Sure are a lot of seagulls down there. Family day at the beach? Or is it because the sun finally came out?
Hmm…. They seem to be all talking at once, and with their mouths full too. Ill-mannered scavengers.
Ahh … I see. It’s poor man’s caviar time. The herring have spawned near the beach.
I might try a lick or two when those pesky seagulls move along.
*Herring roe and seagull photos by Paul Knettig.
I used this photo in a post early this summer, about catching two fish in place of one, but it also works for a picture of a ling having lunch.
The Captain wasn’t wanting to catch a ling. It was salmon he was after. But here is how it happened, many, many years ago.
These sea salps are tiny jelly-like creatures (but they are not jellyfish) that glom together to make a bigger mass. They are a nuisance to commercial salmon fishermen when the fishing lines pass through areas where the sea salps are floating.
Some years, warmer southern currents come farther north and the salps float along with the currents into colder waters where they are not usually common.
When they coat the gear, the fish can’t find the lures (and the hooks), so the salps have to be cleaned off the gear constantly or no salmon will be caught.
They are harmless otherwise. Unlike some jellyfish they don’t have any sting when they are touched.
J is for “just a jellyfish lookalike.”
“Junior! What are you looking at down there?”
“Nothing interesting, Ma. I’m just wondering who’s going to clean up all the mess those seagulls are making. After eating all those herring and the herring roe, I bet it’s pretty slick and hummy on that roof.”
“The squawking and shrieking is ear piercing. They have no pride. Slithering around on that roof as they digest their shreds of herring. But I guess they do a good job of cleaning up the beaches. If only they’d clean up the roof after they … you know …. But wait! What’s that I hear the seagulls saying?”
In the month before Christmas I have marked my novels down to US $.99. This way you can load up your e-reader with five novels to keep you turning pages for about $5.00 total. Hours of entertainment for very little cost.
What will you get for 99 cents each?
When Sylvia receives devastating news, she knows she has to leave her California home. While hiding away in the Baja Peninsula, living in a camper van, she meets a man with a similar dilemma. Both must avoid the spouses pursuing them, or be forced to return to the intolerable misery of their past. Will the sparks they feel for each other help see them through or only make their problems worse?
Baja camping is not without its dangers and both runaways must learn to trust and mistrust at the right times.
*****
Andrea leaves big-city boredom in Ontario to search for love and a new life on B.C.’s rugged coast. The love of two men and a woman leads her into the world of commercial fishing. But soon, her adventure becomes a nightmare. The beauty of her surroundings is at odds with the terror that she lives every day. Trapped in an isolated cabin on the coast, she will need to test her newly acquired wilderness skills if she ever hopes to escape. Be sure to follow up with the sequel, Reckoning Tide.
*****
*****
Unlucky in love, Marlie flees a bad relationship. She accepts a teaching job in the remote Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii). The beauty of the islands and the rugged challenge of northern living enthrall her. A good-looking artist has his eye on her. The perfect gentleman. Or is he? And what about that handsome fisherman? Is he just a bit too real for her with his hunting and fishing? Just as Marlie hopes that her life has made a turn for the better, disaster strikes. She is shocked to see her life spiraling downwards yet again. How could she have made such an error in judgement—an error that sets more bad luck in motion?
Not willing to lose control, Marlie takes a deep breath and sets out to get her life back on track. But can she do it alone?
Set in the remote islands of coastal British Columbia, Marlie is a heartfelt romance of love and loss and love again.
Experience the fears and joys of northern island living and delight in a second chance at true love.
Julia’s Violinist takes us to postwar Europe for an unbiased story of a love triangle. Julia is widowed with two children at the end of WWll. She remarries and hopes to pick up the pieces to put her broken life back together. It isn’t going well. A letter arrives from her first love from twenty years ago. After all these years, he is alive and wants her to join him in a new life. She struggles with morality and a chance for happiness. Life’s decisions are not always easy and they can come at a huge price.
*****
To find out more about these novels, you can visit my website:
You can also click on the book cover images at the side of this post to go to amazon. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can go to smashwords.com to get these e-books for all types of e-reader formats.
So much fuss over a little fish.
But it is a very popular fish, especially on the tables of the UK and Germany. You can have it smoked or fried, or fried and served in tomato sauce, or pickled and rolled up into Rollmops. If you like fish, you probably love herring.
My mother told me that back in the days before WWII, a fishmonger was selling herring in the street, and he called out to the customers, “Herring! Herring! So fett wie der Goering.” (“Herring! Herring! As fat as Goering” [the commander-in-chief of the Nazi air force]). Since Goering’s name rhymed with the name of the fish, it caused a chuckle among the townspeople who came out of their houses to buy his fish.
But the Nazi bigwigs didn’t like to be made fun of so they arrested the fishmonger and put him in jail for two weeks.
When he was released, the fishmonger went back out onto the streets to sell his herring, calling out, “Herring! Herring! … As fat as … they were two weeks ago.”
*****
Right now the local herring fishery is winding up and the cleanup begins.
Here is a photo of the beach area below our house where you can see the herring spawn turning the water close to shore a turquoise blue colour.
The seiners have caught their allowed quotas of herring and most have gone home. There is still a lot of herring spawn (eggs) in the water, a lot of it stuck to seaweed and being washed up on the beach.
This is what the seagulls gorge themselves on.
The one on the bottom left has “egg on his face” but doesn’t seem to mind it. See the herring roe sitting on his beak?
*****
In my other blog, you might be interested in a post about what turns readers off.
https://annelisplace.wordpress.com/2021/03/20/what-turns-readers-off/
The seiners wait in the harbour for the signal that the herring are fat enough, with a high enough roe count, to allow the roe herring fishery to proceed.
Rafts of sea lions are waiting too. They will take advantage of the herring being “rounded up” in the purse seines of the big boats. Many herring “escape,” right into the waiting jaws of these huge mammals.
Some of them like the fishy smell coming from small power boats and are trying to investigate up close.
Seagulls wheel around the seiners trying to grab any herring that swims too close to the surface.
This immature eagle is about to find out that the beach will be full of bounty as roe and herring and bycatch float ashore. These foods provide much-needed calories for the eagles especially at their nesting time, which happens very soon after the herring fishery. Healthy eagles will have healthy chicks.
And let’s not forget that as much as we scoff at seagulls and their shrieking habits, they are the janitors of the beaches, cleaning up every bit of mess.
Once the carnage has been cleaned up, the animals have to scrounge what food they can until next year’s feast.
wordsfromanneli 