We here at FishOn have always been fond of restorations, as long as they don’t involve hair plugs or anything else follicle-related. We have spent a lifetime trying to restore our reputation from an unfortunate incident that occurred at the end of our fifth high school reunion. Our struggle continues.
We were happy to hear last week that Maritime Gloucester would be the first stop for the Fuller shallop, a restored replica of the original shallop that came to America aboard the Mayflower, as it made its way from Lowell’s Boat Shop in Amesbury to Plymouth Harbor.
As you may have read in our stories in the Gloucester Daily Times and online at gloucestertimes.com, the shallop, now a complement to the restored Mayflower II, was available last Friday and Saturday at Maritime Gloucester’s Harriet Webster Pier for public viewings and demonstrations.
We got a nice note from Dick Stone, president of Mayflower Event News, that had a simple question that we were remiss in not asking in the first place.
“Nice article about the shallop,” Stone wrote. “I really enjoyed it and had a question: Why is it called the Fuller shallop? Was that the name of the owner, designer, other?”
A penetrating query. Once healed of our shame, we went back to Michael De Koster at Maritime Gloucester and asked him that same.
De Koster responded, by way of the Plimoth Patuxet Museums, that “A generous donation from a private foundation made the restoration possible and the donor chose to honor the memory of Mayflower passenger Deacon Samuel Fuller.”
So, there you go. Another mystery solved.
FishOn weekly baseball quiz question
On this date in 1974, the Red Sox and the Angels played an epic 15-inning game in which losing Boston starter Luis Tiant pitched 141/3 innings. Winning Angels starter Nolan Ryan pitched 13 innings — while throwing 235 pitches and striking out 19! In the bottom of the 15th, the Angels won on an RBI double by a player that would join the Red Sox precisely a year to the day later. Who be that player? The answer resides below.
The Flamingo kids
You know what they say: Go big or go home. What they don’t say is go to sea on a giant inflatable pink flamingo and expect things to go swimmingly.
Let’s got to Alaska.
On June 5, three (alleged) adults and two small dogs boarded a giant inflatable pink flamingo (the S.S. Impending Doom). Things went poorly. The dogs wisely mutinied and the Coast Guard had to come to the rescue with an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter when the craft, swept by winds across Monashka Bay, ran aground on offshore rocks.
Kodiak residents Colin Dickey and Katie Gray witnessed the voyage of the damned from their deck. They shot a video, which they posted to Instagram and shared with alaskalandmine.com that you can watch here (https://bit.ly/3xdahgj).
“We were outside on our porch, and I saw this giant pink flamingo floating across the bay,” Gray told the website. “The first thing I said was, ‘Oh, another invasive species’.”
Hollie Spence, a passenger aboard the flamingo, took to social media to thank her rescuers, sayeth alaskalandmine.com.
“Thank you every single one of you gentlemen & every Kodiak resident that cared, reported & made sure we were OK!,” she wrote. “I will NEVER forget my 30th birthday!!”
The website later updated its post to report that Spence also confirmed that the Coast Guard rescued the flamingo, as well. The ASPCA may stand down.
Feets don’t stain me now
We now turn to the marine environmental mystery portion of today’s FishOn. First up, what was causing people at beaches in New Hampshire and southern Maine to complain that the sand was staining their feet?
According to a story in the New York Times, theories flowed like sands through an hourglass. Some thought it was algae. Others guessed oil. One even blamed a submarine she’d seen in the area. A spokesman for the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry provided the most plausible answer: millions of dead black kelp flies that feast on decaying seaweed.
“It’s not known why,” Jim Britt told the Times reporter. “Nature does crazy stuff. This might be one of those instances.”
The minuscule flies — which we like to bake and stuff, but you need the microscopic bread crumbs — apparently contain a “naturally occurring pigment.” Hence the stains, which while aesthetically annoying, apparently pose no danger.
No one knows why the huge kelp fly mortality event occurred and NOAA Fisheries is said to be readying a Tiny Take Reduction Team to investigate the riddle.
The Times story also stated that social media posts reporting the phenomenon were generated from as far away as Gloucester.
We here at FishOn want to state, in the clearest possible language, that it wasn’t us. We never complain about anything. Is someone laughing out there?
Sea snot? Sure, why not?
Now to Turkey. We here at FishOn have never been big fans of the Ottoman Empire, even if it was an empire where you always had a place to sit. There is the little matter of the Armenian holocaust in which about 1.5 million Armenians were killed. So we’ve never been in a big rush to go to Turkey. Even more so now.
According to a story in the Washington Post, Turkey is under assault from a “scourge of marine mucilage” that is choking the coasts along the Sea of Marmara, which lies between the Black and Aegean seas. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has even waded into the gooey fray.
“My fear is, if this expands to Black Sea . . . the trouble will be enormous,” Erdogan told the BBC, via the Post story. “We need to take this step without delay.”
He also declared the area a conservation area. Well, that usually does the trick.
“Thick layers of the viscous, slimy mucus colloquially known as ‘sea snot’ have been wreaking havoc along Turkey’s coastline for months, choking harbors and clogging up fishermen’s nets while suffocating marine life,” the Post story stated.
Scientists have pinned the blame on untreated sewage, agricultural runoff and other manner of pollution mixed with warming waters into a noxious cocktail. The cleanup has included giant vacuum cleaners (really) and a massive handkerchief the size of Ankara (not really).
FishOn weekly baseball quiz answer
Denny Doyle doubled off Tiant in the 15th to seal the win for the Halos. On June 14, 1975, the Angels traded Doyle to the Red Sox for a player to be named later (Chuck Minor) and the plucky little second sacker played a significant role — including a 22-game hitting streak — to help the Red Sox reach the World Series.
As always, no fish were harmed in the making of this column.
Contact Sean Horgan at 978-675-2714, or shorgan@gloucestertimes.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SeanGDT
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