Friday June 5, 2015 Jenner CA.
Foggy but calm
I could see it was foggy as I drove into Jenner this morning, but a real big plus was the wind was down. I put my boat in the water and decided to paddle up the river a bit as when I was driving down, I spotted the fish tracking biologists in their boat by Paddy’s rock, tracking fish. They’ve been tracking tagged fish in the estuary for a bit now, but they’ve been doing it in the upper estuary so I haven’t been able to catch up with them for a chat.
Since they were tracking in my area, I headed that way, but not hurrying as they have a motor and can disappear fast, so I just did my thing and if they were still there ok, if not, it looked like it was going to be a nice day.
I crossed over the little channel at the upper end of Penny Island and started up the river. This was my view as I’m just about to clear the island heading up the river. A bit of fog and flat.
Biologists up river
As I was paddling near Eagle’s landing, I could see the biologists in their boat up in the fog just past Paddy’s rock, so maybe I’d be able to catch up with them. Chick the picture to get a larger one and higher quality too.
Osprey lands
As I was paddling by Eagle’s landing, I was thinking I haven’t seen an eagle land here in a long time and I was looking up in the trees when this osprey landed right in front of me, not making a sound.
Biologists at work
I left the osprey in the tree and continued on up the river. When I got up to the Muskrat area, I could see the biologists were still there, across the river, so I started paddling on over their way and this is what it looked like as I quietly approached their boat. They were working away, taking measurements of water conditions and tracking tagged fish.
This was the first time I’ve been able to talk with these guys this year. They were here last year so I’ve talked with them before. This was Bill and Brian. We discussed what they were doing and some of what they found out from last years study and a lot about the functions of the estuary and fish spawning in general. We covered a lot of stuff which mixed with what I already think I know gives me a lot to think about, merging their information with mine sometimes changing how I think about how things work down here.
Lots of questions
I had a bunch of questions for them, but only could remember a few of them. I followed them tracking fish up to the highway one bridge, then left them at it and went on over to Dead Deer gulch and did some thinking about what I had learned.
Centipede rescued
While I was sitting there in the water near the shoreline, I spied this centipede on a little rock surrounded by water and was wondering if it was alive or dead? If it was alive, it was in a bad way as the shore was a couple feet of water away. It had about four inches before the rock was covered with water.
I put my paddle over near it and it moved, so it was indeed alive. At first it ran from my paddle, but I hold it still for it to climb on and it finally did as there was no were to go on the top of the rock. I put it on the shore where it scampered off doing what centipedes do.
My good deed for the day. When I was younger, I would have more likely squashed it. :O)
I headed back down the river with the wind still down and some higher fog.
It was so nice out, I really took my time paddling along here, stopping often.
There were some cormorants and some ducks resting on this old redwood log as I neared Penny Island. You can see it’s a bit foggy, but not really too bad.
I pulled into the little channel on the upper end of Penny Island. With the mouth officially closed the water is high in this spot and it’s always real nice and scenic and out of the wind if it’s blowing.
Headed to the river’s mouth area
I was debating with myself about paddling down to the river’s mouth area. It was so calm out, I decided to head on down that way and I paddled along the north edge of Penny Island headed that way. Here I am just leaving the lower end of Penny Island and just starting to head across the open water to the river’s mouth area. You can see Goat Rock on the far right.
As I as crossing this boat came by. I think they are some biologists taking water samples of the estuary water, as I’ve seen them before. They got their samples and were headed in.
There were the usual harbor seals resting on the beach and several different kinds of birds too. The mouth was closed up behind the jetty, so I continued on a little further to the end of the river. I was checking out these cormorants when I realized there were some geese on the shore too. The geese were blending in with the wood logs and I didn’t see them right away. At least they were being quiet and not honking.
The water was real calm and I was just sitting around watching things. I drifted over to this spot and was just sitting.
Just to the right of that spot, things looked like this. Very scenic and very relaxing.
It was about 4:30PM so I was starting to head back towards the boat ramp by way of Penny Island. I passed this pair of mallard ducks on this big piece of wood, just preening and taking it easy.
I made it back to the ramp about five and took my boat off the water and went on home for the day.
Not much energy to do anything at home, so I just napped and sat around in the yard for the rest of the day.
Nice day.