Pollen & Wolf

Now we're finally seeing some vaguely springlike weather, the Birch buds have broken and there's grainy pollen all over everything. Cars, windows the lot. We had a small Herring run, but a month later and much smaller than last year, although it was big enough to bring both Steller's and California Sea Lions into Dodd Narrows. A few days ago there was one California Sea Lion (Steller's don't bark) barking away somewhere North of Round Island at about eight in the morning. Then there was a shot and there was no more barking.

At Easter we were graced with a raft of Surf Scoters ululating as they took a break on their way somewhere; they're later than last year too. Local legend has it that everything is much later than usual. Although this year we haven't had the Black Tail Deer plundering our tulips like last. Little sods. I've been getting in a little fishing, although I seem to keep missing the right state of the tide. Neighbours have suggested I try my luck at a place a couple of miles hence where there's a nice steep drop off close to shore.

Oh, and there's been a couple of Wolf sightings so local gossip informs me. I wondered why Dog has been kicking up these last few nights. He must have been hearing the call of the wild.

Have purchased a copy of the Writers Market Guide, and the next month or so will be punting my MSS around Vancouver and Toronto, see what turns up. If nothing, then I'll try further south and see if I get a bite from there.

Fish?

Just had a look out of my kitchen window while making a cup of well-earned tea and noted a lot of bird activity over on the shore of Mudge Island. I'll go and have a look with Dog in a while and see if there is an early April Herring Run going on. It's a month late but what the hell.

If this proves to be the case, tomorrow I will purchase that new fishing rod I've been promising myself and renew my salt water fishing licence.

There's fish out there

Walking Dog this morning, I cast my eyes down to the waterfront at the choppy tidal vortex that forms every high tide half way down Dodd Narrows opposite Mudge Island. Flecks of white scum, like petals, floated in five or six metre long stringy slicks up the channel. The shallows were a particular shade of turquoise.

Could all be a trick of the light of course, but conditions do seem to mimic the early stages of last years Herring run. May be worth getting my fishing kit out.

Fishing story - The fish that wouldn't be caught

I have never seen so many fish and caught nothing before. Standing on the bank of a river some ten or so metres wide looking at a shoal of fish some five or six metres long from beginning to end, just short of a metre wide and solid with fish. From some about the length of my forearm with fingers extended to others as long as my arm (and bigger) in about seven feet of clear water.

Well we cast wet and dry flies all over that damn shoal all afternoon. Drifted flies downstream over their very noses. Nothing. My brother in law lost two lures and I lost one. Did we catch a thing? No.

We saw these fish jumping out of the water and taking the occasional Caterpillar that dropped down onto the water from the trees, we saw them arguing amongst themselves causing sudden flurries in the water as they squabbled for a place in the tightly packed shoal but they just weren't biting.

Brother in law, who is an experienced fly fisherman, was frustrated by the whole experience. I was surprised to say the least and commented that I'd never seen so many fish in one small pool as that and come away with so little.

Later on, we stood and watched from a bridge as another fly fisherman made fruitless cast after fruitless cast onto a big shoal of metre size grandaddy fish. Personally, I reckon we'd just picked the wrong time of day. Hunting and fishing are dawn and dusk activities when the game is most active. To add insult to injury, when we looked in our fishing licence guide, we found that we couldn't have taken any fish home anyway until October 15th. Damn, these regulations are complicated!

We went home empty handed so it was Pork for supper, not Salmon. Still good though.

Volcanic eruptions so far in 2008

I've been indulging myself in a little research, just as a matter of intellectual curiosity. How many volcanoes erupt in any given year, and does this correlate with anything else? So far this year there have been over 54 major eruptions, as listed below. All compiled from the Smithsonian Institute records and other reputable sources.

Volcano         Eruption Date  Location    
Shiveluch             26 Sept  Kamchatka
Piton De La Fournaise 22 Sept  Indian Ocean
Mayon                 11 Aug   Philippines
Asama                 10 Aug   Japan
Kasatochi              8 Aug   Aleutian Is.
Chikurachi            29 July  Kurile Is.
Reventador            29 July  Ecuador
Okmok                 12 July  Aleutian Is.
San Cristobal         22 June  Nicaragua
Masaya                18 June  Nicaragua
Soputan                6 June  Sulawesi
Cerro Azul            30 May   Galapagos Is.
Dukono                29 May   Halmahera
Semeru                20 May   Java
Chaiten               10 May   Chile
Egon                  15 April Indonesia
Karymsky              27 March Kamchatka
Kerinci               24 March Sumatra
Mt. Etna              12 March Sicily
Garbuna Group         11 March New Britain
Bagana                 3 March Bougainville
Lopevi                24 Feb   South Pacific
Veniaminof            22 Feb   Alaska
Heard Is.             22 Feb   Indian Ocean
Mt. Cleveland          8 Feb   Aleutian Is.
Erta Ale               8 Feb   Ethiopia
Suwanose-Jima          7 Feb   Japan
Anatahan               5 Feb   Mariana Is.
Guagua Pichincha       1 Feb   Ecuador
Poas                  22 Jan   East Africa
Krakatau              21 Jan   Indonesia
Galeras               17 Jan   Colombia
Ubinas                14 Jan   Peru
Ol Doinyo Lengai      14 Jan   East Africa
Santa Maria           10 Jan   Guatemala
Fuego                 10 Jan   Guatemala
Soufriere Hills       10 Jan   West Indies
Pacaya                10 Jan   Guatemala
Rabaul                10 Jan   New Britain
Huila                  7 Jan   Colombia
Miyake-Jima            6 Jan   Japan
Sakura-Jima            6 Jan   Japan
Sheveluch              3 Jan   Kamchatka
Bezymianny             3 Jan   Kamchatka
Llaima                 2 Jan   Chile
Colima                 1 Jan   Mexico
Mt. St. Helens         1 Jan   United States
Kilauea                1 Jan   Hawaii
Mt. Erebus             1 Jan   Antarctica
Popocatepetl           1 Jan   Mexico
Arenal                 1 Jan   Costa Rica
Stromboli              1 Jan   Italy
Tungurahua             1 Jan   Ecuador
Yasur                  1 Jan   Vanuatu

All those Volcanoes pumping Gigatons of CO2, SO2, various other gases and particulate matter up to and over 8000 metres into the atmosphere. Kind of makes you feel small doesn't it? Will post more detailed figures as they are compiled, and when I can be bothered to work out how blogger can be persuaded to handle html tables.

Anyway. Sister in law is in town with husband, and he and I are going fishing tomorrow before the girls rejoin the boys for a nice supper and bragging session. All this and Jamesons's Irish Whiskey. Life feels pretty good right now.

Idle musings

Wife is back tomorrow evening and I am busy preparing for her homecoming.  Kids appear to be well settled into academic life and working hard.  This news is positive.

It's a bit chilly outside at the moment and I'm going to switch the heating on tomorrow if things don't warm up a tad.  The Autumn leaves are beginning to fall, and I'm checking out the BC Fisheries website before tootling off for a late afternoons casting my lures into the water.  The reports seem to indicate that the Fraser River Salmon run is slightly bigger than expected, so that bodes well for an early evenings sport.  Not that I'm likely to catch anywhere near my limit.

Poor journalism

Read this story in the Telegraph this morning and stifled a guffaw.

The writer obviously did this to deadline and omitted to research the story properly. Being a long time Fisher of Sharks in Cornish waters when I lived in the UK, there are two elements in the story I would challenge. First is the corny "This is the first time it has happened in British waters", WRONG! First recorded 'Shark attack' in British waters happened in the 1960's under similar circumstances in the North Sea. An Irish skipper got careless with a Blue and it bit him in a similar fashion. I've caught a number of Blues, up to over 100 pounds, and seen those teeth close to. Even on the little ones they rival a circular saw, and you learn respect for the beasts early on. Second is the 'Global warming driving blues and other sharks into British Waters' bullshit. There has been an established sports fishery for Blues, Mako's and Porbeagle since the 1900's, hence the existance of the 'Shark Club' in Looe, Cornwall. The fishery has been in decline since the early 1990's because far eastern 'long liners' have been harvesting sharks fins quite ruthlessly out on the Blues transatlantic migration routes, thus seriously depleting the population.

Cooler

The current cool weather on this part of Vancouver Island has come as quite a relief after the muggy heat of the past few days. Even the mossies have deemed it too hot to make their usual meal out of me. Dog, with his thick coat, has suffered greatly with the heat, and is going to be sent for shearing this week.

As for other non weather related stuff, I even caught a fish yesterday. Tiny little guy who tried to swallow my lure whole. Notwithstanding, I threw him straight back in the water and he swam off. He will live to bite another day. Barbless lures make it easy to flip unwanted piscine life off your line with little damage. I'm just amazed the little tinker actually managed to get his mouth round the hook.


As for writing, I've resumed work on one of those 'back burner' projects that I've been fiddling with for the past five or six years. It shows promise. Forty thousand words, and the characters feel solid and three dimensional.

Regarding my 'First Flights' MSS, there's been no word at all from any of the enquiries I made. Seems like no one in publishing wants Sci-Fi right now. Not from any relatively new authors anyway. At present I'd settle for a 'thanks but no thanks' or even 'fuck off and die' response, but this silence is absolutely mind numbing.

Not so silent places are the woods. While I was away visiting relatives and chilling, one of the woodland trails has become blocked by fallen trees, and when I say blocked, I mean where three separate tree trunks, all over two feet across, have fallen to form a six foot high blockade. One tree fell and smashed into another, which smashed into another, and all of them fell around the same spot. Must have made a hell of a racket when that lot came down. Just goes to prove the old adage that nothing happens in isolation. Nature follows the rules of causality.

Wonder if my handy neighbour with his chainsaw will clear the way again.

Buggerit.....

There are much better things to do in life than rail at the stupidity of the world. Fishing is one such thing.

Off day

Bit of an off day today. Output dropped to 1000 words, and most of that was pretty crap. I know when I'm writing well, and when what comes out of the world in my head is disjointed, clunky and basically rubbish. Today has been one of those days when nothing seems to fit.

Lead character is having a bit of a dilemma which is supposed to alter his motivation. Unfortunately it just ain't happening / not working. I need an alternative scenario consistent with plot and storyline for things to work out. Premises must run to conclusions, by leaps and bounds if need be, but story causality must be consistent with character and plot.

It's on days like these when you begin to question your abilities. When nothing goes right, when your keyboard plays traitor. Loads of typo's and mis-spellings. No fair. At present I just want to curl up in a corner with a bottle of whiskey and wash all the crap out of my head. Then go on the wagon for a week or two. This generally has the effect of either;
a) Clearing all the cruddy, useless storylines out of my head and leaving the good ones gleaming in the sunlight of reason.
Or more commonly;
b) Stopping the whole project dead in it's tracks.

This close to the finish line; b) is unthinkable. I think I need to go fishing. There's just too much craziness and irrationality out in the world which I don't want to / can't be arsed to respond to. I need time to take a break and ignore all the global warming lie crap / Political interference in life. I don't care if what I do is more like dredging weed than fishing.

Time to step away from the keyboard for a day or so.

Dolphins!

Sighted in the Southern part of Dodd narrows at around 10:15, a lot of splashing out in the middle of the channel. At first I thought they were two of the Sea Lion population come to pay us a visit, but before I could get a good look, they were gone. At around 12:00 they turned up again. Two of them, and this time I got a good enough look to definitely identify them as Dolphins and nothing else.

The fins had a particularly sharp profile, which leads me to suspect that they were White sided Dolphins known to be native to BC, although I could not be certain, only having a set of old 7x35mm binoculars. However, they were just mucking about in the water, hunting and generally plaguing hell out of the local fish population. Until two large power boats bimbled up and down the channel, sending the Dolphins diving for safety. Our local seal simply regarded the intruders with his (Her?) habitually mournful expression before diving and heading for the shallow side of the channel to the west of Round Island.

Spent four solid hours down at the waterfront, casting and ledgering until just before three at slack tide with no luck. However, my casting has improved dramatically, and nine out of ten of my casts are well over twenty plus metres. Even managed one or two closer to forty metres than thirty. No fish though. Not even a crab like last time. Never mind.

Wife has been monopolising my ageing 'pooter, having been given the job of rewriting mini biographies of some of the local worthies for the re-opening of Nanaimo's Museum and chopping the prose down to 175 and 75 word chunks. She asks my advice every so often, which is gratifying. I'm also a little amused by the folk who get a bit carried away with the written word. Some of the offerings Wife has had to rewrite have been heading over the verbosity event horizon and accelerating. However, it's easy for me to say this, I've been writing to wordage limits for years, and précis kind of becomes second nature after a while. All it takes is years of abuse.

The manuscript is looking better, although I'm going to have to research a little more plasma physics so my characters sound like they know what they are talking about, even if I don't.

Oh well, it's our Wedding Anniversary tomorrow, and after that we're both helping out at a Kids event down at the Waterfront on Monday. Meeting on Monday night, followed by a busy week. All this and the price of gas going up. Hi ho.

First catch, Tempura batter and good feeling

The past couple of days I have been away from the keyboard, fishing and cooking and generally chilling out. Not much to do on the work front, and as output on the writing front has been bombing along at 3000+ words a day, I have elected to take it easy and rethink some of the story lines. Wife monopolised my battered old Compaq for her Museum project, and I have been making myself scarce in case she asked me to help out.

Today my fishing activities actually bore fruit. Took advantage of the very low tides and decided to do something about my casting technique. As I have blogged before, I can't cast for toffee, or anything else for that matter, and I was determined to find out why. Fixing a 20z weight to my line with a one metre trace, I farted around until I managed to make one cast of over forty metres. This may not sound much to the experts, but for me it was a superhuman effort. Then I looked at what I had done and tried to replicate the technique. After a couple of embarrassingly muffed efforts, I began to drop my casts at a moderate distance from the shoreline. Thirty and forty metres out, spinning the lure back through two to three metres depth of water. I was quite chuffed. I was even more amazed when what I thought was a snag turned into my first catch ever in BC waters. This little guy was hanging off the hook as I reeled in, pursued by something silvery looking, around sixty centimetres long which turned and flipped into the depths as my catch broke surface. Even though he was of edible size, I wasn't interested as at just under 150mm across the shell, there wasn't enough crab meat for two.



Next item of interest was a Live Lewis Moon shell right at the waters edge. Only a moderate sized one at about four inches diameter across the shell, but still, quite a find. I've found much larger specimens like the one in the photo below, but those have been dead tideworn shells, without much of the colour of the live one above.

Oh yes, I also finally cracked making Tempura batter after many previous woeful failures. I would have taken a photograph, but they were eaten before I could find my camera. Shame.

My paying job is going a bit slow at present, without much happening. Just glad I'm not on commission only, at this rate I'd starve. However, as with all these things, you have to keep going. Something always gives in the end.

Another reason

The times we live in! This evening, I spent a relaxed hour down at the waterfront, rod in my hand, standing on my rocks. To my left, facing north, the sea was dark wine coloured, to my right, steel blue like hammered and polished metal. Didn't catch any fish, but I didn't care at all.

Got back home and read the Daily Telegraph online, I know I shouldn't but it's like a drug. I read an opinion piece about how the Telecoms watchdog in the UK, OFcom, had proposed that when you get 'old' you should be microchipped with an RFID type chip that tells you when to take your medicine etc.

Here's my position on the proposal, fuddy duddy dithering fifty year old that I am; the 'State' can stick a microchip in me over my cold, lifeless, freezing, exsanguinated cadaver. The first person to try such a move, even when I am ninety and feeble in both body and mind, will die. I know exactly how, and it doesn't take much strength or speed, believe me. They can keep their hands off my lifeless corpse as well. If they want that, I'll come back and haunt those responsible until they jump off the nearest high building.

This may sound like an extreme position, but what they propose is pretty extreme too, and signals a sinister paradigm shift between the governing and the governed. I pay my taxes in the UK (Or rather did) so that the Government would provide services for the people, not strut around like little demagogues, demanding compliance and obeisance for each half baked piece of control freakery an unelected bunch of mutton heads can come up with.

As far as this proposal is concerned 'Ofcom' can 'Off-fuck'. Those responsible for this heinous proposal can be identified and harassed via the Ofcom web site.

I really should stop reading the papers, they only make me cross. On the other hand, maybe that's not such a bad thing. Anger has it's uses.

Current learning

Today, joy of joys, I finally got my BC fishing permit and this afternoon proceeded to the shoreline to cast my bread upon the waters.

Not that I was expecting to catch anything, although after about half an hour I saw something big and silvery jump out of the water in mid channel. It must have been as long as my arm. Sadly, the bugger was also well out of my reach the best part of a hundred metres off. The currents in the Narrows were as fast as I had anticipated, and quickly swung my lure towards the shoreline and the weed beds. Reeled in and cast again, although I've always been pretty ashamed of my casting ability. Despite being able to pick up large and heavy objects without so much as breaking step, I can't cast to save my life. Can't throw overarm for toffee either. God, it's so fucking embarrassing sometimes. It's not as if the power isn't there, my physical strength is quite impressive, it's just my lousy timing that makes me throw like a dysfunctional toddler.

An hour and two rock snags later, both my fancy ten buck lures had gone and I decided to call it a day. The tide was all wrong, and I was inclined to think I'd picked a poor spot. The tide is too fast just at that spot, and to keep your lure further out you need a much heavier ledgering weight. Not that I'm unhappy. It was beautifully sunny, and I had the beach, such as it is, to myself. There's always tomorrow. I'm working tonight.

Currently the temperatures are a very pleasant sixteen Celsius, and I haven't taken my Polaroid shades off all day. Yeah. Still a chill in the wind, but the forecast is for more of the same all week. I can do this.

Arresting experiences and shore walking

Yesterday Wife and I were out shopping. As we came out of the car park we saw a bald headed man in his late forties on the ground to the rear of a battered old white Lincoln. A younger guy with short brown hair had hold of his arms. Both in everyday street clothes.

Wife and I, being the kind of people we are, naturally assumed that the older man was having some kind of siezure and the younger man was trying to help him, so we both headed towards them to render assistance. As Wife got within ten metres I noticed that the older man was not in spasm, he was struggling with the younger man. "Step back love." I called Wife back as we had obviously fallen witness to an arrest and didn't want to piss off the local RCMP plain clothes people. We stepped away and watched the older mans arms pushed firmly behind his back and the cuffs snapped on. Another plain clothes man arrived and together they ensured the older man was hefted to his feet and shepherded off to the local nick. No punches, no kicks, no guns, threats or Tazers, just a little judicious Judo type hold and the supposed malefactor was hauled off in chains, despite quite a bit of swearing on his part.

Today was not so full of drama. Having looked at the budget and decided that the purchase of a new camera is going to have to wait until next payday, we instead took a wander down to a pub that has been highly recommended by our friends. It was like stepping through a space warp into the pubs I spent a goodly portion of my mis-spent youth in. Heavy dark beams and age yellowed ceiling. Beermats and memorabilia pinned up all over the walls, just a bit tidier and less careworn. The Guinness wasn't bad either, served just the way I like it, slightly below room temperature, not chilled. Well 'kept' too, with that dry hoppy flavour I like. I could get used to that.

Upon our return home, Wife had the sitting room changed around, and I retuned the TV to one of the analogue stations before taking Dog out to hunt around the inter tidal zone.

At the time of writing, most of the inter tidal stretches of shoreline are coated in a granular coat of Herring roe. Anywhere there is sea grass or any other form of sea weed it looks like it is heavily coated in coarse brown sugar. Despite the fishing boats having gone, there is still enough Herring out there to keep at least eight sea lions busy on our side of the Narrows alone. I watched one feeding less than forty feet away, gulping and snorting down fish after fish until he (she?) stopped and saw me watching him (her?). After a lazy pause the Sea Lion dived and swam off to haunt other nadirs. Like most sensible creatures, I don't suppose they like being watched eating any more than I do just in case some pedant sees fit to criticise your manners.

Bald Eagles all over the place still. Dozens of them down by the low water mark. At least ten perched in the the branches of the local waterfront Fir trees in a three hundred metre stretch. I stopped at one point and spooked four from a tree directly overhead, less than twelve metres above me by accident. The Gulls don't seem to mind having these big winged raptors hanging around, there are huge rafts of seabirds sitting out in the Narrows, occasionally taking a leisurely dive below the water in search of an easy feed. Everything around here seems just so all fired unhurried.

Had a chat with one of my neighbours whose property overlooks the water. Turns out that even those who have been here on the Island ten years or more haven't seen anything like it. Conversations with people born here have turned up more or less the same story. Herring have been reported as being sold for five dollars a bucketful in Nanaimo they are so plentiful.

As for me, I am waiting for the first of April to get my years fishing permit. If the Herring run has been this good, the Salmon will be even better. The 'springs' are plentiful in Ladysmith right now, and that bodes well for bagging a few salmon over next month. I just hope our Freezer is big enough to hold my limit, or that Wife doesn't start pulling a face and saying "Not Salmon again!" when I return with my catch.

Winding down

My birthday today. Still a little ache in the jaw from yesterdays visit to the Dentist. Nothing really much to do but hit the keyboard and walk Dog. Since I am no longer in the UK, none of my friends has sent me a card. I've had a few phone calls and e-mails but nothing much else. Not awfully bothered really, the big five-oh was last year, so this is a bit of an anti climax. I'm just happy to be here. Birthdays are for children really. All the hoopla I can do without.

Cursing my own foolishness right at this moment. Have just returned from the shoreline where I missed a golden opportunity of photographing Sea Lions at close quarters. Had the camera all right. Sea Lions snorting and diving less than thirty feet away. Bone brain here had left his SD memory card in his laptops card reader. To be frank and candid I'm rather cross with myself for being so careless. When I pulled out the camera and went to click the shutter, a 'No memory' warning flashed up. I can be really dozy sometimes.

As for the fishing fleet on our doorstep, looks like most of them are packing up and going home after four solid days of 24/7 work. A few nets are still down in the Narrows, but most of the action has moved south of Round Island. Half of the boats are gone. Tomorrow afternoon I expect that most will be gone, and all I will be left with on my solitary meander over the shellfish beds is the crying of well fed Eagles, and (Groan) the silence of the clams.

Working boats

Feeling a bit sorry for myself after a visit to the Dentist, so took an amble across the road to take a peek at what the boats were up to. There's still quite a few in the Narrows, but there are more in the lee of Round Island, and the smaller feeder boats are working both sides of the channel, within 20-30 metres of the shore.
The Gulls are sitting on the water like so many flakes of snow, mostly too full of fish to move much. Just marking time above the shoals of Herring still in the channel. Larger predators herd the shoals, leaving V shaped ripples as they come close to the surface, which isn't difficult, given the relatively shallow water.
I had a stroke of luck and got these rather low quality pictures with my rather old and shaky digital camera of a boat similar to the one I described previously. In the first picture, the crew snag one of the buoys supporting a Gill net.
In the second picture they are sliding the nets over the wheelhouse so that the top and bottom run over either end of the rotating paddles.
In the third shot the paddles are stalled because something big and predatory has gone through the net mesh and left a three metre wide hole. To the guys working the boat this wasn't a problem, they seemed to be having a little fun as they worked up and down the nets. Pretty chill down there, even in the afternoon sun, yet one of the lads in the stern of the boat pictured took time to strip off buck naked and change into his waterproofs. Either that or I was being mooned. No matter, it's a young mans game down there, and fooling around keeps you warm.

Note: There are three or four variants of this type of boat. All around the same shape and size hull, but I noted one which worked bow to stern with shorter, mesh type paddles as opposed from right to left with the big paddles like on the boat pictured.

The Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change (Uncensored)

Item not currently being reported by the Mainstream Media. (Link to *.pdf)

'Global warming’ is not a global crisis

We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,

Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;

Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;

Recognising that the causes and extent of recently observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed ‘consensus’ among climate experts are false;

Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing, human suffering;

Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:

Hereby declare:

That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity's real and serious problems.

That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.

That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.

That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.

That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.

Now, therefore, we recommend -

That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as An Inconvenient Truth.

That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.

Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008. [End of Declaration]

Sounds good to me. The fishing boats are still out in the channel in force, and have been all night. Looks like kippers will be cheaper this week, then. Picture taken last night at ten pm from my kitchen window.

Hat tip to: An Englishmans castle

Herring run

Down south of Nanaimo this afternoon there is a Herring run in progress. Forty plus commercial fishing boats are busily netting and long lining for all they are worth. I could clearly see and hear all the activity down in the Narrows from my kitchen window as seen below.

The sea by the western edge of Mudge Island, all the way down to Link and Round Island is a pale pastel milky green band rich with Herring roe. Long slicks of Roe and spawn leave fifty metre long trails of white surface scum on the surface of the water, spreading along the current lines. The Harbour Patrol, in a small cabin cruiser with an outsize outboard motor are out checking fishing licences. Even a senior couple in a small white dinghy who have brought out their rods and lines to see what they can catch.

Gulls sit on the water, too gorged to move, while the local Bald Eagles swoop lazily in a perfect blue sky, looking for the odd careless salmon feeding on the glut of Herring.

In and under the water, massive shoals clearly visible, are buffeted and herded by several Sea Lions, their three and a half metre long pale brown bodies clearly visible from our vantage point above. As the Sea Lions moved down southwards, two Common Seals took their place, feeding in a leisurely fashion.

On the other side of Mudge, someone is blasting. Each heavy thump, sounding like heavy logs sharply hitting concrete from this distance, is heralded by a number of toots from one of those little compressed gas horns, and followed by one longer morselike dash sound. Toot-toot-toot-toot-toot (Bam) toooot. Dog is currently trying to hide under my chair. Poor animal. He does so hate the noise.

Despite all the blasting, fishing boats are coming and then leaving an hour or so later, their bare alloy hulls riding visibly lower in the water as they struggle up the narrows against the flooding tide. The run continues. For hours, maybe a day. Then all the excitement will die down. Until the next Herring or Salmon run comes to Dodds Narrows.

There is warmth in the early March Sun, the breezes are soft and forgiving for this time of year. I live in a small piece of Paradise.

Dangerous to know

Busy day today, fixing wheelchairs and aids for the disabled. I just got on with it, not fussing the rest of the guys with 'what do you want me to do now?' I just picked my jobs and did the ones I could. I like working with my hands. It's absorbing, even cathartic, and strangely enough helps me think. Successfully fixed four wheelchairs, a stroller, and a few other bits and pieces.

I used to blog about my last UK job under a pseudonym, and had a regular readership of over 2500 'hits' a week. During December 2006 this rose to over 8000 individual readers a week on the run up to Christmas. Not like this blog, which is a very placid and obscure little backwater in the blogosphere, which suits me just fine.

Six months after I finished that job and stopped posting about my job on the blog, my ex-employers thought they'd found me out, and my old alter ego got a threatening 'cease and desist' e-mail from my old boss. One of the things I gave thinking time to today was what I was going to do about the threat, which has been bothering me for quite a while. What it boiled down to was this; what were they going to do if I left the blog up? Have me arrested? Sue me? Refuse references? These three options had me pondering until I arrived at the following decision; they can go swivel on it. The blogs will remain. Firstly I don't like being threatened. Secondly I'm over five thousand miles away and the UK civil courts have no juresdiction. Thirdly, in the UK I'm broke, so they aren't likely to get any money out of me. Fourthly I'm not going to quote them as a reference. Although I did a capable job for them and always got praise from my immediate superiors for the quality of my work, I hated every minute of the time I had to spend in my erstwhile bosses presence and almost wrecked my health working for them. Upon careful reflection I have decided that I owe them nothing. Fuck 'em. Petty little sods. The blogs can stay up as a memorial to their ineptitude. If they can prove it was me in a court of law, which I doubt they ever could; there's no benefit for them. If the press ever connected my alter ego's blog to my real name, it would make my employers look even more petty and ridiculous than ever I found them. The blogs traffic will eventually wither and die until it becomes a dusty little cul-de-sac on some back road off the information superhighway. Calling attention to it would be a mistake. If they had any sense, my ex employers should let that particular sleeping dog lie. But they haven't. That's probably what drove the blog.

Talking of sense, I've been haunting the UK newspaper forums of late, although I know I shouldn't, and find precious little there. If what is written is the reflection of the UK's general level of intelligence and education, then UK plc is in serious trouble. Very few people seem to think before posting. They don't look at the big picture at all. From the insulting behaviour of the online 'trolls', to the frothing insanity of the conspiracy theorists and religious fanatics, there's hardly an atom of logic to be found at all. They almost always attack the messenger, not the message, because many have nothing but dogma to fall back on for argument. Their intellectual bankruptcy appals me. For myself I often erase what I've written and step away from the keyboard because reacting to the futlity of it all is just not rational.

Whenever temptation to get involved in a posting free-for-all strikes a choice piece of dialogue from the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy drifts into my head. "You can read my mind?" Goes the outraged voice of Arthur Dent, the quintessential middle englander.
"Yes." Responds the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android. "And I'm amazed you can live in anything that small."

Such is the human condition. Never mind; the fishing season is almost upon us, and I've got a nice little spot picked out from which to bag the odd salmon. One of my daily tasks is to improve my access by placing rocks to form a stable stairway down to the shore. I've also taken to reading 'Hemingway on Fishing' and P J O'Rourke's pieces on the subject, which may not have as much literary merit, but are far funnier.