WW: Still life with sea cucumber

(Parastichopus californicus. At up to 60 centimetres, the largest sea cucumber in the world, though this one is only about 4 inches extended. Excellent eating, too. As are all but one of the seaweeds pictured.)

Postcards

The instant I start an outbacking trek, I'm looking for postcards.

I define as backward those towns that sell corny postcards, spineless those whose cards depict other places. But the cards I buy fly everywhere, under governance of an elaborate formula.

Lovers get the best ones, followed by Europeans, who suffer a debilitating lack of outback. From there, priority hinges on the closeness of the relationship.

The mailing list is as long as the journey, and I agonize, sometimes for days, over which to send whom. But in the end, I'm mostly just talking to myself.

Slipping cards through slots in post office doors and general store counters soothes the rower, the part of me that always faces aft, and reminds others that I exist, a fact I fear they are likely to forget.


(Adapted from Rough Around the Edges: A Journey Around Washington's Borderlands, copyright RK Henderson. 1922 postcard of the Osoyoos custom house courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous collector.)

WW: Geoduck

(This is just the end of a neck that can reach six feet in length. As the largest burrowing clam in the world, Panopea generosa is a Herculean labour to catch, made more exciting by the fact that it lives in the lowest tidal zone. Hence the bay is on its way back while you furiously dig.)

The One Pure and Clear Thing

"Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed—that is human. When you are born, where do you come from? When you die, where do you go? Life is like a floating cloud which appears. Death is like a floating cloud which disappears. The floating cloud itself originally does not exist. Life and death, coming and going, are also like that. But there is one thing which always remains clear. It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.

"Then what is the one pure and clear thing?"

— From a Ch'an poem; favorite teaching of Seung Sahn.

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: School apples

(Swung into this back-county primary school a few days ago, looking for a place to get off my bike and rest in shade. As I coasted into the carpark I was delighted to find an entire row of summer apples! Two dwarf varieties – a red one and a green one – espaliered against the front fence. Both heavily in fruit.

There's nothing like a tart, juicy, sun-warmed apple of a late July afternoon, when the tarmac is melting under your tyres and you're hungry and thirsty. I don't know whose idea it was to instal this waist-high orchard, but he or she was a genius. Now I come up with excuses to pass this school – which is generally well off my track – so I can enjoy a few more.

May your scrumping be as rewarding.)

Starfish Report 2018

Evasterias troscheli

We had a minus-4 tide the other day and I got in an epic mile-long wade along the tidelands. The biological diversity was outstanding; next best thing to diving.

Among the prolific sea life present were three starfish, all of which presented reasons for hope, if not celebration, that the starfish plague may be slowing down, now that it's wiped out most of our sea stars.

I was first delighted to find several blood stars (Henricia leviuscula). These striking neon echinoderms have been a favourite since childhood. Seldom found intertidally – testimony to the rare opportunity of this very low tide – they were before the die-off omnipresent on mud-bottomed diving grounds.

One adult specimen I found had small scrapes on its disc. These might have been signs of incipient viral infection, or abrasions caused by being dashing about in the "surf" created by passing boats. I also found a few tiny individuals; normal for this time of year. With the exception of that first adult, none showed visible signs of disease (yet?).

Sadly, not a single sunflower star (Pycnopodia helianthoides), of any size, in any condition, was present. It does seem this beautiful if rapacious species, a fixture in quiet northern water until very recently, has been driven to extinction.

Further proof are the leather stars (Dermasterias imbricata) that now stud the beach and shallows. Formerly thinly represented on lower Sound

Adult Henricia leviuscula

beaches, because a favourite Pycnopodia food, Dermasterias is now virtually the only star left.

That population, at any rate, enjoys a natural immunity to the horrific seastar wasting disease, and appears healthy.

Finally, good news and bad on the mottled starfish (Evasterias troscheli) front. Good, because I encountered several specimens of this similarly once characteristic species. Bad, because every one was tiny; a year old, at most.

The wasting virus tends to take a few years to locate and destroy its victims, thus the average size of this species indicates it hasn't yet been able to out-manœuver the plague.

But its presence at all on this ravaged beach suggests that a healthy breeding population exists in the deeper, colder water offshore. With luck and a bit of Darwinian cunning, it may yet return.

Thus the state of the starfish.

It's hard to express how painful all of this is. They may be "just starfish", but this attractive class has been such an integral part of my life, albeit unrecognised till they were gone. Along with most other people, it never occurred to me I might one day wake up to a North Pacific functionally bereft of seastars.

And the creeping suspicion we'll lose many more beloved habitats and life forms before we've seen the end of the Anthropocene.

Immature Henricia

WW: Golf pollution

(I have no idea why golfers are so avid to bat their little balls into the world's watercourses, but I wish they would stop. Here you see just four of about a dozen I encountered on the tideland a few days ago.

I once snorkelled around a small island that was within view of several waterfront houses, and collected a bucketful of balls off the bottom in the process. The presence of a few more on the littoral itself suggested someone in those houses was playing "hit the island".

Another time my nephew and I were anchored in a pretty little bay, fishing, and a householder came out and started driving at us. His shots consistently fell short, and I suspect he knew we were out of range and meant no insult beyond a little joke, but... fishing, remember? I'd bet the bottom beneath us was already littered with those insufferable little plastic balls.

This snotty habit probably has little environmental impact beyond unsightliness, but it's still contemptuous and annoying.

Grow up, people.)