Kate Wing's Blog
Who gets up at 6am on a Saturday to get cold & wet?
August 26, 2007
Posted by Kate Wing in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
There were fourteen of us at Miller Point Park by nine am on Saturday, sipping on coffee and munching scones from the local bakeries (thank you, early rising bakers of Point Reyes). Peter organized the kayak trip for the Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association, helping get people out into the Sanctuary itself, in this case, an unusually glassy calm Tomales Bay. Besides me we had:
- a passionate jellyfish fan, who scooped them out of the water upside-down
- a couple who'd signed up two days before, after seeing a flier at a film about skulls
- a high school senior and experienced kayaker/climber/outdoors adventurer
- a guy who worked for a clothing line and rescued seals in his spare time
I was something of the relief naturalist, there to talk about underwater parks and the Marine Life Protection Act, but occasionally pressed into service to answer questions like "what is this thing on the eelgrass?". There's a lot of eelgrass in Tomales Bay, which is what makes it such a great place for Dungeness crabs and fish and also part of why I love the place so much. My home bay, the Chesapeake, once harbored huge eelgrass meadows alongside its oyster reefs, but they've been in decline for years for many of the reasons mentioned in this post. My mother used to volunteer for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's eelgrass restoration program, and she loved casually mentioning to people that she grew grass in the basement (Hi Mom!).
We saw river otters catching fish, harbor seals, purple starfish, and the far away butts of Tule elk herding their harems up the hills. Achillius and John took great care of our group and nobody flipped, even in the wake of the power boats passing through. There were almost as many power boats on the water as there were canoes and kayaks, but it looked like the national trend was holding up in the Bay. Which is to say, wildlife watching as an outdoor activity is on the rise, with a 19% increase in participation over the last ten years, while fishing participation declined by 15% over the same period of time. There are still a lot of people engaged in outdoor recreation in the U.S.--87 million, or 2 in five people you meet -- and that doesn't even include the high school senior on my trip, since they didn't count anyone under 16. But the way we choose to interact with nature is changing. It doesn't always require early weekend mornings, though yesterday was definitely worth the wake up. Besides, there's always Sunday for napping.
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Comments
Mark Powell — Aug 27 2007 12:07 AM
You know Tomales is favored by the man in the grey suit?