After returning home from a great Thanksgiving feast at my parents home in Seahurst, I decided to take a peak out at one of the lowest tides of the year and spotted this out on the beach just north of the "Rock Pile"

Of course I had to get a closer look and snapped a few more photos for the BDB.

Hoping Black Friday's ultra low tide won't be bearing anymore cephalopod gifts!

Scupper, reporting for Beach Drive Blog

The Department of Fisheries has been notified about this empty net that have washed up on the rocks this morning. Upon taking a closer look, their did not appear to be any marine life caught up in the nets but you have to wonder what may have been caught up on it's journey to the shore.   

My wife spotted this set of fishing buoys during her routine AM dog walk.

Scupper reporting for Beach Drive Blog 

As I was walking our dog this morning, four UW vans pulled up along Emma Schmitz view-point. At least twenty students poured out with cameras and notebooks trying to capture some evidence of our local section of the Seattle Fault.

With the tide half way up, there wasn't much to look at except for the tops of a few boulders exposed to the rising tide… or were these actually "Spirit Boulders" left by the devastating landslides and earthquakes reported to hit this area in A.D. 900? A little research discovered that our native predecessors believed in a vicious guardian spirit named a'yahos (also referred to as Psai-Yah-hus) that appeared in this area and was associated with the existence of the infamous Spirit Boulder in Fauntleroy cove.

Could this be the same sea-creature my neighbor Eddy claimed to have hooked with a Buzz Bomb lure???

Scupper, reporting for Beach Drive Blog 

I counted at least six boats making sets for the chum salmon run yesterday. It's pretty interesting seeing how these boats operate the nets. The following shots were taken as the sun was just coming over the hill…

The days and times for this type of fishing is a moving target set by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife . Purse seiners had the green light for areas 10 and 11 (Seattle/Tacoma) between 7:00AM to 6:00PM.

How many movies can you count where an "incurable disease" threatens the worlds population? No worries if you can't think of any off-hand… they're still making them! 

Unfortunately, this old plot is a bit too close to home for our local Puget Sound salmon runs. Recent news has reported a sample of wild Sockeye in British Columbia have contracted a European strain of Salmon Anemia. Which of course, is non-curable.This fish flu has historically only affected (devastated) the Atlantic Salmon farms in Norway, Scotland, Chile, and Eastern Canada but has never shown up on the Pacific side of the world… until now. 

Like me, you may be asking what Atlantic Salmon are doing in the Pacific mixing with our own superior wild salmon species? Well, our northerly neighbors in British Columbia have been farming the Atlantic species for years now, buying the eggs from Norway (just like Chile did). Then it dawned on me that we have some aquatic salmon pens about 5 miles west of Beach Drive just inside the southern tip of Bainbridge Island inside Rich Passage.

I've motored over to the pens a few times each summer showing guests salmon splashing around and the seals begging a few get loose.  A little research revealed: "Oly Yump'n yalmon!" those are Atlantic Salmon being farmed by American Gold Seafood for buyers such as Whole Foods who sells the fish outside our local market area (it's a "socially sensitive subject" in these parts). American Gold Seafood owns and operates over 120 salmon pens in Washington waters with this villian fish yet claim superior farming methods as compared to other competing sites. They have not detected the virus.  

We've recently noticed the UW research vessel Thomas G Thompson snooping around between Beach Drive and Blake Island wondering if they're probing some of our friendly salmon or herring in their floating laboratory (place dramatic sci-fi music here).

 Scupper, reporting for Beach Drive Blog