The Great Divide

The Barbie pole has made an appearance back here in Illinois.

Conditions were not outstanding, but the daughter and I managed a few dinks from the creek bank. A good time was had by all. We'll be back at it again when the weather settles down.

On another note, I see that there is trouble brewing in the fishing world. Apparently some of it pertains to me.

A group called "Smallmouth Unlimited" has started up recently. I don't know anything about this group outside what I found on their website. I have yet to speak with their leadership. Certainly anyone interested in conservation done the right way represents something positive. Since Smallmouth Unlimited has adopted the template of the Illinois Smallmouth Alliance philosophies as their mission statement, they must be such a group. I wish them well.

I also wish the story ended there.

Unfotunately, it seems the Illinois Smallmouth Alliance has taken umbrage that Smallmouth Unlimited borrowed text from the ISA Conservation Philosophies. Since I wrote virtually all of the ISA document (the ISA leadership added one article and subtracted one), it seems I have a stake in this issue.

Let's get this issue back on an even keel.

The ISA Conservation Philosophies were intentionally never copyrighted. They were never intended to become the "property" of any one group. To the contrary, the Philosophies were specifically written as a template for general use among conservation angling groups. They are ideas and ideas can't be owned. The use of those ideas and even their wording by Smallmouth Unlimited is appropriate, legal, and encouraging.

The promotion of those ideas, and not the ownership of those ideas, should be the central concern of the ISA. The fact that another group would promote those ideas should be seen as an opportunity and not a threat. The apparent friction here illustrates my deepest longstanding disappointments with the conservation establishment at large.

It hardly seems fair to pick on the ISA, given that this issue extends to academicians, administrators, non-governmental organizations, governmental organizations, conservation professionals, sporting goods companies, and individual anglers. This is a basic human failure, (probably the most fundamental of human moral failures). It is a failure just the same.

Conservationists, if they are conservationists, promote the interests of the resource ahead of themselves. Once a group places their own interests ahead of the resource they are not so much "conservationists" as "territorialists".

Unfortunately, in many, many cases, territorialism seems to be the dominant approach to natural resources. When priorities are selfish, protecting a research niche, funding source, group prestige, professional salary or mission statement very quickly over-rides the needs of the resource. I could list innumerable cases where the resource was harmed or put at disadvantage because of a group or individual's desire to promote themselves, often by attacking or undermining other groups or individuals who had legitimate contributions to make.

Certainly competition for territory has a long history in human events. Struggles over turf are a basic part of animal behavior. In a pursuit as laid back as sport fishing, I would have hoped that kind of thing could have been set aside. Clearly that is not the case.

Seriously, people, what is really at stake here?

More on this soon. There are SO many stories to tell here. I'll see which ones become appropriate.

One more Belize trip before hitting the road

Back in Illinois now.

Took one last fishing trip out of Placencia, using the kayak to drift along a freshwater salt water seam in the seagrass at the lagoon mouth. The dinks were cooperative, but nothing of size made an appearance for quite some time.

So after several hours of catching small jacks, schoolmaster snappers and blue-lined grunts, the final bite of the day bent the rod double and pulled the rod tip under the boat, the drag wasn't quite ready to respond. Whatever that fish was, it didn't slow down much before it snapped the line.

I don't know how many big fish I've lost to an overly stiff drag. Need to remember to keep it limber by pulling some line through it now and then.

Ah well. There's always next time.

For now, it's time to find the Barbie pole and some nice Illinois panfish just right for a 5 year old.

Randy Rays

A spawning aggregation of cowl-nosed rays showed up in a canal in the lagoon yesterday.

Thanks to Emily who came by the office to tell us. The pictures speak for themselves.

The Leaning Ice House of Placencia

The Anachronism apologizes for the recent gap between posts but frankly things have been a bit busy here.

You have heard of the Leaning Tower of Piza? Meet the Leaning Ice House of Placencia.

Aside from finishing two projects, hosting a workshop, running a contest and battling raccoons (a story for another day), we have also had the biggest earthquake in Belize in recent history. The epicenter was in Hounduras (a large bridge I traveled on there recently near Progresso collapsed) and registered a hefty 7.1. We've had aftershocks as big as 6.1 almost every day since then.

For a village accustomed to danger from the sky, this was an unexpected twist. Most of the village was spared. Unfortunately, near the end of the point where the sand has been recently deposited, the shaking liquified the ground. Mud sprang up through the sand everywhere and houses sank. Several luxury concrete homes and condos are leaning and cracked.

One especially notable loss was the Placencia Fisherman's Co-op. The co-op ice house is still operating (if at an angle), but the main building is a complete loss.

Admirably, power and water were restored within a few hours after the quake. The water tower in Independence Village collapsed and crushed the water main, but even they were back up and running the next day.

It will be time to travel back to Illinois soon. Maybe I can slip in one more Belizean fishing trip before I go.

Requiem for a manatee

My friend Adrian Vernon usually handles reporting for any dead manatees found in the Placencia area. The folks at SEA provide him logistical support. When a call came in this week, I went with Adrian to help move the carcass so it could be necropsied.

We found the small female near the shore in Mango Creek.



The cause of death hasn't been officially determined, but from the wounds it seem pretty obvious that this manatee has been struck by a boat motor. As more and more people and boats move to the Placencia area, manatee-boat collisions become a bigger and bigger problem.

Rest in peace little mermaid. We will remember you.

My biggest snook

Some day I will give the whole story on this. Most of you won't believe it, so I'm in no big hurry. But this is in fact the biggest snook I've ever caught. I normally would have released it, but not in this setting. The fillets went to the boat captain and I'll take two servings tonight as well.

It was a nice bright spot in a hard week.

Mangroves, mangroves everywhere

Adrian and I planted another 800 mangroves this weekend. Here he is surveying a bunch we planted last November.

That was a total of 1,800 for the week and well over 12,000 for the project as a whole.

STOP THE PRESSES: Apparently Adrian went stark mangrove-planting crazy this weekend and put an additional 1,200 in the ground (keeping us relatively even in numbers for the week, that devious little...I'll pass him yet). SO. That readjusting the numbers between us that gives us a total of 3,000 for the week and about 13,400 for the project. We now return you to your mangrove planting blog entry....

Meeting with government officials and donors the middle part of this week.

Here's hoping all goes well. Fighting hard to keep the ship afloat.

A quick fishing trip produced a bunch of dinks. Time for a strategic adjustment.

Mangrove count hits 1000 for the week

More mangrove planting today...


The morning was spent in the office doing civilized things on the computer. After lunch I threw the kayak into the Mexican skiff with the 50 horse motor for a short ride down the coast.

The afternoon will not be civilized.

Found the cut in the mangroves and rode the little path of water through the familiar twists and turns until I came out into the lagoon where I wanted to plant.

I pushed the skiff into the shallows until it ran aground in the black muck of the delta below the shrimp farm outlet. No more motors. Backed up so the falling tide wouldn't strand me. Threw out the anchor and then the kayak. Climbed into the kayak and began paddling, leaving the boat anchored just below the delta. Hopefully the anchor will hold. I don't want to have to chase the boat across the lagoon when I return.

Half a mile upstream in the delta the kayak is beached and I'm out on foot walking across burned out savannah. Dry season is just ending and much of coastal Belize has burned. It is the annual cycle here. The smell is comforting somehow.

Ahead are the berms for the shrimp farm. There's the drainage canal. It's silted in and over-grown. That might seem like a bad thing, but it's not entirely. The water in a silty canal spreads out, slows down and drops its' load of sediment. The plants growing in the canals suck up nitrogen. It's not conventional, but it's not a disaster.



There's a nasty layer of sediment under a thin film of clay. That's muck that never made it into the lagoon.



Let's trap a bit more.


First site...250 mangroves planted along the silty canal edge.


Second site....150 mangroves planted across an especially shallow spot.

That's a thousand mangrove propagules planted for the week and I'm feeling pretty good. Now I know what to recommend to the farms.

Walk back out over the savannah to the kayak....oops.

Stepped on a seedling mangrove on the shore. Gotta plant one more before I go.

There. 1000 again.

The wind is behind me as I paddle out. The kayak bounces around in the front of the skiff on the last leg home.

Not a bad day at all.

Mangrove Planting Count: 600 for the week so far

I am firmly convinced there is simply nothing in this world more satisfying than a hard day of work doing something you deeply believe is worthwhile.

First there was the little experiment this weekend to see what kinds of propagules survive better under different conditions. That's 200 planted...

Then today I visited a shrimp farm and put several rows of propagules along a little delta from a drainage ditch. As the mangroves grow, they'll slow the run-off and spread it out more, making more sediment settle out before it reaches the estuary. That's 250 more.

Then I spoke to a dredge operator about plans to rehabilitate a sedimentation pond. For good measure I added another 150 to the end of the pond that won't be cleaned. They'll trap nutrients and sediment there...

That's 600 red mangroves this week and counting.

Also in this week's body count...

3... dolphins swimming under the kayak.

2... iguanas eating buttonwood blossoms outside the bedroom window

1....proposal for a mangrove preserve, approved

I'm hanging in there.