick up the shrimp lest it give one last violent snap as I put it on the hook. I finally cast my line toward the middle of the creek
“What are you casting out there for?” the beast bellows. “Why don’t you just drop it over the side? Snarl! Can’t you see where the chum-bag is?”
I know where the chum-bag is, I say to myself, eyeing the beast. Then as I begin to reel in my line, he says, “You might as well leave it there now.”
Suddenly I remember the radio. I place my rod in the holder and head for the cabin. While I’m trying to tune in some soothing music, the beast becomes frantic and yells, “You got a bite! Look at your rod! What are you doing up there anyway? Turn off that damn radio!”
My rod is bent and quivering over the water. I spring from the radio and grab my rod. I tighten the drag and begin reeling.
“Don’t horse it!” the beast yells. “Keep your rod up!”
I reel the fish to the surface.
“A damn catfish!” the beast whines.
I hate to catch them; they’re so cute with those whiskers. And since I can’t get the hooks out of their soft mouths, the beast has to do it. I watch helplessly, hoping he doesn’t hurt the fish. He throws it back. I sigh in relief.
Now I need another shrimp but dare not ask the beast. So I pull the bait bucket up as quietly as I can. Slipping on the gardening glove I keep stashed under the seat for just such an emergency, I feel around in the bucket for a not too live one.
The beast snaps, “What are you doing with that stupid glove? How can you be afraid of a few little shrimp?” He grabs the bucket and fishes one out. “Here!” he says, slinging it on the deck.
He leers at me as I try to pick it up with my cloth. Then as I break off that sharp little horn right between the shrimp’s eyes, the beast howls with laughter. Only a moron would believe that story (told by a neighbor who catches a lot of rather large fish) about how this releases the shrimp’s essence and attracts the big fish. But what the heck, I always think, it’s worth a try.
Right then a fish yanks on the beast’s line. “Oh no!” he groans, storming toward his rod. He begins to reel it in. It looks like a big one. The beast’s eyes are glazing over as he reels it toward the surface. But suddenly the fish lets go. The beast loses his balance and staggers. Then he whirls around, a froth of saliva oozing through his bared fangs.
“If you’d do your own dirty work – snarl – I wouldn’t lose so many damn fish!” His eyes, two slanted slits, he hoists the shrimp bucket again. This time he fishes out three. “Here!” he snarls, pitching two at my feet. “So I don’t have to keep gettin em for ya!” After securing his rod, he rummages in the cooler, craving a beer – the stuff boat-beasts are made of. And contrary to popular belief, this beast thrives on the silver bullet. However, another fish picks that very instant to strike. The beast crashes past me shouting, “Are you blind? Couldn’t you see I had a bite? Get the net! Get the net!”
I stick my rod in the holder and stand by with the net.
“It’s a big one,” the beast says, his voice almost human.
Oh please, I pray silently as he seizes the net from me, let him land it. And please let it be a big one. That would appease him. I hold my breath now as he slops a nice fat mangrove snapper on the deck.
“Heh, heh, heh,” he snickers, the light from the lantern catching the primitive glint in his eyes.
Suddenly, a loud zing! My rod is arching and dancing over the water. I grab it and begin reeling. Without the help of the beast, I manage to land a snapper twice the size of his. That’s when he begins his tirade of excuses: “One of these days I’m gonna get me some good fishin equipment. How can anybody do anything with this junk? Look at this rod! Look at this line! It’s all balled up. Snarl!” His voice grows louder as he thumps his snapper on the deck again. “I can’t even get the hook out of this damn fish! Where the hell are the pliers?”
“I have the pliers,” I say, calmly. With my glove on, I remove the hook from my prize, remembering that this is what makes it all worthwhile. This is why I repeatedly suffer such abuse. Dropping my catch into the cooler, I sidestep the beast to avoid his tormented eyes, lest he catch me gloating and give me the world’s worst hickey. I turn on the radio and tune him out while dreaming of the delectable fish, poached in wine, my loving husband and I will share tomorrow. Tomorrow – when the boat-beast is gone and altogether forgotten.

FISHING IS GOING TO BE GREAT

We have been having several storms crossing the fishing grounds, although we can not go out right now, when we do the fishing should be great. We need the southeast winds to bring in the weed. The storms are bringing weed and the upwelling bringing in the nutrients for the fish to eat. I need to find some people who want to split a tank of gas, so I can get myself out to the ocean and bring in some dolphin. The freezer is empty except for some lobster tails.

Looking for some people who want to get out to the big blue and catch some fish.