Sting

Thunderstorms have returned to Florida’s east coast. On most days this summer the late afternoon dark clouds fat with rain kept their distance while the fringe of green above the beach began to brown. But something jostled that dry pattern and one day in mid-August the familiar claps of thunder and razzle-dazzle of lightening returned, bringing with it the long awaited downpours. For the past ten days the afternoon rain has crashed down in a daily abbreviated monsoon. We’ve been spared the threat of dangerous weather this far into the season, but according to weather wizards, the approach of Tropical Storm Isaac now in the northern Caribbean may change that. Looks like we could be tying down the outdoor furniture and battening down for Sunday and Monday.  

Stingrays are common in coastal tropical waters around the world, but a comparatively rare sight on the Florida beach that I call home. Unlike a hundred other creatures of the deep, until this week I had never seen one washed up in the surf. The one in the photograph below is a baby whiptail stingray in the family called Dasyatidae. Found worldwide in tropical to temperate marine waters, they have flattened pectoral fin discs that are most often oval, but are sometimes seen in a diamond shape. They range in size from seven inches to almost six and a half feet across. The name comes from the whip-like tail, which is longer than the disc. All of the whiptail rays have a venomous barb near the base of the tail for defense. In the picture below the stinger barb is visible just below the small white shell at the top. 

Stingrays are a fish with a cartilage skeleton and related to the shark. Most have the barbed stinger on the tail, which has two grooves on the underside with venom glands. In larger rays the barb can reach a length of almost fourteen inches. It is covered with a thin layer of skin where the venom is concentrated. 

They feed mostly on mollusks, crustaceans, and sometimes small fish, but with eyes on top of the body and a mouth on the underside, stingrays cannot see their prey, so use smell and electroreceptors instead. They bear live young in litters of five to thirteen. 

Usually docile creatures, the most common reaction is to flee any disturbance, but they will use their stinger in cases of self defense. For the victim, the sting causes local trauma, pain, swelling, muscle cramps from the venom, and possibly infection from bacteria. It is a very painful injury, but seldom life-threatening unless the stinger hits a vital area. (Most are familiar with the sad death of Steve Irwin in 2006 from a stingray.) In most cases the barb breaks off in the wound requiring surgery to remove the fragments.

In some countries rays are caught as food using fishing lines or spears. Depending on the country, there are any number of recipes, but in Singapore and Malaysia it is commonly grilled over charcoal, then served with spicy sauce.

Sandbars & Driftwood

Barefoot in the surf again on Sunday. The last few weeks have taught that a walk in ankle deep water offers a completely different perspective, lowers the heat factor by several degrees and takes the mind off time and distance. Tidal flow these past few days has created a long sandbar about twenty yards offshore, a swath of nearly submerged sand enclosed on either side by knee deep water. Constantly washed by the surf, it offers the perfect conditions for wading birds hunting small fish, and for the solitary shell collectors who meander among the pools and inlets. 

Summer is at our doorstep here on Florida’s east coast, a season when few could ask for a prettier or more felicitous environment. While schools are still in session the weekdays remain quiet and unruffled. Weekend crowds are still small, still manageable and arrive with their temporary dash of color and unthreatening ruckus. The days are still untroubled by the furor that comes in mid-June with a bombardment of families on holiday arriving with insatiable children and 200 pounds of beach equipment. For now, a few children romp in the pool, build sand castles and watch daddy fish, but hardly a number to dent the passage of golden days.

Not the avid shell collector, my walks on the beach are never an eyes-down search for the perfect specimen. That’s not to say that I amble along uncaring or blind to the possibilities of the unusual, and I do turn my attention to the curious shape or color half-buried in sand. By now, the dime-a-dozen examples that blanket the sand seven days a week go by unnoticed, but I am vigilant for a couple of the rarer shells or lifeforms. One favorite is something called a seaheart, and in my days here I’ve managed to find eleven of them, most often pulled from a tangle of seaweed. A dark brown tropical seed, they are carried to the ocean by freshwater streams and rivers, drifting on ocean currents and later washing up on distant shores. They float because they have an internal air pocket trapped by a hard outer covering on the bean.

Another hard-to-find favorite is the sand dollar, something that is commonly seen in broken pieces on the beach. These shattered remnants are part of the animal’s sun-bleached skeleton, minus its skin of tiny velvet-textured spines and small hairs. Only once have I come across a whole, unbroken sand dollar skeleton, and until Sunday had never found a living specimen. Conditions were right, and suddenly there at my feet, half buried in sand three inches underwater was a brownish-green sand dollar. From the moment I lifted it from the water I could feel the spines and tiny hairs moving in my hand. In spite of my fascination with a living sea creature I had never seen up close, underlying that feeling was a tinge of guilt at killing it by not returning it to the water.

The photo above shows a white sand dollar skeleton and the brown sand dollar picked up on Sunday. Along with it are two shells, a starfish and three small pieces of driftwood that caught my fancy on different walks.         

Feathered Punk

One bird common to this stretch of coastal Florida has for a long time caught my eye, most of the time raising a smile with its punk rock feather-do. Not at all a rare sight most months of the year, it mingles freely with the more common gulls and is visible on most walks up and down the beach. I have wanted for some time to find out more about this bird, but have been stymied by lack of a name to start with. The other day, during a visit with nearby friends, I was invited to have a look at a bird book laying out on the coffee table. No plan, no thought, the book fell open to a page showing this familiar bird of the wacky crown. “So, that’s what it is!” I exulted, “a royal tern.”

In my case at least, shyness or aloofness in any creature of legs or wings tends to heighten curiosity. Try to creep a little closer and they edge away, or approach within even slight proximity and see them dash or flitter away. The royal tern is perhaps the shyest of birds and won’t stand still at any advance. Without a telephoto lens, good photos are hard to get. In most situations I swear by the camera on my iPhone 4S, but it’s next to useless in capturing a good close up of the royal tern.

The appearance of the royal tern in both sexes is similar. It has a white face, neck, breast and belly, with black legs and a thick bill of bright orange. The back and upper wings are pale gray, the rump and tail white, often with dark edgings. The tail is long and deeply forked tail. Average wingspan in an adult is 51 inches (130 cm). Length is from 18–20 inches (45-50 cm) from beak to tail, and average weight anywhere from 12-16 ounces (340-450 grams). The royal tern’s most interesting feature is its black cap with the spiky crest at rear of its head, or what I call punk rock spikes. This spiky cap is more prominent during breeding season and in winter becomes a little patchy, a sort of ornithological call for Rogaine.

Feeding is sometimes in small secluded bodies of water like estuaries, mangroves and lagoons, but the royal tern will also hunt for fish in open water, typically within a hundred yards of shore. When feeding in open water the bird dives from heights near thirty feet, usually alone or in groups of two or three. When tracking large schools of fish they can be seen feeding in large groups. Most often their prey is small fish such as anchovies, weakfish, and croakers. Fish is the main source of food but they will also eat insects, shrimp, and small crabs swimming near the water’s surface.

The females lay one or two buff or whitish colored eggs with brown blotches in an unlined shallow depression in the sand. The eggs are incubated approximately one month. After the eggs hatch the chicks remain in the ‘nest’ for about a week. About two weeks after hatching the chicks gather into groups called a crèche and are fed primarily by their parents who recognize offspring by voice and looks. When the chicks are a month old they start to fly.

With a dab of new knowledge about these standoffish and spike-headed denizens of the water’s edge, my enjoyment of their presence on walks can only be enhanced. There is the sense of a small opened window that will now widen my appreciation of one more feathered member of this sandy environment.

Winter Flights

Walks on the beach have been rare these past weeks for a number of reasons. Though it doesn’t appear to bother too many others, recent tides washing in heavy loads of seaweed day after day have left the beach splotchy brown and saturated with a strong odor. Some days have also brought high tides that flood the beach so completely, it becomes a case of picking a path through ankle deep water, mushy sand and slimy seaweed. We still have the smelly seaweed and a beach less than pretty, but this week brought temperatures in the upper seventies and when the sun is bright a walk on the beach doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

With the tide at its lowest point, the sun warm enough for shorts and a T-shirt (and a few bikini-clad young ladies), I wandered down for a walk. For the first quarter mile the smell of seaweed was inescapable, but soon enough the ocean air cleared all that from my nose and there again was the sense (almost taste) of pure oxygen-like air blowing into my face. Still, it must be a slack period in the ever-churning cycle that brings a calendar of new faces to Florida’s east coast beaches. Yes, the air is tumbled about by gusts of wind and the blue-green water splashes onto the sand in a spill of foam and seashells, but little of that now is refreshing. On most occasions a walk on the beach here is paused frequently to stop and observe a curious bird, fish or crab, to examine an interesting shell or other tidbit washed up onto the sand. Not much out there now to catch the eye other than washed up Clorox bottles and waterlogged shoes.

A new sign a mile down the beach has appeared. It relates to the concrete fire ring that turned up one day last year. Perhaps people were building their fires in ways that broke certain rules and the Beach Patrol decided a sign was needed. Maybe some didn’t have the proper permit, or possibly the county is looking to gather extra revenue from permit fees. My thought is that during the daylight hours when there is no fire, the fire ring is almost invisible until you are right up on it. Children running on the beach could easily slam right into the concrete. It makes one wonder why they haven’t painted the outer rim a bright easy-to-see color, but it might be because fire, water and salt air would quickly erode the paint.

Though not an especially memorable walk on the beach, my belief still holds that every walk, no matter the season, somewhere along the way yields a tiny impression that makes the walk worthwhile. As it happens, today’s tiny impressions were nothing more than a waterlogged white feather and a single exquisite shell. I backtracked twice to see closely these two things glimpsed out of the corner of my eye the first time.

The first, a feather soaked into the sand in perfect detail and outline, a filmy white inkling of flight trapped in the sand like a temporary fossil of this wet environment. Fortunate that it found space in a corner of sand away from the browning seaweed.

With all the seashells at my feet this past year rare finds are few and far. Just the same, there are times a beautiful shell rolls to your feet out of the surf. This one went straight into my pocket, and when cleaned later got its own private beach inside a round box. The reddish speckles against a spectrum of gray—perfection.

Rain & Tide

An unusual amount of rain fell along Florida’s central east coast on Monday, and while it seemed benevolent enough at the time, the effects of it all on the beach landscape were not visible until Tuesday morning. Of course, heavy rainfall by itself wasn’t enough to create all the changes visible on the early winter beach. A strong, seaweed heavy tide swept in some time before daybreak working its way up and down the sand like heavy grading equipment and leaving a completely new arrangement of sand, sculpted around spongy swaths of yellow brown seaweed.

From the stairs leading down to the beach on the north side it is impossible to reach the sand without either leaping over a great canyon, or clambering over the railings and jumping down. The south stairs were blocked by sand until someone came with a rake and opened a narrow pathway down onto the beach. But once there, a tangled and fetid garden of seaweed lay between the stairs and still close surf line. These are not the prettiest of times at the beach, but such churnings of sand and seaweed are a vital part of an environment constantly renewing itself.

Went over to historical Canal Street for some Christmas shopping and later some lunch at Clancy’s Mexican restaurant across the drawbridge. Surely because the area has been designated as an historical landmark, Canal is always charming in it rows of giant palm trees, always immaculately manicured and now entwined with Christmas lights. Walking along the street you wouldn’t find as much as a dropped receipt or single cigarette butt anywhere along its pristine length.

Looking out to the street from the patio at Clancy’s Mexican Restaurant

Back home just at the start of a sudden shower and unexpected fall in temperature. The rain was quick in passing but the chill has stayed behind making a pullover necessary outdoors. I clambered down to the beach late in the afternoon to investigate an unmoving pelican perched on the sand and visible from my windows. Another sad wrench in nature’s ongoing cycle, the young female bird sat in an awkward lean, legs forward in an odd fashion, and though still alert with clear eyes it was apparent she wouldn’t be rising again. Wild birds don’t otherwise allow humans such near at hand approach. A neighbor came down to see, saying what a terrible and sad thing for the bird. No question the situation is pitiful, but no worse probably than a pelican’s death in old age, a time when blindness from constant dives into the sea has eroded their vision, leaving them unable to catch fish and thus dying slowly of starvation.

A Splendor of Cold Sunlight

Tides and colder weather this season have done a good job of making morning walks a sometime activity. Thinking back to last December I remember nothing about conditions that made getting out on the beach every morning difficult. The arrival of winter this year has had a different effect on the tide and its interaction with the beach, making what was last year’s solid footing into a December ’11 mushy mess. Something about the look of the beach last Wednesday encouraged a walk, but it was one that quickly turned into a plodding drag through a pudding bowl of sand in a hard and cold wind. It was a long three miles of dodging surf and glistening wrack, wet and tangled with seashells. The deceptive part is always the direction of the wind, and what is a helpful boost in one direction becomes a delaying force the other. The combination of cold and unstable footing eventually got me home wheezing with long dormant asthma.

But there is another side. While those winds and tides enforce their changes upon the beach and sand, and while the encroaching cold brings on shivers and long sleeves, what a sky and what an ocean fill out the rest of the picture! I have taken to eating breakfast on the patio for the pleasure of observing the water and sky in early morning. Apart from the obvious there are forces unseen that now pass their brush and palette across sky and water, leaving behind a canvas fresh with the textures of brand new blues, fresher greens and chilly grays, all fluffed by overhanging clouds of winter white.

The best of this season for some oceanfront dwellers is the absence of people, the emptiness and barren aspect of a beach in winter, when even the faraway silhouette of another is almost nettling. These December mornings I sit with breakfast in the splendor of cold sunlight, the island adirondack chair offering a throne-like vista of empty sea and untrammeled beach, and I mumble a silent thanks for the distance of everything but sky, ocean, sand and my own thoughts.

Small Moments of the Ordinary

Yesterday included a couple of memorable moments in the humdrum cycle of hours. Always looking to extract a glimpse of the unusual during these days along the edge of Florida where it meets ocean blue, and more times than not something will arise to banish the mundane. Surprises are not always found at the water’s edge, but now and then popping up in unexpected places on dry land.

Wednesday’s pop-ups were on the beach, in my front yard and at the barber shop in town. With hair hanging around my ears I called the place in town where I get regular haircuts to make an appointment, but learned that my usual barber is on vacation. Too long to wait for her return, I made an appointment with someone unknown. From that moment forward visions of butchered hair haunted me. Don’t imagine that mine is a complicated hairstyle requiring the secret and magical arts of one single wizard barber. Probably the plainest kind of cut on the style chart—short but not buzzed. That said, I worry unreasonably, always afraid that no one but the usual barber can do it to my satisfaction. Now, with the deed done I look back and know the worries were uncalled for.

Out of the barber’s chair my first thought was that it looked better than usual, more to my liking than what I get from the barber now on vacation. Carol Ann is a friendly lady with a good eye for hair who looks more like a soccer mom than a hair stylist. Who knows? Maybe she’s a soccer mom as well as a hair stylist, but she can cut my hair anytime.

Sitting out on the patio yesterday I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see a black snake only a short slither off the patio, head raised six inches off the ground looking me right in the eye. Maybe three feet long, not even as thick as a broom handle, clearly not a poisonous snake, I guessed it to be a black racer, a type not uncommon to this area. What was he doing in the pitt shrubs by my patio? With the number of lizards scampering in and across the shrubs during this season, it’s pretty clear he was looking for a bite to eat. After a minute or two the snake retreated into the bushes where the hunting is probably better.

My walk on the beach came late in the afternoon on Wednesday, a time when some of the heat had passed away with little worry about slogging though sledge hammer glare. The weather forecast predicted rain and I was almost disappointed it never came. Walks in the rain are often exhilarating as long as lightning is not a threat and the day before I met a downpour as refreshing as a desert oasis. But Wednesday’s post-snake walk was one without the predicted rain. Water temperature being what it is in mid-summer (70°-75° F) dead fish on the beach are a rare sight. Little but sand, water and people in mid-July, with even small numbers of jelly fish washing up. The hefty half-fish I came upon yesterday was a surprise. Looks to me like it was in the wrong place at the wrong time and met some hungry jaws out there in the blue. Not altogether sure my guess is accurate, but I think it is one called a jack fish. An hour or two prior to the photograph here, it was a fish at least fourteen or fifteen inches long. Can’t be very pleasant to suddenly be bitten in half, even for a creature without a central nervous system.

Nature of a Dune

With each morning’s ramble down the beach, views to the left and right are forever a lesson, a shifting example of the divergent worlds of land and water. For the first half hour the ocean pounds on my left, while on the landward side eddies of wind stir the sand, at times rustling sea oats and beach grass on the dunes. Turning back toward home the contrasting sides shift and both land and the ocean opposite are affected by a different angle of the sun. The change in perspective is immediately noticeable in light and shadow, particularly toward the dunes. For the past months my main focus has been on the ocean with its shifting currents of blue, blue-gray, green and blue-green, on the cresting surf and the wet sand with its scatter of shells and birds. A return of the sea turtles has turned my eye toward the dunes.

Dunes are the result of wind blowing across plants on the beach. Sand particles are carried on the wind and as the wind passes across plants the windspeed slows and sand grains fall to the ground. At most times wind is a constant on the beach and little by little the windblown sand piles up and a dune grows. A variety of grasses and wild flowers colonize the dune as it grows taller. Dunes create a protected environment on their landward side allowing for various kinds of plants, which in turn support birds and animals. At different times the appearance of beach mice, doves and tortoises is not surprising. The lowest dunes provide a habitat for sea turtle eggs, sand crabs and other marine creatures. They also provide a barrier to salt intrusion from high tides and storm surges, in addition to protecting the land behind from erosion. Without the sea oats and other plant life dunes would have no anchor and blow away, changing the ecosystem drastically.

The turtle nesting season along Florida coasts is from mid-May until late October, a period of months when early morning patrols by marine biologists pinpoint the spots where large sea turtles have left egg deposits. Barriers are erected around the nesting sites, with the laying and approximate hatching dates marked on the barrier posts. The sites are monitored daily until the eggs hatch and the baby turtles make their dash to the water.

The past week four turtles have made their way to the stretch of beach along my walking path. Though it is my second time to be here for the season, there was still some excitement a few days back when I came upon a newly laid nest and the barricade put up by the biologists.

At a nesting site a mile south I got a good look at the surrounding dunes and was taken by the burst of spring growth in and around the dunes. Along with the biological renewal seen in the laying of turtle eggs, there is also a visible regeneration, a regrowth of plants and wildflowers. Interspersed with the brownish green of sea oats is a burst of red, yellow and orange from a bloom of dune sunflowers, firewheel and most surprising a fat pumpkin. In the midst of all this color I looked back over a shoulder to see the flat swath of blue water, the morning sunlight a scattering of jewels on its surface.

Something perfect about the scene a short distance above the turtle nest. Sun-worn stairs down to the beach crowded by sea oats, the white chair off to the side of a spreading firewheel plant.

A happy Halloween growing amidst the dried branches of palmetto and beach grass. Most curious of all is the Spanish moss to the left of the pumpkin’s vine and leaves. More common to the southern live oak, where it droops from branches, this plant (Angiosperm) is not common in sand dunes.

A spread of dune sunflowers, a sprinkle of firewheel in back, this is good example of the anchor plants provide to halt erosion and protect the land behind.

Couldn’t resist the splendor of this beach bouquet—a beautiful spray of firewheel flowers.

Each turtle nest is marked with this sign warning the curious to keep outside the set up barriers, to in no way interfere with the natural hatching of these endangered creatures.

For more detail on the laying of turtle eggs and their hatching, look back at Dreaming of the Sargasso Sea.

Free 2Nite

Obvious now that summer is on its way to the beach. Southern winds are blowing in signs of warmer air, greener water, cumulous clouds adrift on pale blue skies. It’s in the air and upon every leaf, in every greeny tumble of surf and everymornings of pale blue air. A plane flies over the coastline pulling a long banner with the words, LADIES DRINK FREE 2NITE PUB 44 N SMYRNA BEACH. The long strip of beautiful local beach is seeing more footprints and the honky-tonks are heatin’ up downtown. “Summertime and the livin’ is easy…” The words could be about summer in NSB.

Four and five times a day someone walks past tossing off the often repeated, ‘Beautiful day, isn’t it?’ I have all the appreciation in the world for the climate here, but it’s hard not to take it for granted. My unspoken answer to those ‘beautiful-day-isn’t-it’ greetings is commonly “When is it not?” Probably sounds offhand but living along this particular beach is for sure a true blessing.

On an early afternoon walk the sand just above the surf line is a hard-packed wet cardboard brown. A little more traffic on the beach this Saturday but not anything that says crowded. Walking is a mind-free business, on and off the almost warm surf splashes up my ankles, raising the thought of going for a swim. The lifeguard’s chair a hundred feet back had a sign saying that ocean water temperature is 70°. Probably a little cold for us timid bathers but the water seems fine for the hundred or so bouncing on waves. Swimming season is upon us, each day closer to perfect.

I pass some time on the patio with a couple of friends fresh from their beachcomber chores. The haul today was a tiny plastic toy soldier, heaved across the waves from who knows where. That little soldier now drafted into duty stands guard for Clarisse, a faded-pink metal flamingo perched on the patio. Poor old Clarisse. She’s another story.

Death Takes No Holidays

With all the severe and mostly miserable weather affecting much of the country over the past couple of weeks, it seems almost spiteful to bring up Florida weather conditions. True, here in the near tropical clime of central and southern Florida there is little to complain of weather-wise. Not to say that every day here is sunshine and shorts. On one day this week I walked an hour on the beach in T-shirt and shorts and the very next day shivered under my sweater, pullover and jacket along that same stretch of beach. Certainly not Chicago, but then neither is it Rio.

Friday was another of the cold days and one with not a lot of sunshine. Definitely felt like winter all day long. As far as walking on the beach goes, time and stubbornness have hardened me to some degree and short of a thundering downpour, some time in the day will find me plodding along the sand. So I bundled up this afternoon and struck out. Didn’t even have time to settle into a pace before coming upon one of those disturbing but inevitable sometime sights in nature’s coastal preserve. First thought was, “Why isn’t that bird scrambling to get out of my path?” Well, the unfortunate creature was beyond flight, and very near beyond any movement at all. It was a young male pelican. Standing a mere three feet away, I watched his final strength draining out on the sand, a once magnificent bird unaware of all outside the final struggle for life, unseeing of the tall human bulk looming over him. His head slowly drooped to the sand and then just as slowly struggled up again. With legs stretched behind him in an ungainly spill, I began to feel like a peeping Tom intruding on the bird’s closing battle. I moved on down the beach.

For the past week or more there’s been here on the central east coast what they call a bloom of jellyfish. This time it’s the cannonball jellyfish and the surf line is dotted with numbers of them washed ashore. From the first appearance of these odd-looking blobs I’ve been struck by how much they resemble the one-man fighter planes of the type flown by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Odd thing is, these are edible “fighter planes” considered a delicacy in Japan. But hold on, it’s not likely to see anyone picking up these interesting jellyfish to munch on.

The cannonball jellyfish, sometimes called a cabbage head jellyfish, despite being a good swimmer sometimes washes up on beaches in large numbers. The shape is almost what you would expect a futuristic plane to look like. It has the stealth bomber type of graceful flaring wings and a circle of “thruster jets” at the back. Naturally, in the water the ‘wings’ become an umbrella shape with the ‘thruster’ becoming short stingers or nematocysts. Some books will describe the cannonball as bluish or yellowish with a brown border. Those here on Florida’s east coast are clear and uncolored apart from a reddish border and reddish stingers. The reference books describe them as sometimes reaching seven inches in diameter. Many of the New Smyrna Beach cabbage heads are eight to ten inches in diameter. The good news is, a cannonball jellyfish has only a mild sting and brushing against one in the water won’t usually result in a sting. As for eating the jellyfish, bear in mind that it must be harvested alive and healthy and prepared properly. Dried is the most common method.

Two photos show what looks likes like healthy (at one time) specimens.

Forty minutes after first seeing the unfortunate pelican, I passed him again on the way back. Struggles over, he was at peace finally in some other plane.

Rainy Day Passing

There are days when the weather conspires to make the beach a place for natural inhabitants alone, a place inhospitable to creatures without feathers, gills or hard shells. At such times water, wind or cold temperatures throw up unwelcome signals warning that conditions are, temporarily at least, on the outer edge of safe.

Today was that kind of day on Florida’s east coast at the latitude of 29°. From early morning, rain was heavy and the only thing on the beach apart from sand and seashells was birds, and even they were few in number. Looking through windows the outdoor perspective was little other than ghost-like lines rubbed faint by hard falling slants of rain, the definition of horizon, surf and sand smeared, if not by cloud or fog, then by a weakness of light. One of those times when warm and dry interiors offer the better choice.

Hard and steady rain lasted through the early afternoon but by three o’clock people were sniffing the air, venturing out for a look at what the sodden beach might hold. Not long before a straggle of people were plodding along the water’s edge. It wasn’t a pristine stroll, as rain and tide had worked together to throw up a grimy beard of jetsam and ruined bits of plastic along the surf line, a sight thankfully rare during these colder months.

A half mile south I came upon a first-time sight, one that no one likes to see. At some time during the long hours of rain, a sea turtle—what looked to be a mature Loggerhead—had come ashore, and there just above the waterline breathed its last. Orange paint spattered on its back is probably a marker put there by the beach patrol. Tire tracks circling the turtle could come from only the beach patrol who relay such information but do not get involved. Local fish and wildlife officers will pick up the turtle and determine the cause of death. Disease or sickness is a possibility, but so is cold shock, the very same that is affecting catfish and snook.

Sad to see the death of a magnificent creature like the sea turtle, but then nature in its myriad ways is nothing if not example of pure democracy.

Some interesting sea turtle tidbits:

• Sea turtles have existed for over 100 million years.

• Florida beaches are ‘home’ to eighty percent of Loggerhead turtles in the US.

• Scientists estimate that only one in 1,000 babies reaches adulthood.

• Hatchlings weigh 1 ounce and are 2 inches long; adults often grow to over 3 feet long, weighing 200-300 pounds.

• Nest temperatures during incubation determine a turtle’s sex. Males develop in cooler temperatures, females in hotter temperatures.

Tangled in Seaweed

This Wednesday past, a combination of wind and tides worked a magic wand over the beach here, and as far as the eye could see was nothing but a wide and flat, clean ribbon of beige, almost white sand. The trash buggy that trundles by two or three times a day never had occasion to stop and scoop up so much as a bottle cap.

But tide and wind are fickle, and the scene is quick to change. With the arrival of true autumn weather, the morning tide has shifted such that early morning walks have become impossible, or next to it, unless you have webbed feet or the stamina to trudge through loose unpacked sand for long distances. After lunch has now become the best time for good beach conditions, and I’ve adjusted my walking schedule to fit that hour.

Today I look out toward the beach as I am tying my shoelaces and see what looks to be a long unending smudge of seaweed browning the waterline. Before my feet ever touch sand, a strong salty tang of ocean and fish reaches me, growing stronger the closer I get. I haven’t seen the seaweed this abundant in weeks, and it doesn’t bode well for clean, trash-free walking. Sure enough, within minutes I spot the first gaudy splash of red plastic tangled in the wrack. The seaweed works like a broom to sweep rubbish in to the beach, and when considered, you have to say it is a good thing. Once the plastic is tossed up on land, it’s less risk to the ocean ecology, and easier for a regular patrolling trash collector to find. Certainly not pretty to see on the beach, but much of it will be picked up before washing out to sea again.

Old plastic bottles and waterlogged shoes aside, the ocean and sky today are outstanding, and bubbly tiaras of foam dance on the wave tops under a wide stretch of puffy clouds and cerulean sky. I stop for a few moments to look out and over the seaweed mess to the majesty of two blues above and below, and the twin whites of cloud and foam. I aim the camera but have doubts that any gadget can capture and hold this almost perfect combination of elements.

Something new in the tide these past few days, another deposit of seed pods, possibly from a faraway land. Like the seahearts, these smaller black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) pods have drifted on the currents to wash up on a Florida beach. They are a pretty diversion from the bottle caps and bits of plastic, and lay in olive green scatters around clumps of wet and glistening yellowish brown seaweed. I find a plastic cup that once held Cheerios, and rinsing it clean in the surf, use it to hold a collection of the green pods. By the time I have finished my walk I have what turns out to be a bowlful. Two of them I plant right away in the big white urn of geraniums outside my windows. A friend tells me she tried getting these pods to grow, but had little luck. Black mangrove naturally grows in coastal tidal areas throughout the tropics and subtropics of America and Africa. It grows marginally removed from the shoreline, where it can be reached only by high tides. Not exactly the conditions found in that white urn of geraniums outside my window, but…

A Cold Radiance

Woke this morning to find that someone had flipped the calendar ahead about three weeks. No, I didn’t open my eyes to turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie, but rather biting cold and ferocious wind. Three steps from bed and I decided these tile floors are out of season, and jumped for the slippers.

Outside, over the water a special light show was in play, and despite the early morning cold and hard-blowing wind, I grabbed the camera and ran to take some photos. I did manage to get five or six pictures, but my state of half dress in the windy cold made it hard to get a steady shot. Not completely satisfied with the photos, but I believe the radiated light at least comes across.

The surf was tumbling too close to the sea wall and walking wasn’t an option. Near lunchtime the tide receded and the water calmed enough to make a walk look good. And so it was for the most part. But walking south with the wind at my back turned into an almost jog. I felt like I was on a treadmill with the speed set too fast and the track running away from me. When I finally turned back, heading north, I was walking face on into what seemed like a wind machine in overdrive, a hand on my chest pushing me back.

A cold beach in driving wind still has its particular beauty, but it’s all a new scene for me, and a reminder that some winter shopping is on the horizon.