Never used these, actually never opened the box, still zip tied, and don't have anything that fits so, Free,

Might even meet halfway for a delivery,

Stopped in yesterday (Pacheco/Pleasant Hill) for a toddler life jacket, saw the 30% off sign, just confirmed it over the phone, it's still there and is 30% off retail price($2399-30%). Not sure how good of a deal that is but thought I'd post it up. Copperhead color.

Still a fair selection of stuff, got 2 kids life jackets at 40% off.

I came across this passage in the book "The Log from the Sea of Cortez" , Steinbeck, this morning, and lo and behold someone else thought it was good enough to put an excerpt online so here it is.

 http://www.daneverard.co.uk/dan/loop3.html

This comes from "The Log from The Sea of Cortez", and should appeal to any engineers reading it, or anybody who has had the joy of using an outboard motor in real life.

Steinbeck is describing the equipment taken on an expedition to The Sea of Cortez (The Gulf of California), and Tex is the mechanic who went with the expedition.

. . . We come now to a piece of equipment which still brings anger to our hearts and, we hope, some venom to our pen. Perhaps, in self-defense against suit, we should say 'The outboard motor mentioned in this book is purely fictitious and any resemblance to outboard motors living or dead is coincidental'. We shall call this contraption, for the sake of secrecy, a Hansen Sea-Cow - a dazzling little piece of machinery, all aluminum paint and touched here and there with spots of red. The Sea-Cow was built to sell, to splutter its way into the unwary heart. We took it along for the skiff. It was intended that it should push us ashore and back, should drive our boat into estuaries and along the borders of little coves. But we had not reckoned with one thing. Recently, industrial civilisation has reached its peak of reality and has lunged froward into something that approaches mysticism. In the Sea-Cow factory where steel fingers tighten screws, bend and mold, measure and divide, some curious mathematick has occurred. And that secret so long sought has been found. Life has been created. The machine is at last stirred. A soul and a malignant mind have been born. Our Sea-Cow was not only a living thing but a mean, irritable, contemptible, vengeful, mischievous, hateful living thing. In the six weeks of our association we observed it, at first mechanically and then, as its living reactions became more and more apparent, psychologically. And we determined one thing to our satisfaction. When and if these ghoulish little motors learn to reproduce themselves the human species is doomed. For their hatred of us is so great that they will wait and plan and organise and one night, in a roar of little exhausts, they will wipe us out. We do not think that Mr Hansen, inventor of the Sea-Cow, father of the outboard motor, knew what he was doing. We think the monster he created was as accidental and arbitrary as the beginning of any other life. Only one thing differentiates the Sea-Cow from the life that we know. Whereas the forms that are familiar to us are the results of billions of years of evolution and complication, life and intelligence emerged simultaneously in the Sea-Cow. It is more than a species. It is a whole re-definition of life. We observed the following traits in it and we were able to check them again and again:

Incredibly lazy, the Sea-Cow loved to ride on the back of a boat, trailing its propeller daintily in the water while we rowed.

It required the same amount of gasoline whether it ran or not, apparently being able to absorb this fluid through its body walls without recourse to explosion. It had always to be filled at the start of every trip.

It had apparently some clairvoyant powers, and was able to read our minds, particularly when they were inflamed with emotion. Thus, on every occasion when we were driven to the point of destroying it, it started and ran with great noise and excitement. This served the double purpose of saving its life and resurrecting in our minds a false confidence in it.

It had many cleavage points, and when attacked with a screwdriver, fell apart in simulated death, a trait it had in common with armadillos, and several members of the sloth family, which also fall apart in simulated death when attacked with a screwdriver.

It hated Tex, sensing perhaps that his knowledge of mechanics was capable of diagnosing its shortcomings.

It completely refused to run: (a) when the waves were high, (b) when the wind blew, (c) at night, early morning and evening, (d) in rain, dew or fog, (e) when the distance to be covered was more than two hundred yards. But on warm, sunny days when the weather was calm and the white beach close by - in a word, on days when it would have been a pleasure to row - the Sea-Cow started at a touch and would not stop.

It loved no one, trusted no one. It had no friends.

Perhaps toward the end, our observations were a little warped by emotion. Time and again as it sat in the stern with its pretty propeller lying idly in the water, it was very close to death. And in the end, even we were infected by its malignancy and its dishonesty. We should have destroyed it, but we did not. Arriving home, we gave it a new coat of aluminum paint, spotted it at points with new red enamel, and sold it. And we might have rid the world of this mechanical cancer!

Well I'm not sure of the age, and it's kind of a tangled mess, but the main trunk is over 6 ft high and would be a beautiful piece if someone wants to work with it.  I've lived here 25 yrs and it was big and old looking when I moved in.

It needs to go and I hate killing a plant that old.

The brown edges in the pic are the flowers from this year that will fall off pretty soon.

Your voice may make a difference this time.  Make sure you get heard.

I’m not sure why this subject isn’t getting more traction on NCKA but I’m putting it out there now.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has recommended to the California Fish and Game Commission (the deciders for lack of a better word) that the Abalone Fishery be completely closed in 2018. For reasons that are somewhat complex if this happens there is a real possibility that the closure may last decades and may even become permanent.

The decision will be made at the next Fish and Game Commission meeting in early December.

Normally the Commission puts into law the recommendations made by CDFW. However in this case it appears that the Commission is seriously looking for options to keep some sort of a season open.  From my experience this is an unusual circumstance but it is real.

For this reason I believe that everyone who wants to see an Ab season next year needs to contact the Fish and Game Commission and make their position known. 

Don’t get me wrong, if there is a season in 2018 it will be drastically curtailed from even this years season, but I believe there is hope for a 2018 season.

Contacting the Commission is easy, email works, or paper mail if that suits you better.

By email at  fgc@fgc.ca.gov

Physical mail is
California Fish and Game Commission
PO Box 944209
Sacramento, CA 94244-2090


In my opinion the most effective letters are respectful and cite some reasoning for your position.


Here is mine, it got pretty long, yours doesn’t need to be anything like mine, just get your position known. Kinda like voting.


Recommendations for a 2018 Abalone Season

To the California Fish and Game Department,

My name is Dale Della Rosa, I’m a lifelong California resident and have been abalone diving for over thirty years. While I don’t go as often as I used to, it is still important to me, especially as I introduce my son to the sport.

The decision on the 2018 season is slated to be made in December. Therefore, herein, I offer specific comments and proposals.

In the past I believe the normal course of action would be for the Commission to follow the recommendation of the CDFW and the guidelines of the ARMP.  However, in this case with the ARMP admittedly being flawed, the new Red Abalone FMP being in the works, and the observed, albeit slight, improvement in ocean conditions and kelp this year, I believe another course of action is available and I am encouraged by the Commissions’ attitude towards other options that I observed in the video of the Oct 12 session.

With that said I offer the following specifics, which is simply my personal opinion after reviewing all the data I could find as well as a couple trips to the coast last week. One was a trip for surface observation (looking for kelp) and talking with divers. The second one was a personal dive trip to see conditions for myself before writing this proposal.

Recommendation for a 2018 Abalone season;

1.   Limit the number of cards sold to 15000,
2.   Annual limit of 8
3.   Daily limit of 2
4.   Annual limit for Sonoma County and southward of no more than 4 total
5.   Annual limit for Mendocino County and northward of no more than 6 total
6.   Increase the cost of the Abalone card to make the estimated revenue equal to the average revenue of
        the last 3 years.
7.   All other facets of the current regulation remain in place.

This proposal is designed to drastically reduce total take and spread fishing effort across the entire range of open waters while offering a higher level of protection to Sonoma County in light of the higher degree of concerns in that area. 

It is also designed to keep current revenues in place.  A reduction in revenues would result in a reduction in CDFW efforts whether abalone specific or not. The increased card cost is warranted as I believe any reduction in CDFW efforts would be counter-productive.
 
While each item above is painful to the abalone fishing community it offers a way to have a 2018 season versus the CDFW recommendation of a complete closure of the fishery.  Hopefully proposals like this can help the Commission to decide to have a season and at the same time not reduce revenues.
 
Another reason to have some season versus a total closure is poaching. An active group of legal abalone divers is one of the best prevention measures to spot and limit poaching. No season means no legal abalone divers and an extremely limited enforcement effort due to lack of divers to check (just plain less enforcement work) and the funds to have the wardens there. Legal sportsman have always been the in frontline against poaching.

I would also like to make recommendations against some of the options I’ve seen offered.

1.   Changing the minimum size to 8”,

First, while this most likely would reduce take, it has a potentially significant downside. I sincerely believe, when considering everyone involved in the abalone fishery, that in the attempt to take abalone of  8” minimum size more undersize animals would be removed from the rocks and the resulting mortality even when they are immediately replaced would be greater than is now occurring with a 7” minimum size limit.  I believe from experience that it would be highly likely that there would be an increase in the total abalone mortality per legal abalone taken.

Second, this change would result in more >=8” abalone being removed from the breeding pool versus with a >=7” minimum. An 8” abalone produces more offspring than a 7” abalone.  This change could in effect reduce the mass of the breeding pool.

I believe for these two reasons an 8” minimum size may actually be more detrimental than protective to the overall abalone population.

2.   Requiring abalone to be measured before removing from the rock.

In the case of “rock picking” this change might make sense, but most abalone are taken by divers where this measurement would take place underwater out of sight of enforcement officers. Therefore it would be especially hard to enforce to the point of being a mostly meaningless unenforceable regulation.  CDFW especially doesn’t not like regulations that are hard to enforce. This item would just clutter up the regulations.

In closing, I think at this point there is a mountain of undeniable evidence that the abalone population has been under extreme stress and some significant action must be taken. Red Tides, a starfish die off that resulted in a kelp munching urchin population explosion, and warm water intrusion have all contributed to get the abalone population and kelp to its current state.

I’ve spent many hours gathering and digesting what information was available from CDFW surveys and studies as well as other sources. I recently took a trip up thru Sonoma County to observe the Kelp canopy and talk with divers. I also did a single dive day at Van Damme State Park in Mendocino County last week to see the conditions for myself. I was quite disheartened to see the acres and acres of purple urchin barrens where I used to find a vibrant community of sealife including thick kelp and almost countless abalone.  On the other hand during the same dive just a few yards away I was also excited and encouraged by what I found in the current existing kelp beds, sealife and abalone everywhere, truly, cracks where the abalone were shoulder to shoulder “just like it has been for decades”.

Thank You,
Dale Della Rosa

Earlier this year I posted up an article on a significant shark die off in the bay, Here is a followup story about the biological investigation and a probable cause,  interesting stuff, mentions WSB.

https://baynature.org/article/hunt-bay-shark-killer-narrows-suspect/

BTW "Bay Nature" is a super high quality publication about all things Nature related in the Bay Area.

Yeah was some tough days, hope you take some pride/comfort/perverted pleasure in knowing the power you hold.......

Hey is it just me or is it whole lot faster?

https://baynature.org/article/sharks-dying-san-francisco-bay/