Ocean
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October 2007
Everyone is back, and great trips were enjoyed by all.
Summer has abruptly abandoned San Diego. Along with the tourists, we'll have to bid adieu to the hot weather and the warm water. Say hello to the rain my friends. Did someone do a rain dance? We got quite a dose of sky water this morning at South Cardiff. At any time of year, the rain water washes all sorts of pollutants from our streets and local canyons into the lagoons and ocean.
While not as bad as untreated sewage, it's not something you want to swim in. The standard procedure is to avoid water contact for three days after any significant rain. The San Diego County department of environmental health routinely monitors water quality along all the beaches except for Children's Pool (it always fails). You can check the water quality on line at Earth911. I hope everyone keeps an eye on water quality this winter. I know I've gotten sick from polluted water. It's no fun at all.
There's a lot happening locally.We'll start with the Children's Pool saga. The state court of appeal handed down its decision on the city's appeal. The short story is that they denied the appeal. The long story is that it was accompanied by a judicial beat-down. I thought the trial court's decision was concise to the point of acerbic. The appeals court trumped that with a royal flush of disparagement. The city had roughly six points to make in their appeal. The appeals court denied every last one of them. They repeatedly cited a lack of evidence presented by the City Attorney.
The city is on the hook for more that $500K for the plaintiffs legal fees. If one includes the cost of the city personnel, the legal costs vastly exceed the cost of doing the right thing in the first place. Unless someone in the city attorney's office has a new legal theory and evidence to support it, a sham appeal will be a colossal waste of money that should go to vital needs in San Diego.
Given a probably loss in the courts, it looks as if the next arena for this controversy will be the Coastal Commission. They're already out trying to build support for having the commission declare Children's Pool as a wildlife preserve.
This would set a couple of frightening precedents. First it would mark the first time that anyone has successfully repurposed a land trust. These types of trusts are intentionally durable. The same instruments protect wildlife habitats and open spaces. If we rip this one apart, we open the door to scrapping the protections for millions of acres of wildlife habitat.
The second involves the Coastal Act itself. It's primary goal is to ensure public access to our beaches. It also protects unique habitats. Reading the act itself, it seems clear that it's referring to natural features, which Children's Pool is certainly not. If we put human access as secondary, then we stand an excellent chance of losing access in other areas. There are still a lot of wealthy people who'd like their side yards back. There are problems in Malibu, among other places, where local residents resent the outsiders. Any erosion of the access doctrine is likely to bring unwanted losses elsewhere.
On a happier note, the underwater pumpkin carving contest is coming. It's a fun, if totally off-beat event. You can mark your design on the pumpkin in advance. Toss a dive weight inside the pumpkin to keep it on the bottom (pumpkin floats). You have to carve the pumpkin with a bona fide dive knife. Leave the "Blackie Collins" knife at home, and take something small. Swim out to where you find all the bubbles and bits of pumpkin in the water, descend, and carve away. Werner rounds up some excellent prizes for this contest, and even throws in lunch.
This has been one of the most active diving summers we've had in recent memory. Thanks to everyone who joined us. We had some great dives, and a few not so great dives. We'll give it another go next year.
— Dave AmbroseOctober conditions are unpredictable, so we'll go to the impromptu system. I'll put out a call when conditions get good.
As usual, please RSVP to my cell phone at 858-248-6203. — Dave AmbroseFrom the CA DFG regulations: 29.90.
Spiny Lobsters.
(a) Open season: From the Saturday preceding the first
Wednesday in October through the first Wednesday after the 15th of March.
(b)
Limit: Seven.
(c) Minimum size: Three and one-fourth inches measured in a
straight line on the mid-line of the back from the rear edge of the eye socket
to the rear edge of the body shell. Any lobster may be brought to the surface of
the water for the purpose of measuring, but no undersize lobster may be brought
aboard any boat, placed in any type of receiver, kept on the person or retained
in any person’s possession or under his direct control; all lobsters shall be
measured immediately upon being brought to the surface of the water, and any
undersize lobster shall be released immediately into the water.
The California spiny lobster is a species of spiny lobster found from the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula to Monterey Bay, California.
They are generally found at very shallow depths near the coastline or near offshore islands. They migrate in order to mate and to give birth to their young. During the spring, California spiny lobster travel to shallow waters and then move to deeper waters in the fall. In December, they often move offshore to waters as deep as 110 feet. By late January, the lobsters generally move back up to depths between 15 and 45 feet of water.The California spiny lobster is generally nocturnal; during the day, these spiny lobsters can be found in hiding places such as small holes and cracks, or hidden in grass with other lobsters, but at night, they tend to hunt singly.
Spiny lobsters are scavengers that mainly eat sessile or slow-moving animals, such as snails, sea urchins, clams, sponges, kelp, worms, mussels, scallops, barnacles, and fish. California spiny lobsters are a vital part of the California coast habitat because they keep the purple and red sea urchin population under control. The jaws of the California spiny lobster are extremely strong, and they are capable of crushing shells and bones of other animals.Predators of the California spiny lobster include giant sea bass, kelp bass, California sheephead, California scorpionfish, rockfishes, octopus, moray eels, sea otters, cabezon, horn sharks, leopard sharks, other lobsters, and humans.
Mating takes places between January and April, with the ventral sides of the male and female animal against each other, during which a sperm packet is transferred from the male to the female. When the female spiny lobster is ready, she will scratch open the sperm packet with specialized claws while simultaneously releasing her eggs. Once the sperm have fertilized the eggs, they will stick to the pleopods (swimmerets) and stay there until hatched. A newly matured female will produce about 100,000 eggs while an older and larger female will make nearly 1,000,000. When the female spiny lobster is ready to release the fertilized eggs she goes to shallower, warmer water, usually in May or June. The eggs are bright red when first fertilized, but become dark brown after about ten weeks.The eggs hatch into Phyllosoma larvae, which look quite unlike the adult, and are free-floating creatures with very little mobility or defense. After about six to nine months, when the larva has molted 12 times, it will reach the puerulus (from the Latin meaning child) stage. This looks like a small lobster with very large antennae. The puerulus moves very close to shore where it molts into a juvenile spiny lobster.
Back in the days before divers went down to pick them by hand, spiny lobsters often grew to be 150 years old and over 3 feet long. These giant spiny lobsters were too big to fit into any traps, and had very few predators. Most spiny lobsters now grow to the age of five to seven years before being caught. The largest on record was 26 lb and over three feet long.
One of the most noticeable features of the spiny lobster is the two large antennae. The antennae are longer than the body, and they are used to sense any movement in front of them. Spiny lobsters also have smaller antennae called antennules, which are used to sense food and predators.Although they lack the large claws (chelae) of true lobsters, one protection that these spiny lobsters have is the abundance of spines on their backs. The two largest spines located over their eyes are known colloquially as the horns. In the event of danger, the tail fan is used to propel the animal backwards (the caridoid escape reaction).
The spiny lobster, being nocturnal, is most easily gathered by walking through shallows at night, using a carried light. This is aided in its southern range by the warm waters present in bay shallows. Although not respected in the restaurant trade as much as the clawed lobster, it is known worldwide as "langusta" and its substantial tail muscles are similar in taste and texture to its clawed cold–water relative. Preparation by cooking is similar to lobster or to crayfish.As with other shellfish, the eating of this animal is restricted by some religions particularly Jewish dietary law, and some interpretations of Islamic dietary laws.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_spiny_lobster & http://www.dfg.ca/gov/marine/oceanfish)
Ocean Enterprises is Sponsoring a Lobster Diving Contest:Register on Thurs September 27 or Fri September 28 by:
Opens Friday, October 5!
SEA MONSTERS: A Prehistoric Adventure brings to life the most bizarre, ferocious and fascinating creatures to ever inhabit Earth’s oceans. Produced by National Geographic with original music by Peter Gabriel, the film combines dynamic, state-of-the-art animation with exciting paleontological discoveries around the world to produce an unforgettable adventure on the giant IMAX Dome Screen. Audiences will be submerged in an 80-million-year-old scientific mystery as they travel back in time to uncover the secrets of the ancient leviathans that once ruled the seas.
For more information, visit: www.rhfleet.org
All Proceeds go to Breast Cancer Research
Once sea-turtle hatchlings hit the surf, they vanish for up to five years. Where the half-dollar-size tots spend these "lost years" while ballooning to the size of dinner plates has been a mystery, until now. New research, published today in the online edition of the journal Biology Letters, indicates the green sea turtles hide out in the open ocean, where they feast on jellyfish and other marine creatures. Not only did the researchers spot their short-lived sea homes, but they discovered that these reptiles, thought to be lifelong vegetarians, are actually meat eaters as juveniles.
The results help to solve a 50-year-old mystery about the hideouts. “This has been a really intriguing and embarrassing problem for sea-turtle biologists, because so many green-turtle hatchlings enter the ocean, and we haven’t known where they go,” said study team member Karen Bjorndal, a zoologist and director of the University of Florida's Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research. Before this study, scientists had two "snapshots" that provided scant clues about the missing information on the lives of green turtles: When they hatch, the 2-inch-long sea turtles push through seemingly colossal surf. Then, between three and five years later, the now juveniles reappear closer to shore. "Literally, when green turtles run off their nesting beach and into the ocean as little hatchlings, they disappear. And nobody sees them again [for years]," Bjorndal told LiveScience.
The scientists collected samples from the shells of 44 green sea turtles at a site near Great Inagua in the Bahamas. They analyzed heavy and light stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen from both the oldest (earliest-grown) and newest sections of the shells. The isotopes act as fingerprints for an animal's diet (carnivore or herbivore) and where in the ocean the animal lived. The results indicated the green sea turtles spent their lost years in the deep ocean, feeding as carnivores, before moving closer to shore and switching to a vegetarian diet of sea grasses. The findings have implications for conservation of the green turtles, because as Bjorndal explained, "you can't protect a species if you don’t know where it is." (Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience.com, Sept 19, 2007)
Save the date. Finding a cure for breast cancer is a dear cause for many OES members. Dive for the Cure is planning a major fundraiser for October 14th. Money raised will be donated to a support program for low-income woment at Sharp Hospital. For more information, visit:
http://www.diveforthecure.com/SanDiego.htmlThroughout Belize's history, Guatemala has claimed ownership of all or part of the territory. This claim is occasionally reflected in maps showing Belize as Guatemala's twenty-third province. As of March 2007, the border dispute with Guatemala remains unresolved and quite contentious; at various times the issue has required mediation by the United Kingdom, CARICOM heads of Government, the Organization of American States, and, on one occasion, the United States. Since independence, a British garrison has been retained in Belize at the request of the Belizean Government. Notably, both Guatemala and Belize are participating in the confidence-building measures approved by the OAS, including the Guatemala-Belize Language Exchange Project.
Hurricane Hattie inflicted significant damage upon Belize in 1961. The government decided that a coastal capital city lying below sea level was too risky. Over several years, the British colonial government designed a new capital, Belmopan, at the exact geographic center of the country, and in 1970 began slowly moving the governing offices there.It was a British colony for more than a century and was known as British Honduras until 1973, when it was renamed Belize and became an independent nation within The Commonwealth in 1981.