june 6

[aquaticbiology]

Time for another sampling trip! Drop everything and come down too!

Yesterday:

Wind Speed: 5mph

Wind Direction: South

Wind Trend: light breeze then seabreeze later

Visual Description: "Water is nice Emerald Green...little bit murky near the beach...no reports of jellies or red tide."

Pressure: 29.97 and rising

Air Temp: 78

Water Temp: 80

MONDAY
NORTHEAST WIND AROUND 5 KNOTS...BECOMING SOUTHWEST IN THE
AFTERNOON. SEAS 1 TO 2 FEET. PROTECTED WATERS SMOOTH. A SLIGHT
CHANCE OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS.

MONDAY NIGHT
WEST WIND 5 TO 10 KNOTS. SEAS 1 TO 2 FEET. PROTECTED
WATERS SMOOTH. A SLIGHT CHANCE OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS IN THE
EVENING.

TUESDAY
WEST WIND 5 TO 10 KNOTS. SEAS 1 FOOT OR LESS. PROTECTED
WATERS SMOOTH. A SLIGHT CHANCE OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS.

All other data about the same.

After a full day of hitting it hard from the Apalachicola mud flats to murky Joe's Bayou, we'll be finishing up at the Bruce Irons Surf Video Party at Hammerhead Fred's in PCB! See you there!

Oh yeah, if there's a huge white van pulling a jet boat getting ever closer to your rear bumper - either go faster or move over!

[RiverOtter]

Oh yeah, if there's a huge white van pulling a jet boat getting ever closer to your rear bumper - either go faster or move over!

:blink: Did you say Jetboat? :biggrin:

http://www2.hotboat.com/image_center/data/521/284attitude2.jpg

[Waterman]

:blink: Did you say Jetboat? :biggrin:

http://www2.hotboat.com/image_center/data/521/284attitude2.jpg



That's aggressive!!! :lolabove:

[Waterman]

Oh yeah, if there's a huge white van pulling a jet boat getting ever closer to your rear bumper - either go faster or move over!

This is what I meant as AGGRESSIVE! :lolabove:

[FoX]

:cool:

[kurt]

So you, Waterman, and UofL will be in town this week.

[aquaticbiology]

Oh, Momma! What a great trip! We even made a quick stop by Gulf Specimen Company in Panacea. If you haven't read the books, you need to, and if you have, he has another one out, but only available at the entrance.

Yep, we use the jet boat (a little smaller and shorter but still "aggressive") since we have to get so many places in so short of time.

Weather was great (good thing we went when we did!), water was so-so clarity, about 8-10ft visibility, with better tannin levels than in April.

Most startling find: PCB, St. Andrews bay, in the cove near the pass - a whole lot of live sand dollars and olive shells were blown over the barrier island from the ocean sand bar into the bay by Ivan and seem to be doing well so far. It's the same place that hurricane Opal picked up huge multi-ton rocks from the jetties and tossed them over into the bay.

Gross-est: The leach pits at the paper company flooded AGAIN earlier this year releasing tons of sulfuric and bromic acid once more into Port St Joe bay. Won't be any red tide there, or anywhere else the acid mix wanders, mostly northwestward. Soil samples show non-hazardous but interesting levels all the way up into the upper reaches of West Bay. Same stuff you smell in the air when the wind is from the east. (A big thanks to all those who use bleached paper products - everything from napkins to office paper.)

Next trip sometime in late July unless they want a sample set from after Arlene - SEE YOU THERE!

[kurt]

Thanks for the update!

[Landlocked]

You guys ever see that tar-like stuff wash up on the beach like it used to? I can remember coming home from vacation with beach towels with gobs of the stuff on them. Not to mention the bottoms of our feet.

[kurt]

You guys ever see that tar-like stuff wash up on the beach like it used to? I can remember coming home from vacation with beach towels with gobs of the stuff on them. Not to mention the bottoms of our feet.

Nope.

[Landlocked]

The rigs must have improved how they do things out there.

[aquaticbiology]

the two rigs that were <125 miles out have both been capped - but the goop balls we remember were probably from the offshore oil tanker offload facility, with the new one in place things are doing much better. there were tar pieces and limestone rock chunks too from old washed out roads, and the ever lovely underwater phosphor rock mines are long mined out and gone too, moved south down toward tampa. ah, the old days of being a child on vacation in destin and later panama city beach, the anticipation, reading over and over zim's 'introduction to seashore life' and later all the rudloe books, assembling huge whole growth-series beach shell collections, identifying and cataloging hundreds of tiny microscopic sea shell babies in large tupperware containers of tidal sand we brought home, picking sea urchin spines out of my heel during finals week, the all-natural salt-water aquarium (shudder!), bringing home a mini-coconut that had washed up from somewhere only to have worms spew out of it about 2 days later! wouldn't give those memories up for the world.