The Queen of Grease

Nerissa of Waglisla provides a tremendously good primer on our little friend, the Ooligan or oolichan, fish, a.k.a. the candlefish, "the queen of grease," so greasy that when dried, you can light it like a match. These little guys have been running in lately, and lots of brown pelicans have been hovering like mastadons over the near surf. The poor surviving Caspian terns from nothern beaches-with-cars are wandering about trying to model sea gull behavior - I guess they are imprinting youths. There is a mix of sea birds on the beach, and every time I see them wheeling around, I am sadly aware there are "too many." Porpoises are whelping now, too.

Yesterday the Pacific heat wave brought lots of human and dog beach combers out to the beach. A tiny black poodle came dashing up to me and spread eagled himself on the sand, gave me a kiss, and ran off, leaving a little bi-pedal print in the sand where his rear legs kicked out. The salp we saw in last week's surf, in the dense fog, remains but a story. The excellent, professional photographer with me out in the extreme fogginess was engulfed by a rogue wave while attempting to photograph the tiny, sandy salp. So she could not capture it, but the salp's mythology lives on. Reminded me of the first encounter with Jackie, a photograph taken by a three-year old on the beach here, the niece of a scientist. The photograph I saw was broadcast gigantically in a power point presentation by a Fish and Wildlife scientist at the Columbia River Maritime Museum. Someone asked, "what is that?" and she explained what it was, and that her niece had found it on the beach and asked for the camera so she could take a picture of it. She, the niece, lay down on her belly and took the shot. The scientist, impatient with the three-year old, did not even see the thing in the sand, and thought the niece was being kind of silly, like a three year old. Only when she saw the photograph down-loaded and larger did she realize what it was. A salp from Antarctica. The three year old was resonant enough to recognize its intelligence there on the beach, one half inch in diameter, perfectly transparent, and beautiful as all get out. It was a dazzling shot. Here is a Salp. It's not Jackie, but there are many beautiful pictures of salps on the internet now, whereas when Jackie started blogging, they were pretty primitive. Salps are getting better known, especially for their key role in climate change.
Many ooligans washing up - witnessed two human-ooligan rescues yesterday. Two teen aged girls, when I pointed at a silvery flopping item, rushed up and saved the one, and a young mother with a newish human baby nestled against her chest carefully bent over and rescued the other, while her unemcumbered sister stood by and watched. I wonder what makes some save ooligans, while others just like to watch? I figure these two washed up ones were dented by sea birds, as they came up with the rising tide.