Saturday, July 30, 2016

Why Are Sharks All Over the South Shore These Days?


OK, it's a misleading headline, and I did it on purpose.

Sometimes we headline-generating types try to assume the viewpoint of the common man who doesn't have a job which requires that he think about sharks for long periods of time. It's easier and more practical than having me try to write from the viewpoint of an actual expert who studied Marine Biology and has hours in the field. It also sets up a straw man for me to knock down.

This is important, because my last paying work as a writer where I wasn't my own boss was as a "Fantasy Football Consultant." You'll notice that, when the shark ate up that kid in Jaws, nobody was clamoring for Chief Brody to call in the Fantasy Football Consultant. Keep that in mind as I flesh out my theories for you.

Sharks are not "all over the South Shore," and it's not a case of them just being around "these days." Only the question mark at the end of the headline saves it from being an outright Lie.

Sharks pre-date humans in Massachusetts. The Wampanoags- who, whatever their faults may have been when dealing with the English, were much more environmentally reasonable than the Palefaces- never really developed Swimming as a mass hobby.  There may have been several reasons for that, but a top contender would be "the English hadn't fished Cape Cod Bay to exhaustion yet, and the larger fish stocks drew in both seals and their toothy predators."

Swimming didn't even catch on with Mr. White until a few hundred years ago, and it wasn't feasible to travel from inland to the beaches until the Industrial Revolution brought about trains and so forth. It wasn't long after the English pushed inland from the coast that a majority of people in America bore young who lived and died without even once thinking about a shark. Until the release of Jaws in the 1970s, the only sea-villains in entertainment were Pirates, Leviathans, U-Boats and the mighty White Whale.

Coastal people tended to work the seas, and sharks were just by-catch to them.  While they undoubtedly saw and perhaps even feared sharks, it was only something to worry about if the ship sank or if the Captain made you walk the plank. Remember, most of the time that man has taken to the seas was well before radios, distress calls and search planes. If your ship sank, you died, and you didn't make it back to shore to tell everyone how sharks ate the rest of the crew.

Sharks were in Cape Cod Bay long before 2010. If I remember to put it in, you can see a pic of the big Great White that was caught a few miles off of Duxbury in the 1930s. Two of the three fatal shark attacks in Massachusetts history happened off Scituate and in Boston Harbor. They went down in the 1800s and 1700s, respectively.

In between then and now, a few strange things happened. The waters off of Massachusetts, which were the first ones to be overfished by Europeans, had their fish stocks drop to very low levels. This was felt up the food chain, through the seals and right to Great White Sharks.
Cape Cod had a bounty on seals for a while, and this drove their numbers down markedly. Low seal totals meant that sharks brought their game elsewhere.

This happened as many areas of formerly isolated Massachusetts coastline were brought under development. It also coincided with the emergence of Beaching as the go-to summer activity. People began to develop formerly empty sections of Duxbury, Plymouth and what have you.

Fish stocks were plummeting, and reached all-time lows by the 1990s. The government intervened, catch limits and keeper sizes went into effect for both commercial and recreational fishermen, and fish gradually started coming back to our waters. This brought back the seals, who began showing up in notable numbers on Cape Cod around the turn of the century.

That's generally a good thing, nature-wise. However, it only took a few years for the sharks to figure out where the seals went, and they began arriving off the shores of Cape Cod in numbers that couldn't helped but be noticed.

It didn't take long for the sharks and seals to grow in number to where Suburbanization became necessary. You could see a seal sunning himself on Duxbury Beach in the 1970s, but it was an unusual thing. It became much less unusual after the century turned.

Likewise, only so many sharks can cruise a particular area. Monomoy, the primary seal and shark hangout, soon spread her apex predator bounty to Orleans, Wellfleet and Truro.  Unlike Monomoy, these are towns with people going to the beach. Truro, not Monomoy, caught the first two shark attacks of the modern era.

We know by shark tagging that the Great Whites summer here, and then head to Dixie for the winter.... regular snowbirds, they are. They sort of follow the Gulf Stream back up here every summer.  To a shark moving north along the US coast, Cape Cod is going to be sort of a roadbock. The seals keep them hanging around once they get here. Competition moves them up along the Cape.

Once they hit Provincetown, they have a decision to make. North equals open sea, East equals open sea and West equals the lovely curved shoreline of Cape Cod Bay. For a fish that primarily eats shore-hugging seals, there's really no debate.

Seals and then sharks have rounded the corner and are now occupying Cape Cod Bay. It's ironic, because one of the selling points of South Shore beaches is "no Cape traffic."

It's more of a trickle than a flood, which makes a lie of the "all over the South Shore" part of the headline. You can learn a lot by judging the results found when sharks are tagged. Monomoy, which is sort of the seals' capitol city, had 14000 shark detection buoy pingings last summer. Duxbury and Plymouth combined for about 200.

Granted, Dr. Gregory Skomal (the shark-tagging guy) focuses his efforts out on Monomoy. I don't think he has ever been tagging in Cape Cod Bay. The South Shore does have shark buoys, however, and these buoys show that sharks are coming from Cape Cod to the beaches of the South Shore. Plymouth was the site of the last shark attack in Massachusetts.

Two bad factors ("bad" for people on the South Shore who are afraid of sharks) kick in at this point.

1) There is nothing to stop the sharks and seals from populating Cape Cod Bay

and

2) It's actually a pretty cool place for seals (and the sharks who eat them) to hang out.

Other than carnivore whales and larger Great Whites, the list of creatures willing to f*ck with a Great White Shark is a small one. Not many of these creatures (Orcas and the like) end up in Cape Cod Bay. The only regular inhabitant of Cape Cod Bay who could kill them is a human. They have a free hand in this town, as the former Sheriff of Lago once said.

The South Shore also has long stretches of uninhabited or sparsely inhabited beach. Duxbury Beach is mostly uninhabited. Plymouth has a lot of coastal housing perched on towering sand cliffs, making it hard for those residents to just trot down to the beach. Seals can come ashore on either spot without much concern over human interaction... I mean, it's tough to sun yourself properly when people keep trying to get you to bounce a ball on your nose, yaknowwhati'msayin'?

Both species could easily get to likin' it here... and there's no reason for them to leave.

The South Shore is populated by people who aren't used to sharks being off of their coasts. I am no superhero type at all, but as a child of the 1970s on Duxbury Beach, I would have saw no threat at all in jumping off of a boat where people had been fishing with big bloody mackerel chunks all day and swimming 100 yards to shore. Even in my 30s, I'd have guessed that Smoking would be the one thing that would kill me over a long swim from a boat to shore.

That is no longer the case. If you view summer as 100 days, like Cape Cod does, Plymouth and Duxbury's numbers show that there was a shark off of each beach every day of last summer... and those were only the ones they got tags into off Monomoy. Perhaps only Poseidon, God and Aquaman know how many Great White Sharks are actually in Cape Cod Bay.

While the threat of a shark attack is still minor if not minuscule, the threat is much greater than it was 40 years ago. The risk is little... but little things mean a lot in a game where the loser is Devoured.


Friday, July 29, 2016

Much Needed Rain Coming Friday Morning


Massachusetts has been in quite a drought, and we have a rain deficit of several inches. That's not going to be a problem today, as soaking rains are set to enter the region.

From the National Weather Service:

BARNSTABLE (and PLYMOUTH) COUNTY:

...FLASH FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT THROUGH THIS EVENING...

THE FLASH FLOOD WATCH CONTINUES FOR

* PORTIONS OF SOUTHEASTERN MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND...
INCLUDING THE FOLLOWING AREAS...IN SOUTHEASTERN
MASSACHUSETTS...BARNSTABLE MA...DUKES MA...EASTERN PLYMOUTH
MA...NANTUCKET MA...NORTHERN BRISTOL MA...SOUTHERN BRISTOL
MA...SOUTHERN PLYMOUTH MA AND WESTERN PLYMOUTH MA. IN RHODE
ISLAND...BLOCK ISLAND RI...BRISTOL RI...EASTERN KENT RI...
NEWPORT RI...NORTHWEST PROVIDENCE RI...SOUTHEAST PROVIDENCE
RI...WASHINGTON RI AND WESTERN KENT RI.

* THROUGH THIS EVENING

* RAIN MAY BE HEAVY AT TIMES IN RHODE ISLAND AND SOUTHEAST
MASSACHUSETTS. RAINFALL TOTALS OF 1 TO 2 INCHES ARE
FORECAST...WITH 2 TO 4 INCH AMOUNTS POSSIBLE IN LOCALLY HEAVY
DOWNPOURS. LOCATIONS NEAR THE SOUTH COAST...CAPE COD AND THE
ISLANDS ARE MOST LIKELY TO RECEIVE THE HIGHEST RAINFALL TOTALS.

* SIGNIFICANT URBAN FLOODING IS POSSIBLE INCLUDING ROADS AND
UNDERPASSES THAT ARE PRONE TO FLOODING IN HEAVY RAIN. SOME
SMALL STREAMS MAY ALSO RISE OUT OF THEIR BANKS.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A FLASH FLOOD WATCH MEANS THAT CONDITIONS MAY DEVELOP THAT LEAD
TO RAPID AND LIFE THREATENING FLOODING. BE PREPARED. IF YOU LIVE
OR WORK IN AN AREA PRONE TO FLOODING...KNOW A SAFE PLACE TO GO IF
FLOODING OCCURS OR IF A FLASH FLOOD WARNING IS ISSUED.

DRIVERS SHOULD PLAN TO AVOID FLOODED ROADS AND HAVE AN ALTERNATE
ROUTE AVAILABLE.

STAY TUNED TO LATER FORECASTS AND BE PREPARED TO TAKE ACTION
SHOULD FLASH FLOOD WARNINGS BE ISSUED





The rain should start this morning, and clear off the Cape by the afternoon. We're looking at anywhere between a half inch and 4 inches of rain. Tropical rainstorms (not a tropical storm) are fickle girls, and you never know where the bounty will be until it falls.

This won't erase our rain deficit. In heavy rains, much of the rain is lost to runoff, once the ground becomes saturated.

Your lawns, flowers and vegetables are already doing their happy dance. The person paying $3000 a week to rent a Cape cottage? Maybe not so much.

Here's the radar shot from 6:45 AM Friday.



Monday, July 25, 2016

Tracking Bridge Traffic Over A Summer Weekend


Just for laughs, we summoned up Google Traffic every hour or so during peak commuting periods.

We struck during mid-summer, which is a peak period around here. We did it before the end of the month, so we spared ourselves the cottage monthly-rental crowd.

We chose a weekend without some major event like a Scallop Festival or the Pan Mass Challenge. We did, however, choose a scorcher of a weekend.

Overall, I'd say we got as easy of a weekend as we could ask for in the summer. We may do another version of this when the PMC is in town (early August), just to see how it compares.

Here's the volume:

Bourne Bridge
Year round daily average (2011) = 42,505 vehicles
Summer daily average = 58,467

Sagamore Bridge
Year round daily average = 51,489
Summer daily average = 70,674

Here's what we found this week. We had no way of counting cars, even though we did do a few drive-bys just to make sure that Google Maps wasn't fibbing.



Friday, 5 PM.... 1 mile backup heading on-Cape at the Bourne Bridge, 1.5 mile backup at the Sagamore.

Friday, 6 PM.... traffic flowing freely over Bourne, minor delays approaching and crossing Sagamore.

Friday, 7 PM-Midnight.....hardly any traffic at all


Saturday, 8 AM.... 1 mile backup at Bourne Bridge, 2 mile backup at the Sagamore Bridge. Accident reported on Route 3 South just before the Sagamore Bridge

Saturday, 9 AM,... Accident at Sagamore still there, traffic back 4 miles, well past Exit 2. Bourne Bridge has 2 mile backup.

Saturday, 9:30 AM... Sagamore delays still back 4 miles, Route 6 East jammed to Chase Road.

Saturday, 10 AM.... Sagamore accident cleared, traffic still back 4 miles, pushing 5. Route 6 East jammed almost to Meetinghouse Road. 2 mile backup at Bourne Bridge, Scenic Highway jammed. Cranberry Highway filling up in Buzzards Bay.

Saturday, 11 AM... Route 3 South jam approaching Exit 3, Route 6 still jammed to Meetinghouse Road, entire Scenic Highway is bumper-to-bumper heading towards Buzzards Bay. Bourne Bridge jam 3-4 miles back onto the mainland. Bounedale Road, which may have 10 houses on it, has several ominous red sections on Google Traffic.

Saturday, 1 PM.... 3 mile backup heading on Cape towards the Bourne Bridge, accident just reported, this delay may grow substantially. One of our scouts tells us that Rte 25 heading to the Bourne Bridge sems to be moving 25 feet a minute. Both the Scenic Highway and the Cranberry Highway have multiple accidents, and are bumper to bumper. Traffic already on the Cape has eased up, just a brief jam after the Quaker Meetinghouse Road area. Traffic easin g up slightly approaching the Sagamore from Plymouth, maybe 3.5 mile backup now instead of 4.

Saturday, 2-4 PM.... 3 mile backups at both bridges, multiple accidents. Both rotaries are jammed. t 4 PM, there had been at least a 3 mile backup at Sagamore for over 8 hours.

Saturday, 6 PM on.... accidents are cleared, traffic flowing smoothly over both bridges.


Sunday, 9 AM... minor delays crossing Sagamore, a mile of bumper-to-bumper on traffic on Route 6 leaving the Cape. The Belmont Circle rotary in Buzzards Bay s getting full, might be church-related.

Sunday, 10 AM.... All clear, other than Route 6 leaving the Cape. The traffic jam is back two miles now.

Sunday, 11 AM... Mile long backup at the Boune Bridge, heading on-Cape. Six mile backup leaving Cape Cod on Route 6. Scenic Highway jammed.

Sunday, noon... Scenic Highway cleared, but Sandwich Road bumper-to-bumper. Mile long backup at the Bourne Bridge, Route 6 leaving the Cape is backed up to Chase Road.

Sunday, 1 PM... Route 6 jammed to Quaker Meetinghouse Road, accident in effect, 6A now jammed back to the Stop & Shop, perhaps people trying to get around the accident. Mile length backup at Bourne. Sandwich Road heading towards Bourne Bridge jammed a mile back.

Sunday, 6 PM.... very little traffic, minor delays leaving the Cape at both bridges. Ungodly good beach day, could be heavy volume later.

Sunday, 7:30 PM... The Exodus.... Rte 6 jammed back to Exit 6. One mile backup at Bourne Bridge. Sandwich Road and 6A have pockets of heavier traffic. Bumper to bumper on 495 around the Middleboro rotary.

Sunday, 9 PM.... One mile backup approaching Bourne Bridge rotary, pockets of traffic on 28 in Falmouth, Yarmouth, Harwich and Chatham. Route 6 approaching Sagamore back to Route 149.

Sunday, 11 PM..... except for a small stretch of 28 in Harwich, all traffic on the Cape is moving unimpeded.


Monday AM.... no Monday traffic, a sure sign of a slow summer weekend


Sunday, July 24, 2016

Great White Shark Sighting Just Off Of Duxbury Beach

My man C.L. Smooth was at White Horse Beach for this picture, but that sign may need to go up off Duxbury Beach this morning...

It's swim at you own risk time in Deluxebury, as an as-yet-unconfirmed sighting of a Great White Shark went down off of Ocean Road North this morning.

The sighting was made by a boater. I could not confirm if it was a more sea-wary Fisherman type of boater. Either way, there's a 10-15 foot fish close enough to shore that the witness was able to assign a street name to his report.

Many fish are mistaken for the Great White. Basking Sharks are common off Duxbury Beach, and usually show up around this time of year, too. They are actually larger than Great Whites, and an inexperienced observer or even a good one who got a hurried look at it could make a classification mistake. They eat nothing but plankton.

If you can see the dorsal fin, here's how you tell a Great White Shark from a Basking Shark. The GWS fin is pointier, like a surfboard, and has a sharp tip. The dorsal fin of a Basking Shark is much more rounded, and looks like the end of an ironing board. The dorsal fin of the Basking Shark will also flop around limply as the shark turns in the water. The GWS, on the other hand, is always on that Cialis tip.

The sighting could also be an Ocean Sunfish, which can get up to 10 feet or so. The video with the Boston guy cursing at a sea monster involved a sunfish.

Dolphins and even whales can also be mistaken for a GWS, and are common enough in Duxbury's waters.

Also, keep in mind that the guy who is telling you about Basking Sharks and Sunfish is sitting comfortably onshore in Bourne. The guy who actually saw the fish in question is saying "Great White Shark."

Either way, the Duxbury Harbormaster is advising you to stay out of the waters off of Duxbury this morning. He sent some boats out to investigate the sighting, but he found nothing. The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy did not detect this shark on their tagged-shark detection buoys.

As my Doctor told me once.... "It's the law of the sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. After that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."

We have several reporters embedded in the region, and will update you when we have some more information.

Be careful out there, my friends. This magazine can not afford to lose any readers.


UPDATE.... he's hanging around, he just set off the shark detector buoy at 2:42 PM today.


Friday, July 22, 2016

Severe Thunderstorm Warning


EVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
MAC023-230145-
/O.NEW.KBOX.SV.W.0059.160723T0104Z-160723T0145Z/

BULLETIN - IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TAUNTON MA
904 PM EDT FRI JUL 22 2016

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN TAUNTON HAS ISSUED A

* SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR...
  EAST CENTRAL PLYMOUTH COUNTY IN SOUTHEASTERN MASSACHUSETTS...

* UNTIL 945 PM EDT

* AT 903 PM EDT...A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WAS LOCATED OVER
  HANOVER...OR 7 MILES SOUTHEAST OF WEYMOUTH...MOVING EAST AT 35 MPH.

  HAZARD...60 MPH WIND GUSTS.

  SOURCE...RADAR INDICATED.

  IMPACT...EXPECT DAMAGE TO ROOFS...SIDING...AND TREES.

* LOCATIONS IMPACTED INCLUDE...
  MARSHFIELD...SCITUATE AND DUXBURY.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

FOR YOUR PROTECTION MOVE TO AN INTERIOR ROOM ON THE LOWEST FLOOR OF A
BUILDING.

LARGE HAIL AND DAMAGING WINDS AND CONTINUOUS CLOUD TO GROUND
LIGHTNING IS OCCURRING WITH THIS STORM. MOVE INDOORS IMMEDIATELY.
LIGHTNING IS ONE OF NATURE`S LEADING KILLERS. REMEMBER...IF YOU CAN
HEAR THUNDER...YOU ARE CLOSE ENOUGH TO BE STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.

&&

LAT...LON 4204 7066 4202 7068 4202 7067 4201 7067
      4203 7074 4215 7072 4214 7069 4209 7064
      4205 7066 4204 7063 4203 7062
TIME...MOT...LOC 0103Z 280DEG 33KT 4211 7087

HAIL...<.75IN
WIND...60MPH

$$

FRANK
SEVERE WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TAUNTON MA
855 PM EDT FRI JUL 22 2016

MAC021-023-025-230130-
/O.CON.KBOX.SV.W.0056.000000T0000Z-160723T0130Z/
PLYMOUTH MA-NORFOLK MA-SUFFOLK MA-
855 PM EDT FRI JUL 22 2016

...A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 930 PM EDT
FOR NORTHWESTERN PLYMOUTH...NORTHEASTERN NORFOLK AND SOUTHWESTERN
SUFFOLK COUNTIES...


AT 854 PM EDT...A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WAS LOCATED OVER ABINGTON...OR
OVER BROCKTON...MOVING EAST AT 35 MPH.

HAZARD...60 MPH WIND GUSTS AND PENNY SIZE HAIL.

SOURCE...RADAR INDICATED.

IMPACT...EXPECT DAMAGE TO ROOFS...SIDING...AND TREES.

LOCATIONS IMPACTED INCLUDE...
BOSTON...BROCKTON...QUINCY...BROOKLINE...WEYMOUTH...BRAINTREE...
RANDOLPH...MILTON...STOUGHTON...MARSHFIELD...EASTON...HINGHAM...
CANTON...SCITUATE...PEMBROKE...ROCKLAND...ABINGTON...DUXBURY...
WHITMAN AND HANOVER.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

FOR YOUR PROTECTION MOVE TO AN INTERIOR ROOM ON THE LOWEST FLOOR OF A
BUILDING.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

South Coast Gas Prices, 7/21/16


Life doesn't play fair, and the Man is always trying to get one over on you. There's not much that you can do about it, as the Man is the Man for a reason, and that reason is not gender-exclusive. Sometimes, the best thing that can be done is to lessen the intensity of the beating.

As a man who has both studied military history and who has gone toe-to-toe with a few run-stoppers in my lifetime, I can tell you that many battles are won and lost by Logistics. That's one of those Army words that can mean whatever they need it to, and it has wide-ranging civilian implications. The short definition is getting to the right place at the right time with (or, in today's case, for) the proper supplies.

Logistics broke several of history's fiercest warlords, men such as Napoleon, Hitler, the Crusaders.... America would be British today were it not for the inherent Logistical Flaws involved with running America from England. Russia would be Nazi or French. Japan would be Mongol. All of Korea would be North Korea, even South Korea.

That's what we're here today to help you with. No matter how hard I work today, you're going to pay about double what you were paying for gas at the turn of the century. Sorry about that. However, if you can shave a few shekels off the Damages, it adds up over a year.

We're going town-by-town, giving you the lowest and highest gas prices you can find there. It's pushing noon on Thursday, July 21st. The prices are whatever has been reported since Monday.

We publish this on Thursday so that you can stumble across this article and fill your tank before they jack the price up to eff over the tourists on Friday.

You don't want to get treated like a tourist in your own home town, babe... that gets old fast. The best way to avoid that is to know your town. C’est ma raison d’etre......




NATIONAL AVERAGE: $2.182/gallon of regular unleaded

MASSACHUSETTS AVERAGE: $2.211

BEST PRICE, MASSACHUSETTS: $1.88/gallon, at both Diamond Fuel and Whitman Gas, South Ave, Whitman
WORST PRICE, MASSACHUSETTS: $3.57, Shell, Sparks Avenue, Nantucket

WORST PRICE, USA: $5.88, some station in Orlando, FL

BEST PRICE, USA: average of $1.82 in South Carolina

CURRENT PRICE OF CRUDE, PER BARREL: $45.36

HEADING TO CAPE COD? Check this.


TOWN BY TOWN:

NO PRICES REPORTED: Rochester, Acushnet, Freetown, Dighton, Berkley

WAREHAM
Best: $2.19, Maxi Gas, Cranberry Highway and Speedway, Main Street
Worst: $2.25, Mobil, Cranberry Highway

MARION
Best: $2.19, Cumberland Farms, Wareham Rd
Worst: none reported

MATTAPOISETT
Best: $2.29, Gulf, Fairhaven Road and Mobil, County Road
Worst: none

FAIRHAVEN
Best: $2.06, Valero, Bridge St
Worst: $2.29, Manny's Service Station, Adams St

NEW BEDFORD
Best: $2.04, Joe's Gas, Nash Road
Worst: $2.39, One Stop Gas, Kempton Street

DARTMOUTH
Best: $2.04, Cumberland Farms, State Road
Worst: $2.39, Shell, State Road

WESTPORT
Best: $2.08, Cumby's, State Road
Worst: $2.34, Pine Hill, Pine Hill Road

FALL RIVER
Best: $2.12, Cumberland Farms, Airport Road
Worst: $2.39, Shell, Plymouth Ave

SOMERSET
Best: $2.08, Cumby's Grand Army Highway
Worst: $2.39, Shell, Wilbur Road

SWANSEA
Best : $2.09, Sunoco, Wilbur Ave
Worst: $2.26, Columbus Express, GAR Highway

SEEKONK
Best : $1.97, BJ's, Highland Ave
Worst: $2.21, Valero, Newman Ave

REHOBOTH
Best : $1.99 Exxon, Anawan St.
Worst: $2.00, Cumby's, Anawan St.

TAUNTON
Best : $2.03, Sunny's on Lawton Ave, GeKo's on Somerset Ave, Super Petroleum on Dean St.
Worst: $2.39, Mobil, County St.



Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Cape Cod And The Islands Gas Prices


Life doesn't play fair, and the Man is always trying to get one over on you. There's not much that you can do about it, as the Man is the Man for a reason, and that reason is not gender-exclusive. Sometimes, the best thing that can be done is to lessen the intensity of the beating.

As a man who has both studied military history and who has gone toe-to-toe with a few run-stoppers in my lifetime, I can tell you that many battles are won and lost by Logistics. That's one of those Army words that can mean whatever they need it to, and it has wide-ranging civilian implications. The short definition is getting to the right place at the right time with (or, in today's case, for) the proper supplies.

Logistics broke several of history's fiercest warlords, men such as Napoleon, Hitler, the Crusaders.... America would be British today were it not for the inherent Logistical Flaws involved with running America from England. Russia would be Nazi or French. Japan would be Mongol. All of Korea would be North Korea, even South Korea.

That's what we're here today to help you with. No matter how hard I work today, you're going to pay about double what you were paying for gas at the turn of the century. Sorry about that. However, if you can shave a few shekels off the Damages, it adds up over a year.

We're going town-by-town, giving you the lowest and highest gas prices you can find there. It's pushing noon on Wednesday, July 20th. The prices are whatever has been reported since Monday.

We publish this on Wednesday so that you can stumble across this article and fill your tank before they jack the price up to eff over the tourists on Friday.

You don't want to get treated like a tourist in your own home town, babe... that gets old fast. The best way to avoid that is to know your town. C’est ma raison d’etre......

MARTHA'S VINEYARD
Best: $2.99, Mobil, State Road, West Tisbury
Worst: $3.15, Shell, Main Street, Edgartown

NANTUCKET
$3.57, Shell, Sparks Avenue

PROVINCETOWN
Best: $2.40, Cumerland Farms, Shank Painter Road
Worst: $2.45, Gulf, Bradford Street

EASTHAM/ORLEANS
Best: $2.33, Tedeschi's, Vandale Circle
Worst: $2.39, Mobil, Route 6A

CHATHAM
Best: $2.35, Roundabout Gas, Main Street
Worst: $2.45, SAV-ON, Orleans Road

BREWSTER
Best: $2.34, Cumberland Farms, Seaway Road
Worst: $2.43, Mobil, Main Street

DENNIS
Best: $2.23, East-West Dennis Road
Worst: $2.49, Shell, East-West Denis Road

YARMOUTH
Best: $2.33, Mobil, Main Street
Worst: $2.45, Mobil, Station Ave

BARNSTABLE
Best: $2.27, BJ's, Route 132
Worst: $2.49, Mobil, Iyannough Road

MASHPEE
Best: $2.27, Shell, Nathan Ellis Highway
Worst: $2.29, Mobil, Great Neck Road

FALMOUTH
Best: $2.21, Johnny's Tune and Lube, East Falmouth Hwy and Cumby's, Teaticket Highway
Worst: $2.33, Mobil, Palmer Ave

SANDWICH
Best: $2.24, CITGO, Route 6A
Worst: $2.34, Shell, 6A

BOURNE
Best: $2.03 (reported at 10:45 AM Wednesaday), Bay Village Full Serve, Main Street
Worst: $2.17, Mobil, MacArthur Blvd/Clay Pond Road

CAPE COD AS A WHOLE, NOT INCLUDING BUZZARDS BAY OR NANTUCKET
Best: $2.15, Gulf, Bourne Bridge Rotary
Worst: $2.49, Dennis Shell, Barnstable Mobil

MASSACHUSETTS AVERAGE: $2.217

NATIONAL AVERAGE: $2.190

PRICE PER BARREL, CRUDE: $44.96

BEST PRICE IN MASSACHUSETTS: $1.93 US Gas and Stoughton Car Wash, Stoughton

WORST PRICE IN MASSCHUSETTS: $3.57, Shell, Sparks Avenue

WORST MASSACHUSETTS MAINLAND PRICE: $3.49, Mobil, Newburyport

WORST GAS PRICE IN AMERICA, $5.99, Orlando FL

SOUTH COAST GAS PRICES

If we missed something, let us know in the comments section...




Monday, July 18, 2016

Fun Fish Facts: Bluefish


Bluefish and Striped Bass are the two favorite fish of the Bay State surfcaster. We're going to have a look at both fish over the course of this week. We're not experts, but we'll try to give you a good working knowledge of our subjects. We'll proceed in an abecedarian fashion.

Bluefish are the sole (pardon the fish pun) members of the Pomatomidae family. They are distantly related but biologically distinct from Gnomefish. They are known by various names, be it "Shad" in Africa, "Tailor" in Australia and "Elf" on the US West Coast. No, I've never heard it called "elf" either, but this column has a prominent East Coast bias.

You can find the Bluefish in almost any ocean. They do avoid a few places (they avoid much of the Pacific, and the Atlantic between Florida and northern South America) for reasons that only Bluefish know. They migrate heavily. The Blues who you eat all summer spend their winters off the Florida coast. They spawn off of North Carolina. They arrive in Massachusetts by June, and are usually gone for the most part by some time in October.

Bluefish can grow to almost 4 feet long, although 20-25 inches is more of the norm. They can get up to 40 pounds, although anything beyond 20 is exceptional. The Massachusetts state record is a 27 pounder caught by Louis Gordon in 1982 off of Graves Light... way the heck out on Boston Harbor.

The IGFA world record is a 31+ pounder caught off of Cape Hatteras, NC. Check him out right here.... he looks like he could bite off a human head.

Bluefish work in schools, and some schools are very large. One school I saw written about covered 10,000 football fields. They migrate in schools, and concentrate in schools at certain areas. Young ones are known as Snappers.

Bluefish live about 9 years or so, and they are hard-core breeders. Some studies suggest multiple breeding seasons. Stocks dwindled in the 1980s, but management raised the numbers to healthy levels by 2007 or so. 92 million pounds were harvested in 1986, while 7 million was harvested in 1999. Our most recent 5 year average was 13 million pounds. 80% of Bluefish that are caught are caught by recreational anglers. The only saltwater fish who is fished for more by recreational anglers is the Striped Bass.

The Bluefish sports a baby's momma-like disposition, and will bite anything that gets in his path. They, and some species of ant that I read about somewhere, are the only non-humans who kill for fun reasons other than predation, mating, protecting their young, and territoriality. They eat any sort of bait fish. Bluefish suppers include menhaden, sardines, shrimp, squid, mackerel, anchovies, jack, and fisherman fingers.

The gangsta style of the bluefish leaves them few willing enemies in the ocean, but things that will mess with them include seals, sharks, tuna, sea lions, billfish, dolphins and others. I'd guess that humans kill the most Bluefish, followed by seals.


Bluefish are one of the very few fish that a landlubber can watch in action without viewing a documentary. You get this benefit via the Bluefish Blitz, which is when a school of Bluefish chase a school of prey (in Massachusetts, this usually involves Mackerel) close to shore and pins them along the coast. They then close in and just maul the poor bait fish in a feeding frenzy. Bluefish, for some reason, will kill long after they've eaten their fill.

Mackerel will beach themselves rather than be devoured by the Blue Meanies. The waters literally churn like rapids, and the seas flow red with the blood of the Unfortunate.

I saw a guy in the 1970s who apparently had great confidence in his hip waders walk into a blitz off Duxbury Beach, dip a friggin' laundry basket into the water and come up with a Bluefish and some Mackerel. He then put a hook in each bait fish and reeled in additional Blue with this regular-bait method. That's a real, capital-M Man, kids.

The only Bluefish attack on a non-fisherman involved a girl in Spain who may have wandered into the edge of a blitz. The shark attack on Truro in the 1990s was initially blamed on a Bluefish by some people.

If you don't want to risk a bad fish-bite wound, try using 40 pound test fishing line. The Blue is a muscle torpedo, and he puts up a ferocious fight. He can bite through weak line without any great effort. Handle a beached Bluefish with care, as he is a sore loser and is more than capable of taking a fingertip off of a sloppy or careless fisherman.

Bluefish are known as a gamy fish. As we said, it's a muscle torpedo, and that leads to what chefs call "personality." Bluefish have a time-sensitive compound that kicks in 3 days after death that makes it very, very gamy. You want to shop local for fish, and especially Bluefish.  Patronize someone who can tell you when the fish that they're selling you was caught. The larger the fish, the stronger the gamy flavor.

There are ways to cut this flavor. Bluefish meat has muddy/reddish areas that are extra oily and lead to a stronger flavor. Fishermen sometimes cut this part out before consuming or even storing the meat. Some anglers soak Bluefish meat in milk for an hour to cut the gamy flavor down. You can also make the Bluefish fight stronger-flavored herbs/spices/sauces... in a skillet!

That's all for now. Get out there and get yourself some Bluefish!


Sunday, July 17, 2016

Great White Shark Sighting Closes Beaches In Plymouth


Beaches are closed for swimming in Plymouth after a Great White Shark was spotted by a fisherman yesterday.

Manomet Point, which is the sight of the last shark attack in Massachusetts (remember the kayak-eating shark?), scored another shark yesterday. It's like Monomoy West out there!

A lobsterman (Bob Ward) pulling up his pots had a "Hooper drives the boat, Chief" moment when a large porker followed his pot to the surface, perhaps briefly mistaking the moving pot for a seal. He was about a half-mile off of a packed-with-bathers Manomet Point.

He called the local gendarme, and beaches were closed for swimming soon after.

Beaches are also close for swimming today. I'm presently not sure if the beaches themselves are closed.

The Atlantic Shark Conservancy verified the shark's presence, which may or may not mean that the shark spotted was tagged by Dr. Gregory Skomal.

We'll get back to you if the shark eats someone.

Cranberry County Magazine thanks this shark for showing up just after we did our Summer Shark Spectacular article.

Car Crashes Into Bourne Hotel

"I'll drive my car through a hotel, through a motel, through a Quality Innnnnnnnnnnn"

A woman from New York made a little faux pas with the laws concerning parking cars inside buildings last night as she drove her car right into Room 102 of the Quality Inn in Bourne.

The driver was cited and released. Her companion was taken away in cuffs, and also was later released. They're sleeping in the room next to the disaster they caused right now.

No one was injured. The family who was supposed to be in that room arrived at the hotel 15 minutes after the accident. Had they arrived earlier, they would have been killed in the accident. It went down in the 9 PM hour.

Damages to the hotel were extensive, but the town's building inspector allowed the hotel to stay operative.

"Remember, this is Cape Cod on a scorching July weekend," said the hotel's night auditor, who asked not to be identified because he's also writing this article. "I had someone trying to rent that room for $20 cash an hour later."

Photo courtesy of Bourne Police Department

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Massachusetts Sharks In Our Archives

Eddie Fairweather be havin' fish or dinner!

We've been very Nature-oriented this summer. This pattern will continue, as several ideas we're kicking around involve oysters, foxes, bluefish, owls, stripers and God knows whatever else walks/swims/flies in front of one of our cameras.

You're going to get all of that soon enough, but today we're going to issue a recap/filler article about our toothiest locals. Great White Sharks own the news around here, even though more people are hurt by schnauzers than sharks in Massachusetts.

This will be our tenth article devoted to sharks, not a bad total at all for a publication in a region with an 100 day swimming season.

Rather than make you wade through our archives for some good ol' fashioned Shark Talk, we're going to give you a list of these articles for you to peruse easily from this very location here.

If you get through all of this and still need more Shark in your life, you should probably just open a wound in your skin and jump into the waters off of Monomoy. We probably have a few Shark articles lurking on Cape Cod TODAY or perhaps even AOL, but this is everything for which we'll get paid if you read it.

Apologies in advance if you see us re-telling a few stories or even telling the same story twice with different details. We have several authors on this site, and occasional short circuits will occur.

What If? A Cape Cod Shark Attack Fatality

I'm very much in Mayor Vaughn's camp on this one, as I feel that a fatal Outer Cape shark attack caught on video would end Cape Cod's status as a vacation destination.

We were actually wrong about this, at least as far as we have been able to prove. Sharks have attacked a couple of people in Truro and also said howdy-do to a couple of kayakers in Plymouth. It seemed to have no negative effect at all on the Cape's tourist flow.

Aim high, fall far.


Historical Massachusetts Shark Attacks

If you want to know your odds, you have to get the stats.

Location is everything in this category, too. Someone who had done no research most likely would not be able to guess where our three shark attack fatalities went down in the Bay State.

We branch out to include Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut and New York.


Great White Shark Spotted Off Duxbury Beach

This, and the Plymouth attack, brought it all home to the Irish Riviera that sharks are not solely the problem of Cape Cod. You're more likely to be killed by a shark on the bay side of Cape Cod than you are on the ocean side, and the same goes for the South Coast.

This was a brief article, written the instant I heard the news,and more of a warning to my friends and family who live on that beach. If I go to Thanksgiving and have to sit with a one-legged niece with a very personal Duxbury shark attack story, I will very much need my "Well, you should have checked my site updates" guilt-block.

Best line? "Wow, and I thought that Duxbury didn't get Cape traffic."


Ol' Toothy, The Kayak Eating Shark Of The Irish Riviera

We discuss a theory of ours, focusing on the possibility that Cape Cod Bay only had one shark. That's why we named him. We had some theory that he was a rogue, who split away from his posse off Chatham for some reason that probably makes perfectly good sense to a shark.

This theory, like many of my theories, was wildly off-base. Shark tagging and receiver buoys proved me wrong pretty much right away.

I'm pretty sure that this article at one point also included a Stacey-conducted interview with the shark who dumped those two girls out of the kayak off Manomet. We may have had to remove the interview, as the shark's frank talk on race (he prefers white meat) and age (he steals a Mark Leyner joke about brittle-boned/osteoperosis-having old people being crunchier to the shark) would have been  upsetting to a greater portion of our readership.

Best line? "I'm assuming that the shark was male. Boats are girls, Sharks are boys. That's how I roll."


How To Not Get Eaten By A Shark

This is important stuff to know if you plan to go into the water. In short, if it is at all possible to be attacked by a shark, there must exist steps which will lower those odds.

Some advice ("Don't swim where people are fishing") makes sense. Other advice ("Do nothing at all seal-like") we play off as a joke when the advice is actually sound. One ("Swim with people fatter than you") sounds like a joke but was not denied when I approached a nationally-known shark expert for his thoughts about my theory. Yet another ("Be local" ) is true factually, but true in a category with a body of evidence small enough to magnify coincidence.

"Follow these rules, and you'll have mad bread to break up. If not, 17 feet on the wake-up."


Sharks In Cape Cod Bay

Speaking of shark experts, we went to Duxbury  to attend a lecture by shark expert Dr.Gregory Skomal. He's the guy you see on te news, tagging sharks.

We got to ask him all of our stupid questions ("Have you ever met a friendly, seems-to-enjoy-hanging-with-people Great White Sharks?" and "Can you make a Great White Shark do tricks?"), and we got to hear more serous people ask more serious questions.

I'm pretty sure that I'm the only journalist on Earth to ask a shark expert, at length, to weigh in on Dr. Hooper's territoriality theory from Jaws. It turns out that true Territoriality involves one shark claiming an area and driving off other sharks, something which isn't happening around here.

Written during a blizzard, I might add.


Where Exactly Do Our Great White Sharks Hang Out?

Dr. Skomal's efforts do give us some amazingly valuable information. We know where they go in the winter, and we also know where they go when they are up here.

This article tells us where sharks were registered as having swam to. It also tells you how many (tagged) sharks are working any particular stretch of coast.

This is another wake-up call for the South Shore and even the North Shore. Sharks show up from Cape Ann to Cape Cod.

Cape Cod holds the title, no doubt. While Plymouth, Scituate and Duxbury combined for 200 shark tag signals, Chatham had over 14,000 in that same period. Granted, Dr. Skomal spends his days tagging off of Chatham and may never have set foot on the South Shore, 14,000 to 200 is a pretty wide gap.


Can Orcas Chase Our Sharks Away?

This was actually our last article. If you're reading this, you most likely read that. It involves yet another theory of mine.

I still think that a robotic Orca could be employed by Outer Cape towns to drive away the sharks. even if it didn't, there must be some cool use for a 40 foot mechanical Killer Whale.


Deep-Sea Surfcasting Methods

I think that this article, concerning inventions we're working on to allow even novice fishermen to make casts out to sea that would fly completely over small towns if they casted towards land, gets into shark-fishing at some point.

Our best idea involves hooking a shark with a chain that is attached to a Jeep. Dr. Skomal somehow was able to avoid my question about a huge shark taking on a Jeep in a tug-o-war.





Monday, July 11, 2016

New England's Worst Sea Monster?


Massachusetts has several sea monsters in her history.

Daniel Webster saw a sea serpent off of Duxbury, and Gloucester had numerous modern serpentine sightings. Moby Dick is tied to us to a small extent, and Jaws is tied to us to a great extent. We are the new, hip place for Great White Sharks to go, and we even had a Killer Whale in town last week. Lovecraft knew what he was doing when he put Arkham in Massachusetts.

However, our nastiest, ickiest sea monster is larger than a Blue Whale, and the only thing on Earth larger than it is a distant cousin of it. 

There's no way to avoid it, as it goes where the ocean pushes it. We have no sensors to detect the presence of it, and we don't know if one is around until people start being injured by the hundreds. 

Bullets don't harm it, a missile would go right through it, it survived an asteroid strike and you can hack it to pieces without lessening the danger it poses. Oh yeah, it's positively dripping with poison. It may also be immortal.

It'd take a shipload of Hit Points to kill one of those, huh? Thankfully, Godzilla incinerated this monster with his nuclear fire-breath in that 1970s movie, right? Wait... what??

It's real???

No...

Yes.

This monster that we speak of is a Lion's Mane Jellyfish. The LJM is a species of Cnidarian, a phylum that encompasses the Jellyfish family.

It is prevalent in the northern Atlantic, as it prefers colder water. They can not tolerate warmer waters, and are rarely found below 42 degrees north latitude. They dine on zooplankton, just like other giant creatures do. They are pelagic (open ocean) for most of their lives, but they tend to drift into bays as the currents dictate.

It is the largest known jellyfish, and holds the World's Largest Thing title if you don't count stretched-out Bootlace Worms. Massachusetts holds the world record for LJM (and, thusly, everything else), a feat they performed when a LJM washed ashore in a town that I cant find the name of. If anyone knows, hit me up in the comments.

This Lion's Mane Jellyfish that washed up in Massachusetts was 7 feet across. The tentacles, when stretched out, were over 120 feet long. The largest Blue Whales are about 20 feet shorter. That's a lot of jelly! You'd have to slaughter every character that Charles Schultz ever drew to make a corresponding amount of Peanuts Butter to get a PB&J out of that sucker, and that's before we find a football field's worth of bread to house the whole sandwich.

Most of that length is Tentacle, and each of those tentacles is lined with poisonous barbs that would break off into human skin quite nicely. The barbs get fired off like harpoons any time something- like you- touches the tentacle. The poison, while generally not fatal to a healthy adult, can cause critical burns. A jellyfish has thousands of such tentacles.

Now, something like that floating around in the middle of the ocean isn't much of a problem for most of us, and is just a small part of the general Cowardice that keeps me from doing things like Carnival Cruises or joining the Navy. 

However, there is nothing to stop one of these creatures from washing ashore in Massachusetts. What beach it hit depends entirely on the currents.

from USGS

"Washes ashore in Massachusetts" doesn't mean "one washed up here, once, in 1870." We are well within the range of these things, and they have inflicted mass injury in New England before.

Rye, New Hampshire is a nice place to go beaching. However, it wasn't so nice in July of 2010. A LMJ the size of a trash can lid with 20-25 foot tentacles washed into a group of bathers. Officials attempted to remove it, which only broke it up into innumerable pieces.

This, plus the wave action that breaks jellyfish apart, loosed the barbs from the tentacles, and the sea around Rye was a puddle of pain. The barbs can sting long after the jellyfish is dead, and long after their removal from the host creature.

Thinking that the danger had passed, bathers in Rye went back into the water... water that was filled with microscopic, poisonous, floating barbs. Over 150 people were injured

Most of the injuries were minor, because, as bad as it was, swimming into a spread-out infestation of barbs is different than directly contacting a LJM and getting thousands of stings at once. Still, five people needed to be taken to the hospital. The rest were treated on-site with vinegar and baking soda. Old salts swear by meat tenderizer, as well.

As you can see from my handy map of the currents off Massachusetts, had that beast not become trapped in the surf off Rye, it very easily could have moved with the currents down the Massachusetts, visiting Boston, Plymouth, Cape Cod...

You won't know that it's here... until the screaming starts. If you see it, it's already too late.

photo by Dan Hershman

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Can Killer Whales Chase The Sharks Away From Cape Cod?

Old Thom, the Chatham Whale... photo from Capeshores Charters

In case you haven't heard, Cape Cod has a shark problem. It's not really a "problem," and is in fact a sign of a healthy ecosystem, but a tourist-dependent beach destination with Great White Sharks offshore is a soon-to-be non-destination. All it would take is one fatal shark attack on a human to get the ball rolling.

There's not much we can do about it that doesn't involve a wanton act of mass-production animal cruelty. A mass culling of the Cape Cod seal population would be needed, as seals are what the sharks come for. We could also kill the sharks, which are currently protected under federal law.

Or we could just let nature take her course, as people say. Nature works in many mysterious and wonderful ways, and one of these Ways may be taking place just offshore.

A charter fisherman about ten miles off of Chatham spotted an Orca yesterday. We don't mean Quint's doomed boat when we say "Orca," we mean "Killer Whale." It most likely wandered down from the Bay of Fundy, and is relatively unusual in Cape Cod waters.

Another thing that was unusual for a long time on Cape Cod was the presence of a multitude of Great White Sharks just offshore. However, this soon (and by soon, we mean "a couple of years") considered to be the new normal. Why not Orcas?

Orcas do come to New England. The Coast Guard cutter Campbell came across a pod of killer whales about 150 miles off Nantucket in 2014. Experts blame melting Arctic ice and associated whale-food-related problems.
"Don't tell Old Thom that I'm here, OK?" (photo, by our England correspondent Jodi Turck, of seals off Clacton-on-Sea, England)

I'm no marine biologist, but I read 30 minutes of whale stuff, and I'll tell you what I gained from it.

- The whale in question is almost certainly Old Thom, a whale who tends to stray from his fellow killer whales up in Labrador and Newfoundland. He has been spotted in the Bay of Fundy a few times recently.

- Old Thom is about 30 feet long and weighs 8 tons.

- Old Thom comes from a population of whales who don't hunt seals. His peeps prefer to hunt and eat dolphins and Minke Whales. His fellow whales are Specialists, which means "whales that only eat one kind of food."

- This sort of takes the steam out of "Maybe the killer whales will eat all of the seals and end our associated Great White Shark problem."

- A Dr. Hamilton at the New England Aquarium scoffed at the idea of sharks and whales doing the Batman vs Superman thing off of Monomoy. He laughed and said "Maybe in fantasy land" when the Boston Globe asked him about it.

- Scientists laughed and said "Maybe in fantasy land" fifteen years ago if you asked them about Great White Sharks making a summer home off Cape Cod.

- Cape Cod has adequate dolphin and Minke Whales (named for Meincke, a Norwegian sailor who mistook one for a Blue Whale and has been goofed on ever since over it) population to keep Old Thom very well fed.

- Minke whales are usually what you see if you go on a Cape Cod whale watch.

- I have no idea if any (or how many) Minke Whale beachings were a Minke choosing suffocation over being eaten by an Orca.

- Though not listed as an Orca food item, a Beluga Whale got itself into the Taunton River in Fall River and hung out for a few days in 2014. Killer Whales have been spotted upriver in Japan and even in the Columbia River in the US.

- A whale who specializes in seals may not even recognize a fish as a food item, and the same probably goes for whales who eat other whales.

- From what I have gathered, it would be very unusual for Old Thom to buck evolution and change his diet to seals.

- Still, Old Thom could be useful. The one thing that a Great White Shark fears is a Killer Whale.

- Orcas can and do eat anything they want. There are cases of a pod taking out a juvenile Blue Whale. Adult sperm and blue whales are the only whales that an Orca wouldn't cross. Even a large adult GWS is no match for an Orca.

- This website once jokingly suggested that we solve Cape Cod's shark problem by building robot killer whales to patrol the coast off of popular resort beaches. It looks like we could get to test that theory out.

- Several instances have been recorded where an Orca killed a Great White Shark. I have never read of a GWS beating an Orca, and I'll let you know right now that I am researching a future article (tentatively called "Massachusetts Animal Fights: Who Wins?") on which animals in our region can whip ass on which other animals. "Great White vs Orca" just went to the top of that article.

- An Orca holds several advantages on a Great White Shark in a fight. They are almost twice as long as a GW, and often weigh 4-8 times as much as one. Orcas hunt in packs, and will focus on a big fish like a shark if they wish. They are much stronger. They are also much more intelligent, using an amazing knowledge of shark biology when fighting one.

- In combat, an Orca who gets a hold of a GWS will turn it upside down. This induces a state of paralysis called "tonic immobility" in the shark, who is then torn to pieces by the Orca. A victorious Orca will eat only the liver of the shark, and let the rest of the carcass sink to the bottom.

- A tagged Great White Shark who was in a group of sharks that a pod of Orcas attacked off the San Francisco area was observed to immediately dive to 500 feet and swim non-stop to Hawaii.

- Again, Old Thom isn't from a population that A) eats sharks or B) eats seals, which would put Old Thom into competition with sharks.

- Our sharks here on Cape Cod may or may not know that.

- If Old Thom gets closer to shore and smokes a Porker, it may drive other Great Whites away.


- Old Thom poses almost no threat to humans, with one huge exception. To my knowledge, there have been three attacks on humans by an Orca.

- One involved an Orca bumping a child who was swimming. The child was uninjured.

- Another case involved a whale biting a bag of fish that a diver had tied to his arm, and he dragged the diver around for a minute.

- A surfer at Port Sur, California was bitten and released by an Orca, and this is the only case documented where a wild Orca attacked a human. The surfer required 100 stitches.

- These three incidents are all that they have documented. Killer Whales range all over the world, and only three attacks have been recorded on humans... and only one of them was a "real" attack.

- An Orca in captivity is a different story. Dozens of trainers have been attacked. Even the well-known Shamu bit a woman, giving her 200 stitches.

- I have never heard of nor have I been able to find any documentation of Killer Whales in Cape Cod Bay. Larger whales than the Killers wash upon South Shore beaches all the time.                                

- The chances that a pod of Killer Whales will colonize New England is very small, but not impossible, Killer Whales roll in pods, and it must take a bit of convincing to get them to say "Screw Newfoundland and Minke Whales... let's go to Cape Cod and start eating seals."

- If a pod of Killer Whales took up residence on Cape Cod, however, they would stand a good chance of scaring our sharks away. We would then get an Apex Predator Upgrade, with the added bonus of losing an AP that attacks humans and gaining one that will only attack you if you try to force him to bounce a ball on his nose at Sea World.

- Great White Sharks vs Orca is probably not going to be happening here, but it is something to think about if we start seeing more of Old Thom and his buddies in the waters off of Monomoy.

Something else may be targeting him soon....

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

The 2016 Bourne On The 4th Of July Parade!


I thought that this was Johnny Quahog, but he's just the leadoff hitter for the Bourne In The 4th Of July holiday parade.


No expense was spared, we rolled hard on the Americana.... and a good time was had by all.


Much like a Fort Sumter neighbor, I was shooting at every Old Glory that I saw... of course, I'm using a camera.

Bourne's parade is pretty much what Red Dawn would have looked like had the people financing it insisted upon a less ambiguous ending... a parade of miltary vehicles rolling through a tiny village with gallons of 'Merica poured on top.
See?


One of the two shots I took today where I felt creepy.... but someone banging down Bloody Marys on the patio at Buzzards Bay  at 10 AM as a parade rolls by rules pretty hard, and deserves media attention.

I actually met this dog while researching an article that I wrote like 6 years ago. He's the Coast Guard's "water safety dog," and- in one of those faux pas scenarios that go down when people who specialize at working with boats dabble in public relations- he bears a name that might need some work. I think his name is "Drown," or "Riptide," or "Hypothermia" or some other nautically terrifying name. Either way, as you can see, Drown floats- at least when he's on a float. It's just like they said in Apocalypse Now... Never get out of the boat, kids.


Ladies and gentlemen... I present to you a Seabee... I'd make a joke about that French Tickler mustache or the dog food bowl on his head, but that is a machine gun he's holding. It looks like it was crafted for Al Capone to shoot, but I'd bet it could punch a rush hole in me pretty easily.


You say that you want a picture of a guy on a lawnmower doing donuts in the middle of the parade? Why, I just happen to have one right here! 


If that's a toy gun, I want to write the advertising copy for it.... "Watch your classmates cower in fear!"


You can't have a parade without the bagpipe corps, player!


Bourne Braves in the howwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwse...



Onset works their way over the border and into the Bourne parade with a fat red ladder truck.


Hot cars always get love in any parade articles I write.


More pics to come when I figure out the kid's tablet....