Dr. Skip Online

Here in Gulf Shores, Alabama the majority of the people are waxing and waning between frustration and anger, blaming BP and the federal government for not being prepared enough.  Some feel that the booms will protect the marshes but they are like putting bubble gum on arterial bleeding.  Once the waves get much over three feet the oil will lap over the containment booms.  In some places the freshwater from the bays and creeks will sit over the more saline Gulf water and some of the oil will be forced into the interface between the two and go under the booms.

Short term we have the potential to lose the entire shrimp and oyster season and other than a few disaster tourists the beach crowds as well.

Long term – the marshes are nursery areas and the oil’s impact could last for years. Reducing the year classes of commercial and recreational vertebrate and invertebrate species. Since oysters are filter feeders the effects of the spill has the potential shut the fishery down for several years?

The spill could miss us entirely but if the well keeps putting out oil for the next two months like BP and the feds say the chances of that are minimal.

I was thinking that Mussorgsky’s  ‘Night on bald Mountain’ would go well with aerial footage as the oil moved into the marshes. I don’t know why my mind went there but it did.

‘Hang together or hang separately.’

Someone once said that the only constant in the universe is change. I think it might have been Einstein? Be that as it may, one of the changes we’ll all be seeing in the very near future is the death of the incandescent light bulb.
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If you’re not from around here and were wondering about the local seafood I’d like to suggest you try the humble oyster. Alabama is blessed with large oyster beds and a relatively mild winter climate compared to the north. For those of you that like trivia a fresh shucked oyster is the only animal in North America that is traditionally eaten alive. If you listen closely you can hear it yell, “Help me!!” as you swallow it .

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For those of us who were not on the football team and for whom the cheerleaders made an art form out of pretending that we did not exist, there is justice and payback – at least in biological world anyhow. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a cold January Sunday as I sit writing this column and what’s a more perfect topic to write about on a day like this than eels? Our friends down here from the great lakes region are familiar with a nasty bloodsucking fellow up their way called the lamprey and we’re glad that you didn’t bring him with you.

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We’ve all probably heard of the dog Spot in the old “Dick and Jane” stories that we learned to read in the first grade. In the Gulf there’s a fish that doesn’t look like a dog with the common name spot (Leiostomus xanthurus). The spot is a member of the scianidae family like the croaker and red drum.
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You’re bugging me! How often have we said that to our children, a gnat or mosquito? Well, sometimes fish appear to feel the same way.
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The sheepshead (Archosargus progatocephalus) is a member of the porgy family (Sparidae), which is made up of about 120 species. Sheepshead is its common name in the Gulf of Mexico but other areas of the United States it is convict fish, sheephead, seabream and southern sheepshead. Some other common names around the world include kubinskiy morskoi karas’ (Russian), rondeau mouton (French), sargo (Spanish), sargo-choupa (Portuguese), and sparus owczarz (Polish).
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