I have been busy

But I did play hooky Saturday the 17th with my friend Randy Foliente. We were aboard the Fury out of Dana Point Harbor.

What I have been doing this summer

For 7 weeks now I have not left the house except to go to a doctor appointment, or to a hospital.


June 25 I got slammed in the R eye with a fishing weight. A tourist ripped his torpedo sinker out of a kelp stringer and into my eye 15 feet behind him. This caused major damage to just about every part of the eye. Bleeding and swelling raised the eye pressure (intraocular pressure) to over 70 mm. Normal IOP is 15 mm. Blood, and vitreous was forced past the lens into the anterior chamber and incidentally further damaging the lens. This pressure also damaged the optic nerve, and collapsed the channels that normally drain the eye and regulate pressure. I was on a sport fishing boat here in Dana Point and we were a few miles from the harbor. The skipper, and his first mate were on the job from the start. They got me a medical evacuation by the Orange County Harbor Patrol within 15 minutes. The Emergency Room docs, and the consulting ophthalmologist all agreed that if I had been delayed even another 1/2 hour from medical attention, I would have lost the eye.

I was hospitalized for 3 days. We then tried for 3 weeks to control the eye pressure medically.

As the massive blood clot broke up over the next few weeks, the MDs could see the damage better. The muscles that control the eye's orientation were damaged, but have recovered function recently. The extent of permanent damage to the optic nerve was fortunately minor, and the retina is still working well. The cornea was scarred, and traumatic cataracts started growing within days. The iris muscles were paralyzed by nerve damage, and then died as pressure blocked their blood supply. The lens was destabilized when a large number of the fibers (called zonules) that hold the lens in place were snapped. It will eventually break free which will require surgery as will the cornea cataracts and scarring. All in all, this sucks. I took 5 meds on various dosing schedules between 6 AM to 10 PM. The main goal was to stabilize my eye pressure back at the normal 15mm.

The purely medical approach failed. Even when the IOP would return to nearly normal, it would next spike back to 2 or 3 times normal. What had happened was that the extreme pressure, and the blow itself had collapsed the eye ducts so badly they could not recover. Finally with my IOP back over 48 mm, we did an emergency surgery on July 16th. The cornea was lifted to clean the anterior chamber, and a shunt was put in to mechanically replace the drain system destroyed by the injury. The recovery time for that surgery is 4 to 6 weeks. We are into the 5th week now, and there has been considerable improvement. However even with additional surgeries my R eye will never regain full normal functioning.

We have maxed out the medical suppression of the eye pressure while the surgery heals. This means various kinds of eye drops - 13 each day administered by my wife every hour or two between 6AM and 10PM. Plus, I have varied between 1,500 and 500 mg of Diamox- one of the weirder drugs in terms of side-effects I have ever had. What we are not using is pain medication since pain is an important clue to the IOP. In fact, it is really the only one readily available without a lot of medical hardware.

The next time I get injured I want better drugs!

After you eat them, all that is left is a picture

I had a good day aboard the Fury out of Dana Warf.

Photo by Lisa Ray

Just a brief up date, June 29.

The local near-shore fishing has been very dependent on the prevailing winds. For example, 9 days ago I had easily caught over 10 legal (over 12 inch) calico bass, and 3, +28 inch barracuda on a 5 hour trip. However, that afternoon the northwest winds kicked up, and shifted to WNW by Friday. They blew at ~15 knots until Sunday. The water temperature dropped, and the fishing dropped with it. Yesterday the wind shifted to the South and the shallows ( <7 fathoms) warmed to ~65 F. I still had to work to scratch 3 legal bass. The Joker in the Pack is that there are some really good size (20-30 lb) yellowtail, and halibut that moved in, are still lurking in the kelp beds. My article for the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings intended to rebut the creationist stupidity of Joe Kuhn was a "go" on Friday May 25th, and killed on the following Monday. Somebody got to somebody over the weekend. One of the BS criticisms was I had posted a few early comments to this blog. But, never start a large project without a backup plan. The National Center for Science Education will carry the article in their Reports from the NCSE. There are some rather time wasting changes to the overall format. More significantly, I don't need to "play nice" with the Baylor editors any more about why they published Kuhn's piece of crap in the first place. I have distracted myself with some newspaper rants against creationists. I have particularly had fun with the comments on a Nation article, "What's the Matter With Creationism," and more recently comments following a creationist Letter to the Editor. Each had some points of interest.

Mrs. Chatman has posted more cretocrap, but I cannot be bothered until the Kuhn article is reformatted, and revised.

I was fishing the other day

I was fishing at Catalina Island yesterday aboard the Fury out of Dana Warf. The crew were, as always, exemplary; friendly, and actively helpful. We had the first day this year of a solid calico bass bite with water temperatures around 63 F. I kept five bass for the table, and released the rest. I also won the ‘big fish’ jackpot with a sheephead, which we released as well. (We put him directly into the bait tank from the hook. I promised to let him go if he won, but eat him if he lost).

But, that isn’t what is on my mind. The trip from Dana Point Harbor to the island takes about 3 hours. I usually sleep on the way out, and sit in the galley on the ride home. There are a clutch of regulars who are in their 70&80s who are rabidly far-right. They loudly proclaim their love for Jesus, and literal adherence of the Bible, when a moment's conversation reveals they know next to nothing about it. Their galley conversations are always about the evils of communist-Muslim-Atheist-tree hugger Democrats. In support of their various paranoid insanities, they spout “facts” that only exist in their fevered imaginations, and the ozone clouds of Faux News. Yesterday the theme was how Obama’s deficit will destroy the lives of their grandchildren.

Yes, pity the po’ po’ wee kiddies who will forever be slaves paying off Obama’s Federal Debt.

But, when I asked them if they shouldn’t also be worried that their grand kids will face a ruined planet due to Republican efforts to gut the environment, they were outraged. “Everyone KNOWS” that global warming, over fishing, clear cutting, water and air pollution are nothing but LIES invented by the Liberals to destroy America.”

And that ends the lesson. These nitwits have nothing between their ears but slogans, and blatant lies they have memorized. It is an impenetrable shield.

"We're Losing our grip on science"

That is according to Steve Urbon, who writes a twice weekly column for the The Standard-Times of New Bedford, MA and echoed on-line at SouthCoastToday.com.

His May 4th item was largely an entirely welcome objection to the know-nothing anti-science mobs, and a reference to a poll of professionals, and students in "higher education." More on that later.

But tacked on at the end, Mr. Urbon wrote,

The trouble is, if Americans are doubting or despising science, a part of it is the fault of the scientists — or some of them, at least. How many of them are employed by industries seeking to evade the oversight of the government, or to duck accountability for environmental damage, or to get a drug approved?

How many scientists write reports for tobacco companies for fat salaries? How many write research papers for such things as environmental organizations fueled by the oil industry?

I direct your attention to biologist Jane Lubchenco, the head of NOAA, who in her previous job at the Environmental Defense Fund, asserted that because of overfishing, the ocean was in imminent danger of being full of nothing but jellyfish.

Her self-serving scare mongering was quoted around the world, and is driving fishing policy in this country.

But in February, a team of researchers at the Dauphin Island (Alabama) Sea Lab totally debunked Lubchenco's claim earlier this year, saying there's no evidence at all to back it. Yet I will bet that even if you are in the fishing industry, you are reading it here for the first time. What does that tell you?

For openers, few Americans other than professional scientists ever read a science journal. What little science they are exposed to comes from the news media, or re-runs of The Big Bang. There are whores with PhDs. They are a tiny fraction of one percent of professionals. The largest concentration in the USA are in the Heartland Institute, a nest of radical far-right vipers (apologies to vipers everywhere). Then, there are the creationists who work for the anti-science gangs of the Discovery Institute, Answers in Genesis Ministries, or the Institute for Creation Research. These people are not necessarily whores- most are more likely mentally ill.

But, Mr. Urbon goes off into the ozone by associating Dr. Jane Lubchenco with the likes of the Heartland biostitutes, or the Disco'tutes.

Let's start with the biography of Dr. Jane Lubchenco. She received her doctorate in biology from Harvard University, and taught at Oregon State University from 1977 to 2009 when she was appointed to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She is past-president of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), the International Council for Science, and the Ecological Society of America. She is one of the most highly cited, and respected scientists of her generation. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Royal Society, and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, Europe and Chile.

Mr. Urbon lied. Dr. Lubchenco was on the Board of Directors of the EDF- it was hardly her job.

A bibliographic search for Dr. Jane Lubchenco and jellyfish finally revealed an Environmental Defense Foundation report, (link opens a PDF) "Oceans of Abundance." This 10 page report had 28 co-authors. It had the following sentence, "There is scientific consensus that fishing is fundamentally altering ocean ecosystems, (5) which are increasingly likely to yield massive swarms of jellyfish rather than food fish (6). A press release from the EDF opened with, "Will jellyfish replace our favorite kinds of seafood? That appears to be the way we're headed — but a 2008 report, Oceans of Abundance, from leading U.S. policy makers and fisheries experts, says this does not have to be."

Mr. Urbon lied some more; The EDF report didn't claim the oceans were "in imminent danger of being full of nothing but jellyfish." Even the rather florid press release didn't go that far.

The relevant cited article from the EDF document is, "Ecological extinction and evolution in the brave new ocean," (Jackson, J.B.C. 2008. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105: 11458-11465). Jackson makes an entirely data driven observation of the biomass of the hypoxic “dead zone” covering ≈20,000 km2 ~500 km west of the Mississippi delta. The major large species surviving those conditions are jellyfish, and has wiped out a formerly productive commercial fishery.

The recent jellyfish article indirectly mentioned by Mr. Urbon was, "Questioning the Rise of Gelatinous Zooplankton in the World's Oceans," (Robert H. Condon et al, BioScience, Vol. 62, No. 2 (February 2012), pp. 160-169). In no way could it have "totally debunked Lubchenco's claim." For one thing, it was never her claim. The paper never even cited any publication by Dr. Lubchenco, nor the EDF. The authors did note that popular media accounts, like Mr. Urbon's, were far different from the scientific studies. They also concluded that much more funding should be provided to jellyfish experts like themselves so that they could do much more research. Reading the actual studies he is 'interpreting' to the public will apparently be a new experience for Mr. Urbon.


Mr. Urbon is losing his grip on reality.

Seriously Folks. The Fishing Is Getting Better.

I was on the Pacific Queen (good boat, good crew) the other day. We did alright, but my timing was pathetic; either too quck or too slow. I landed the two tuna I hooked, but I missed setting the hook in six others.

I am so easily distracted by fishing

I really appologise to anyone frustrated by my somewhat inconsistent follow-up on some posts.

I have an excuse!!!!111!!!

This was a very tasty, if small, bluefin tuna I caught fishing ~150 miles SW of San Diego, California. We were aboard the New Lo-An out from Point Loma. It was a good 1.5 day trip- good boat, good crew, and hungry fish. I returned home with about 50lbs of meat. Since fresh bluefin is selling retail for ~$27 a pound, I made better than retail on a $450 trip.

Next week I'll leave on the Pacific Queen for another shot at the tuna. One day will be my last off-shore trip, and then I'll be more diligent at writing.

Well, I went on my first long ocean trip from Friday to 11th, to Sunday the 13th. Excellent boat, good crew, fine weather, terrible fishing.

Enought of that for now.

I took a look at the old profile photo of me and a yellow tail that I caught on the Fury. Here is a contrasting, recent photo of me and a similar yellow tail that I caught last year aboard the San Diego out of Seaforth Landing.

A day spent off-shore

I went out of Seaforth Landing in San Diego, California aboard the Eclipse. We had a great day of fishing.

On the water

I was on the ocean yesterday, and had some Delicious results.



This was a 10 lb male dorado.



This was a 25 lb male Albacore Tuna. (The dog's name is Yoggie).

The fishing was slow over all. I only lost one fish (a larger albacore) when my reel momentarily locked up. We caught 11 albacore, 2 Yellowfin Tuna, 2 Yellowtail jack, and 41 dorado for 32 people fishing. Mine was the largest dorado, with the majority barely over 3 lbs. (I had a several of those but released them). The per pound cost of the meat was still well above market, 15 lbs of trimed meat for ~$300. The local fish market charges $10.