The Natural Coast
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30 June 2010
GIVING BACK TO THE SEA...
FROM THE FORWORD OF "THE EROTIC OCEAN"
By Jack Rudloe
The ocean has been good to me. With my nets, biological dredges, and
diving gear I have made a delightful living by selling her wonderful
renewable resources-the living creatures that dwell in her waters and live
on her bottom. I have hauled out nets gorged with struggling fish, swum
through coral reefs so breathtaking with their varieties of colors,
strange-looking fish, and eerie monsters that the scenes have been etched
forever in my memory. I have weathered storms at sea, lived with thundering
waves pounding the beaches and howling winds during a hurricane, and taken
advantage of her treasures cast upon the beach when the sea calms.
FOUR DECADES
More than 4 decades have passed since I started Gulf Specimen Company, a
small collecting enterprise. I settled in Panacea-a tiny fishing village in
northwest Florida, so small that it seldom appears on maps-and began working
with shrimpers, crab fishermen and gill netters. As time passed, the demand
for specimens from schools, research laboratories, and hobbyists increased,
and with the demand I had to learn more about the behavior and ecology of
the marine animals and plants of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Coast.
There was, and still is, much to learn.
A collecting business is subject to tides, winds and weather. It follows the
movements of jellyfish, the migrations of squid, the ripeness of sea-urchin
eggs and the spawning patterns of polychaete worms. Large conchs spew out
ribbons of accordionlike egg capsules, and purple sea hares ooze copious
green strings containing millions of jelly-coated eggs. Female blue crabs
carry thousands of developing larvae under their aprons in the form of a
sponge, and commercial shrimp migrate to the deep waters of the Atlantic and
the Gulf and explosively burst forth sperm and egg that unite-and the tiny
planktonic larvae drift shoreward with the tides and currents, along with
uncountable numbers of fish eggs, larval fish and a host of other developing
creatures. The ocean is so full of life, so productive that one can only
marvel at it.
WHIMPERING CALLS
At midnight in the calm bays and estuaries of north Florida, you sometimes
hear male porpoises letting out exuberant whimpering calls to their mates,
and under the moonlight you hear them splashing about. Then the lumbering
sea turtle comes ashore, dragging her heavy shell over the white sands and
depositing her eggs high up on the beach.
Throughout the marshes and mangrove swamps shorebirds lay their eggs and the
young hatch and feed upon the tiny fish and fiddler crabs. The waters become
milky with veliger larvae of oysters during the spawning seasons, and soon
the wharf pilings and dead shells are growing anew with tiny young oysters.
The waters teem with gametes of sponges, tunicates, hydroids and tiny
crustacea, which unite and settle on the bottom.
The ocean does not give up easily the secrets of where to find these
animals. Only by traveling around and diligently searching in her rock piles
and mudflats, day after day and year after year, will you learn when
creatures spawn and what they eat and where they hide. And that is what I
have done, together with my wife Anne, for last near forty years. Still, we
know full well as we walk over our favorite slat marsh or fishing area,
someone is probably looking at an aerial photograph of the same area,
planning to dredge and fill it, or make it into a parking lot, shopping
center or housing development. I have come to hate those little red
land-survey flags that suddenly appear in the marshes or in beautiful wooded
forests; they are as characteristic of destruction as the chancre sore is of
syphilis.
I long ago realized that I had to get involved. I could not close my eyes
to evil and just go on collecting specimens and selling them to
universities. If I did not take action, it was obvious that nothing would
stop the destruction of north Florida estuaries. Our surveys have not
stopped, but we have also engaged in a long-term campaign to educate the
public through a barrage of lectures, field trips, television and radio
interviews, and articles. I risk unpopularity by speaking out at every
public forum that affects the land and waters I love. Sometimes we have to
risk "not being nice" and receiving the enmity of our neighbors and people
who live in the community. I once said that to live in Wakulla County and
speak your mind, you have to have the hide of a rhinoceros-and maybe the
brain of one. But if you stand up for what you think is right, and you do
it year after year after year, and don't change with the wind, people will
begin to listen to you.
Back in January I saw a bumper sticker on a pick up truck that said, "Drill
Now. Drill here!" I wonder if they still have it.. As we have seen from the
deepwater horizon, oil and gas drilling will degrade Florida's Gulf shores
more than any other source of pollution that we have ever experienced. It
has already degraded our way of life, so keep fighting and don't despair.
Shrimp, crabs and oysters have been around for hundreds of millions of years
and have survived worse. Out of this horror will come a silver lining, an
awareness that will bring action and true protection and an awakening of the
blind and stupid.
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