Re: [Paddlewise] Water's been warm for this time of year!

  From my perspective in the Pacific NW, the biggest threat the Bay Area
faces is the accelerating sea lion invasion. All these pinnapeds in one
place will surely alter the local climate and cause California to list to
port (or starboard). They have already taken over the docks. What will
be next? The coffee houses?  And then there are the Chinese mitten crabs.
The Bay Area is in grave danger.

BRC

From: "Mike Euritt" <mike.euritt_at_gmail.com>
To: "Paddlewise Paddlewise" <paddlewise_at_paddlewise.net>
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 5:23 AM

> Taking that to things I can observe. SF Bay stunk in the 70's I couldn't
> imagine anyone enjoying water sports on the bay then. Now the water is
> clearer, no bad smell, it seems the pollution controls have worked pretty
> well, not to mention run off (silt) from the hydraulic mining in the 
> Sierras
> from the late 1800 has apparently run out. So now we have two factions of
> enviornmentalists at odds with each other. Those that support the 
> relatively
> recent ecosystem that depended on the silt, and those that want to restore
> the estuaries to what they think it was prior to the hydraulic mining.
> Completely different ecosystems. And an ecosystem in transition as a 
> result
> of our activities not related to GW, though some have made the attempt.
>
> The stink was in part sewage, treated or not, that cities dumped in the 
> bay
> along with household garbage. Since that has stopped it is interesting to
> note that things on the shoreline have changed. It does seem there are 
> more
> shorebirds poking around in the mud, but there used to be more small crabs
> to be seen sunning themselves on the rip rap. A neighbor at the marina 
> tells
> me that even a few years ago there would be thousands of fingerlings to be
> seen from the docks, but they are not here now. Maybe its the cleaner 
> water,
> can mean less food which equals less populations, or maybe its the
> shorebirds eating them all, there are a lot of them. The birds were near
> extinction because of our hunting them for their feathers, in the case of
> the egrets, more birds, eat more fish, same argument with seals and 
> salmon.
> Not hard to imagine fish populations suffering from less food and more
> predation, even if we aren't over fishing.
>
> This study does not need the underpinnings of GW to be worthwhile.
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