Mussel/Car

My "river class" is going well, I think, with students seeming interested in learning and writing about their local waters. I'm learning things too. Yesterday a grad student from the enviromental science dept. visited to introduce us to some of the creatures that live in our campus river. Most of his talk focused on different species of pearly mussel, creatures I've often seen but knew absolutely nothing about. While I probably ought to restrict my pedagoguery to the classroom, these little bivalves are so fascinating I can't resist--and their breeding practices put them right at home on FTR.

Take a look at the photo below. How many fish do you see?



If you said four, look more closely. This is a stream enviroment, so fish will generally be looking upstream. So what's that fish--like thing atop the mussel facing downwtream? Basically, a fishing lure. Not one left by a two legged fisherman, but one spun out of a broken ray mussel. Mussels need to implant embyos in host fish to distribute them throughout a waterway and prevent their species from being swept further downstream with each generation. So different types of female mussels will spit out a mucous sac filled with the embryos (glochidia). Fish come along, see the sac, pounce on it--and then become surrogate mamas to the glochidia, which will detatch from the fish and take up their stations on the river bottom after about two weeks.

The snuffbox mussel actually catches and plays the fish, snapping its shell around the nose of fish that turn it over to look for flies underneath and implanting glochidia in the fish's mouth.



Here, you can watch a video of one of these encounters. The rest of The Unio Gallery, sponsored by Missouri State University, has other photos, videos, and news about freshwater mussels. Visit and learn.



As for the "car," part of this post...in another week or so, I will be driving home a new car. As of tuesday, I fulfilled my stated intention to drive my '97 Honda Civic until the wheels fell off. They didn't literally fall off, but a mechanic informed me that they might if I kept driving it. So we're on the hunt for a car now, and while it will be nice to have a new one, I will miss our old Honda. It's carried us across the country and through many notable life passages in the last nine years. A few fishing trips too. It also had the most important attribute any car can have: it was paid off!

Adding another car payment will be a pain, but I guess that's better than careening into ditches, or oncoming semis.

Flies? Check. Sunblock? Check. Meth? Checkcheckcheck! What'sthematterwithyouman? CHECK!

Competition is getting out of control in organized fishing tournaments. The U.K.'s Daily Mirror reports that

TOP championship anglers were left shocked... after being asked to submit to drug tests.

Competitors at last week's World Angling Championships were told to give urine samples or face losing their prizes.

Astonishingly, the tests - which they all passed - were made because officials fear stimulants could give cheats an unfair advantage by sharpening their reflexes when they get a bite.

Read the Rest

Can we expect to see Jimmy Houston, Kevin Van Dam, and other tournament fishermen hauled before a senate committee soon?

While I'm not a tournament fisherman, I have to admit I'm tempted to see whether this might help me catch of of those missed dry fly strikes. So perhaps I'll be turning up in an emergency room--or before a judge--soon.

Combat Fishing

Episodes like this are part of the reason I don't leap at the chance to fish the fall salmon run. From the Ludington Daily News:

CUSTER TWP. — They were there to fight salmon, not other fishermen, but a pair of salmon anglers from National City got more than they bargained for when they went to Indian Bridge on the Pere Marquette River Tuesday.


The brothers, visiting from an area near Tawas City, were fishing near the bridge when they were approached by a father and son who explicitly told them to leave the spot because they wanted to fish there, a Mason County Sheriff’s Office report stated.

The brothers left for several hours before they returned around noon to continue fishing, hoping the father and son who had confronted them had left by then, the report stated.

The son apparently told one of the brothers that he was not letting them fish there, but this time one of the brothers didn’t back down, the report stated. The 18-year-old son came over the guardrail from his post on the river bank and assaulted the 65-year-old man, knocking him to the ground and kicking him, all the while being encouraged by his father, the report stated.

Deputies were able to identify the father and son and the case remains under investigation.

The sheriff’s office said it would add extra patrols in the area in an attempt to prevent future incidents from occurring.

Like they say, the runs of big fish bring out the worst in people and bring the worst people out.




This morning, I turned on the furnace for the first time since May. Goodbye summer, hello exorbitant gas bills.




Tags: Fishing; Autumn

Hey You, Get Off of My Lake!; Updates

For fishermen and other recreational water users, a disturbing court ruling from a federal court in Louisana. A boating industry trade journal reports that

Judge Robert G. James of the United States District Court, Western Division of Louisiana, has said that it is criminal trespass for the American boating public to boat, fish, or hunt on the Mississippi River and other navigable waters in the US.

In the case of Normal Parm v. Sheriff Mark Shumate, James ruled that federal law grants exclusive and private control over the waters of the river, outside the main shipping channel, to riparian landowners. The shallows of the navigable waters are no longer open to the public. That, in effect, makes boating illegal across most of the country.

Not to mention wading.

"Even though this action seems like a horrible pre-April fools joke, it is very serious," said Phil Keeter, MRAA president, in a statement. "Because essentially all the waters and waterways of our country are considered navigable in the US law, this ruling declares recreational boating, water skiing, fishing, waterfowl hunting, and fishing tournaments to be illegal and the public subject to jail sentences for recreating with their families."

Cyber acquaintences of mine from Tenessee have informed me that landowners there have recently had people who simply boated in front of their homes arrested for tresspassing--and this after launching from public ramps.

This is one to watch. If this ruling holds, it will mark yet another extension of private control over resources traditionally managed for the public good. It would be a case of the rich getting incrementally richer though a profound impoverishment of almost everyone else.




Yesterday brought new developments in the case of the proposed sulfide mining operation along Upper Michigan's Salmon Trout river.

MARQUETTE — The Michigan Court of Appeals on Friday overturned a lower court ruling that had blocked the state Department of Environmental Quality from deciding whether to issue a permit for a nickel and copper mine in the Upper Peninsula.

The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve and the Huron Mountain Club challenged the DEQ when it declared the company’s mining application complete, which meant the agency was ready to begin considering whether to approve it.

An administrative law judge sided with the DEQ. But Ingham County Circuit Judge Paula J. M. Manderfield disagreed June 22, ordering the agency to conduct a hearing on whether the Kennecott application was complete. She barred the DEQ from processing the applications until after the hearing.

The DEQ went to the Court of Appeals, which overruled Manderfield. In a brief order Friday, appeals Judge Patrick M. Meter said the tribe and other plaintiffs had failed to show they’d been harmed by the DEQ’s finding that the application was complete.

Unless the state Supreme Court intervenes, the DEQ will be free to resume analyzing the Kennecott application.

The full story

An attorney for the Keweenaw Bay community intends to file an appeal with the Michigan supreme court next week.



Speaking of old business...

The animal killings that shocked my neighborhood last spring ended around the time they began receiving notice in the press. Apparently someone didn't like the publicity. Perhaps whoever was responsible has rethought his grisly hobby. If not, perhaps someone out there is bursting at the seams with pent up psychopathic rage.

Tags: Fishing; Fly Fishing; Conservation;Law

On The Same Page?

While surfing through some news tonight, I stumbled across an editorial in the Jerusalem Post about relations with Syria, and while the editorial itself was unmemorable, it opened with a resonant anecdote.


A man went fishing after much preparation, but caught nothing.

"I don't understand it," he complained to a friend. "I read all the best books about fishing!"

"Yes," responded his buddy, "but did the fish read the books?"

The JP writer wasn't concerned with fishing literally, but might as well have been. Much too frequently, I find myself astream muttering a sort of piscatorial Murphy's Law: There are things (hatches, feeding activity, etc.) that can happen and should happen, yet are often distinct from what actually does happen. While anticipating a trip, it's impossible not to pack my head with scenarios in which trout respond without hesitation to my astutely chosen flies and precise casts. But I find that when it's time to head for the stream, I'm better off leaving those expectations on the roof of the car.

Tags: Fishing; Fly Fishing

They Only Wanted to Help...

As if flies, spawnbags, and giant treble hooks set in tubes of lead weren't enough for spawning salmon to contend with...

FRANKFORT, Mich. (AP)-- Salmon swimming up the Betsie River to spawn were killed by a chemical targeting the parasitic sea lamprey, officials said Friday.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service treated the river Thursday night with the chemical, known as TFM. It does so ever four years in the battle against the lamprey, an eel-like creature that attaches itself to fish and sucks out their bodily fluids...

It happened at a bad time for area resorts, many which are packed with anglers during spawning season.

"I'm not sure ... that I would agree with scheduling the river this time of year," said Mark Tonello, a fish biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. But he said the federal agency usually does a good job with the treatments and added, "If it weren't for lamprey control, there wouldn't be any salmon in these rivers at all."

(from Mlive.com)

At least if fishermen up there get skunked, they have a good excuse.

Tags: Fishing; Conservation

Balance

Next to the washing machine in my basement hang my waders, dry as dust for nearly a month. And at the rate things are going, that probably won't change until next spring.

During August I got a couple evenings of local fishing in, besides my jaunt on the foggy lake, but nothing more. This is the first year in longer than I can remember I didn't take at least one trout fishing trip in August--often I have some of my best days then. The only fishing looming on the horizon is a trip with my dad the last weekend in September, where we'll try for some salmon around Manistee, probably pulling plugs behind his boat on Manistee Lake or the Big Manistee river. I'd love to be wading a stream on the closing day of trout season--Saturday. September 30--but I also want to fish with my dad while he still can, as he's six weeks shy of 80. Hunting season begins a week from today, but...(see sentence two, paragraph one).

Having said all this...I'm really not that unhappy about it. My interest in the outdoors hasn't flagged in the least, mind you, but for the time being I can accept my confinement. I have a lot on my plate, workwise and work-on-the-housewise, and some of that work is actually interesting. Wednesday was one of those days of teaching where everything seemed to work--I was poised and incisive in my presentation of the material, my students were engaged, and most of us left smiling. At times like that, I feel like I've truly found a calling. (Of course, yesterday I feared that someone was about to stick a giant cane through the door and yank me away from the lectern. You never get to coast.) While I don't find working on the porch enriching, I'm finding it less tedious, and I am proud of what we're accomplishing. We may not finish it this fall, but we'll complete enough so that I won't be ashamed if someone comes to visit. And what we have completed looks good.

I've wondered if I'm reaching a point where I can balance better my assorted obligations and compulsions. I know (and if you've followed this blog for any lenght of time, you know) that fishing and other outdoor passions sometimes have warped my connection to or participation in other things--work definitely, sometimes marriage, too frequently my spiritual practice (and believe it or not, for me fishing in itself isn't adequate as such a practice). People talk about fishing as a way of connecting with nature and finding one's place in the world, but my experience has often been that fishing serves to disconnect my from everything else. While fishing is not the center of my life, I feel sometimes it has obstructed me from finding, or keeping, a center.

In times past, this kind of temporary exile from the stream would have felt unbearable. It's perhaps a sign of growth that I can remain nonplussed about this one. More time on the water or in the grouse thickets would be good; outdoor time harmonized more with the rest of my life would be better. I wouldn't say the balance is there yet, but it feels distinctly possible.

Anyway, I found a couple of good blogs by people who actually do go fishing: Trout Underground and Musings of a Trout Bum. Check 'em out. I'll be spending some time at them until I get my boots wet again.

Tags: Fishing; Fly Fishing; Life; Blogs

The "Dumpster Duo" Walk!

An email from the now ex-captives (whose plight was the subject of yesterday's post) is circulating:

This is David and Giles... This email is the breaking news! At 3:30pm this evening we were informed of our release from jail. We were released 3 hours later and now for the first time I am viewing your website!

First and most important, thank you so much! The outpouring of support is amazing. If you get this email tonight, you can update the site, and also in the morning a news report will be in the steamboat pilot with our release story.

Again, thank you so much. I will be in touch tomorrow with more thanks. Now, since I just got out less than an hour ago, it is time to celebrate a little.

Give a hip hip horrah for the truth being out and freedom for us, the LITTLE guy. ITs good news for dumpster divers everywhere. I am glad that the one person who didn't see the reality of this situation finally gave in or began to see what commotion he was causing.

Apparently they had a pretty organized operation working on their behalf.

Score one for internet activism!

Five Cukes Will Get You Six (Months)

Sometimes one man's trash is his own treasure, and worthy of protection as such.

From the AP:

9/1/06. STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - Two men who took fruit and vegetables out of a garbage can have been sentenced to six months in jail.

Giles Charle, 24, of Sumersworth, N.H., and David Siller, 27, of Wayne, Pa., said the punishment was harsh and the only choice they had to avoid a felony on their records.

They were on their way to the Rainbow Family's annual gathering when they were arrested in June and charged with felony burglary and misdemeanor theft. Authorities said they took five cucumbers, four or five apricots, two bundles of asparagus spears and a handful of cherries from a garbage can at Sweet Pea Produce.

The two pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing Wednesday and the felony charge was dropped.

"We didn't have any intention of committing a crime or doing anything wrong," Charle told the Steamboat Pilot & Today newspaper. "We had just come in town and we were prepared to buy groceries from a store but everything was closed...."

Thousands of people were in the Steamboat Springs area at the end of June and early July for the Rainbow Family gathering north of town. At times, the relationship between members of the nomadic group and authorities was tense and a number of citations were issued.

These prosecutions ought to put those dirty hippies in their place, huh?

Shades of Les Miserables, as an acquaintance of mine said (though I'd bet Marie Antoinette wouldn't have minded if the masses ate their cake out of the garbage). Could hanging pickpockets be far off?

I'm all for law and order, but I think this application of the law sketches an order we could do without.

Tags: Society; Justice; Law; Colorado

Academic Reform, Iranian Style

Iran's status in the eyes of American conservatives may have improved just a shade today. From the International Herald Tribune:

TEHRAN. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran called Tuesday for a purge of liberal and secular teachers from Iranian universities, urging students to lead the step back to 1980s-style radicalism.

"Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities," Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official Islamic Republic News Agency as saying during a meeting with a group of students.

More than a few people in this country would love to do the same thing.

Tags: Academia; Iran

Labor Day Tribute

Ye blogger is a proud union man, a stalwart member of the AAUP. Okay, so we're not exactly the Steelworkers, and we are possibly the most priveleged among America's underpaid (though at my institution, we certainly are that). Still, our union does helps us, not least because of the current bargaing rep of my unit.

Let's call her Colleen. I met her the first year I taught here, when I was still visiting faculty. I served on a committee that included her, and I found the experience discouraging for many reasons, among them Colleen. She was abrasive, and hypercritical, she had her own ideas about what we ought to accomplish and wasn't much interested in anyone else's. When the rest of us started to piece together an agenda for the committee's work, she dismissed it as misguided and irrelevant to our objectives. Her proposals seemed that way to the rest of us. It seemed we couldn't put forth anything she would find acceptable, and I was often glad when she missed a meeting.

Our committee never did accomplish what it set out to do, though another member was more directly responsible for that. That's a story for another time. Colleen actually proved to be a very nice (if occasionally stubborn) person as I got to know her better. Once I secured a permanent positon and joined the faculty union, I was quite happy to learn she was our unit's representative at contract negotiations. Looking back on my committee experience with her, I couldn't think of anyone better suited to the job. The terms of our last contract were much more favorable than anyone had expected, and I can't help thinking that Colleen had a lot to do with that. I bet the administration's representatives trembled every time she sat down at the table.

We're moving into another contract negotiation year, and all I can say is, Go Colleen! And go everyone---in unions or out---who helps make peoples' working lives better.

Happy Labor Day, Everyone.

Tags: Labor Day; Academia

Cooler

September arrives with genuinely autumnal weather. I don't think we hit 70 yesterday, and clouds and a cool wind, with occasional spitting rain, made yesterday a day for jeans and long sleeves as we worked on the porch. I wouldn't mind if this trend continues.

Last night was the first night since May that I've slept in pajamas. A sure sign of changing seasons.

This afternoon, Kristine and I are making our annual visit to the Michigan Renaissance Fair, where we'll be entertained by people in pajamas, or what could pass for them.

Endnote: I've had my trap out for two days and the woodchuck remains free. It appears I have a worthy adversary at last.