Pete Thomas Outdoors

Wisdom, world's oldest albatross, is a mom-to-be once more

Wisdom, who is at least 63, incubates her egg on Midway Atoll; photo by Greg Joder

By Pete Thomas/GrindTv

Midway Atoll, in the middle of the Pacific, is extremely remote but steeped in history.

It was the last link in a worldwide telegraph system that was launched with a message from President Theodore Roosevelt on July 4, 1903.

Midway was a landing site for Pan Am Clipper ships that ferried people across the Pacific. As a Naval Air Facility, it once supported more than 5,000 residents and, of course, the small coral atoll served as headquarters for the famous 1942 Battle of Midway, which turned the tide in the war against Japan.

But these days, with a staff of about 40, Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge is mostly associated with its remarkable wildlife, mainly its nesting sea birds, including the world’s oldest-known banded wild bird: a Laysan albatross named Wisdom.

Wisdom preens mate; photo by Greg Joder

Wisdom, who is at least 63 years old and possibly much older, has astonished biologists yet again by returning to the atoll and laying yet another egg.

It’s remarkable given that the average life span for a Laysan albatross is 12 to 40 years. These graceful soaring birds spend most of their time at sea and face many perils, including the ingestion of plastic they mistake for prey.

But Wisdom clearly is not a typical Laysan albatross. Every year it’s a surprise merely that she has returned, and perhaps the same can be said of her younger mate (Laysan albatrosses mate for life).

This year Wisdom’s mate arrived on Midway on November 19; Wisdom was first spotted on November 22. The laying of an egg was reported Wednesday in a blog post by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Pacific Region.

It states that Wisdom has raised between 30 and 35 chicks since being banded in 1956, when she was estimated to be 5 years old.

This marks the eighth consecutive year that Wisdom and her mate have successfully bred. Soon, it’s hoped, a chick will hatch, officially making Wisdom a new mom–again.

Not that any of the other albatross will notice, however. Midway boasts 70% of the world’s breeding Laysan albatrosses. The two islands that comprise the atoll are littered with birds during the fall-winter mating and incubating season.

Wisdom's chick from last year; photo by Dan Clark/USFWS

Hatching season typically begins in mid-January, and fledging occurs from mid-June through July. That’s also when the parents leave the nest, to spend the next several months foraging at sea.

Sounds like a lot to go through for an older bird such as Wisdom, but then what does a bird know about age?

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Depression 'no joke'; surfer Sunny Garcia asks fans for help

Sunny Garcia image courtesy of Four Seasons Resort Maldives

By Pete Thomas/GrindTv

 Sunny Garcia was once a dominant force in pro surfing. He won the world surfing title in 2000, and before retiring from full-time competitive surfing he claimed six Triple Crown of Surfing crowns, at his home breaks on Oahu’s North Shore.

But Garcia's popularity stemmed mostly from the larger-than-life status he had achieved while on the tour. His tirades against judges became legendary. His temper often flared, and punches were occasionally thrown. Sunny Garcia, the beefy Hawaiian, was surfing’s bad boy, a powerful and colossal presence in and out of the water.

Fans loved him, despite the time he spent behind bars–three months in jail and seven months on house arrest–for failing to pay taxes on contest winnings. But today we see a different Garcia, who at 44 has mellowed, but has found himself engaged in a different kind of fight.

 

Depression is no joke waking up feeling like your ready to take on the world then a couple hours later feeling down on life and wondering what's wrong with you well I know I'm not alone and I'm not sure what's wrong with me because I have no reason to feel the way I do and it's been happening for about two years and would love to hear from any of you who suffer these feelings so I can figure out what I should do #fuckdepression #needhelp #whatswrongwithme

A photo posted by Sunny Garcia (@sunnygarcia) on Dec 12, 2014 at 8:03pm PST

On Thursday, the surfer revealed to 63,000 followers on Instagram that he’s battling depression, a mental disease that affects moods and leads to a loss of interest and an inability to enjoy even the most seemingly enjoyable aspects of life.

“I am not as strong as everyone thinks I am,” reads a statement-image along with his post, which is embedded above. In trademark fashion, the words are straight from Garcia’s heart, and sure to resonate with anyone else suffering from this darkest of disorders.

Sunny Garcia at a recent event to benefit children with cystic fibrosis; photo via Instagram

The type or level of depression afflicting Garcia–mild, moderate, or severe–is not clear. But given that he's sharing his feelings on social media and seeking advice, the demons are formidable and he should seek help beyond Instagram, if he hasn’t already.

Depression, which afflicts about 350 million people worldwide, can lead to suicide. That became evident most recently when actor Robin Williams took his life in August.

A person suffering from this illness cannot, in most cases, shake it through meditation or acupuncture... or lots more surfing, as some of his fans have suggested. (However, holistic measures can help and are worth investigating.)

Sunny Garcia (front left) and friends pay a visit to the children’s hospital; photo via Instagram

But a person can seek medical help and get back on track via antidepressants, psychosocial therapy, or psychotherapy–or a combination thereof.

It'll be up to Garcia, of course, as to what level of help he seeks.

Meanwhile the former world champ, based on his Instagram feed, has been busy surfing, visiting kids in the local children’s hospital, and teaching children suffering from other ailments how to ride waves.

Clearly, Garcia is no longer surfing’s bad boy, and hopefully he'll be back to enjoying life to the fullest in no time.

 

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Surf's up on Lake Tahoe, thanks to ferocious winds

As driving rain and powerful winds began to sweep across Northern California on Thursday morning, a few hearty souls braved the elements and went surfing.

On Lake Tahoe.

The accompanying images were captured by the Placer County Sheriff’s Office at its North Lake Tahoe Station.

While the surf may have been up, thanks to 50-mph winds, ski resort operators were hoping the temperature would drop and rain would turn to snow.

As of the time of this post, snow in the Lake Tahoe area was falling only above 7,000 feet.

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Great white sharks videotaped attacking plastic seal

By Pete Thomas/GrindTv

Mark van Coller recently spent several weeks False Bay, South Africa, keeping his camera trained on a seal decoy being towed behind a shark-diving boat.

His stunning footage will give viewers a taste of what it’s like to be a real seal in this region (a horrifying thought), where great white sharks are known to savagely ambush their prey while launching free of the water.

Van Coller told the Daily Mail, “We filmed just before and just after sunrise, as this is the most active time for the sharks to hunt.

“During this time the seals and our seal decoy form a good silhouette for the sharks to target, but the water is still very dark, making it very difficult for the seals to spot the predators. This gives the sharks a big advantage during these hours.”

While capturing this type of footage might seem easy, one never knows when the plastic seal might be hit, and the ferocious assaults occur suddenly and last only a second or two, adding to the challenge.

Said Van Coller, who is South African: “There have been occasions when the boat has pulled the decoy for close to an hour with no breaches. But you dare not take you eye off the viewfinder and the decoy because that is always when it happens. You turn around to say something to someone and smash, you miss it.”

The videographer, who was working for Atlantic Edge Films, doesn’t appear to have missed much.

Cody Townsend honored for 'insane' ski line on Alaskan slope

Cody Townsend (circled in red) descending a cavernous chute in Alaska; video screen grab

By Pete Thomas/GrindTv

Cody Townsend was honored Saturday at the 2014 Powder Awards for skiing what was deemed the most challenging line of the past year: a ridiculously steep and narrow tunnel-like chute in the Alaskan wilderness.

The accompanying footage is provided by MSP Films, which describes Townsend's chosen route as the “Most insane ski line EVER.”

 

Most viewers, whether they ski or not, probably will agree that it requires a high skill level and a touch of craziness to even contemplate negotiating a chute so ominously vertical, dark and narrow, with rock walls only inches away, and with an exit window visible only as a thin crack of light.

Townsend, before his descent, can be heard saying, “Oohh, I’m getting nervous,” but his run was completed stylishly and without consequence, other than to further establish the freeskier as a major talent among his peers.

The exit window is visible as a mere crack of light; photo via Facebook

The chute is located in the Tordrillo Mountains in south-central Alaska.   Townsend was honored, along with other top male and female skiers, by Powder magazine during its annual awards gala on Saturday night at Salt Lake City.

Townsend, who lives in Squaw Valley, California, claimed three awards, including Best Male Performance, based on his many segments (including the footage shown here) in MSP Films’ “Days of My Youth.”

Cody Townsend at the podium during the Powder Awards; photo via Powder magazine

The night was a validation of sorts for an athlete who needs to update the Awards section of his Facebook page, which at the time of this post read: “Three-time Powder Award nominee … Zero-time winner.”

Of a year that also included cover appearances in four different ski magazines, Townsend told Powder, “It’s one of those things where the snow ball just picked up speed real fast. I never skied to win an award. I’ve always just kind of followed what I want to do. So many things that went into it this year, it was because that’s what I thought was going to be the most fun.”

As for reaction to the accompanying footage, which is being widely shared via social media, perhaps a comment by Brian Cano on the MSP Films Facebook page sums up the general feeling: “Good GOD!!!”

Huge blue marlin caught off Kona... on a Gatorade bottle

Chris Zelenka poses with 671-pound blue marlin; photo courtesy of The Charter Desk

By Pete Thomas/GrindTv

Rather than toss his empty Gatorade bottles into the trash or recycling bin, Jeff Rogers reuses them in a most imaginative way.

The fishing captain from Hawaii’s Kona Coast fashions them into big-game fishing lures, dresses them up with vinyl strips, and has found this invention—he names each lure “Gator”—to outperform many of his pricey store-bought models.

That became evident Tuesday when a client with Rogers, who skippers the Aloha Kai, landed a 671-pound blue marlin while fishing with one of the Gatorade bottle lures.

Writes Jim Rizzuto for Fish Track: “When he sets it out, the bottle fills with water and makes a huge fish-attracting commotion as it plows along the surface.

“When he deploys this lure, his parties are usually skeptical. But he reassures [them] that fish do hit it and the strikers are almost always marlin weighing 300 pounds or more. That’s why he always sets it out on the short-corner line—the big-fish spot in the pattern.”

The short-corner line is in reference to a trolling pattern that involves several lures, which are set out at various lengths behind the stern. The trolling pattern resembles schooling bait fish.

Chris Zelenka was the client who fought the marlin, which savagely struck the Gatorade bottle 10 minutes after it had been in the water.

Capt. Jeff Rogers displays two of his proven "Gator" lures; photo courtesy of Jim Rizzuto

The marlin tail-walked across the surface, stripped off a half-mile of line, and sounded. Ultimately, however, it was reeled to the surface and delivered to port.“Jeff told them he’d had a really big fish on the same 'lure' a few days before and lost it after a 20-minute fight,” Rizzuto writes. “No worries. Replacements are easy to make with very inexpensive materials from your trash.”

Sophisticated store-bought marlin lures can sell for $100 or more.

Rizzuto explains that big-game anglers throughout the Pacific have a long history of crafting lures from items they've collected, including bones, shells, boar bristles, and beer cans.

It brings to mind a run, in the mid-1990s, on condoms in New Guinea, because fishermen discovered how well they work when made into tuna lures.

When rigged properly and trolled behind boats, the condoms fill with water, become translucent and take on an appearance similar to live squid, a favorite prey of yellowfin tuna.

So it seems that all an angler needs is a little imagination and some basic lure-making skills to turn just about anything into a fish catcher.

–Follow Pete Thomas Outdoors on Facebook and Twitter

 

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Great white shark caught from Outer Banks beach; 'Sad to see'

Youth pastor hauls shark onto the beach; photo via Jeff Heglund

By Pete Thomas/GrindTv

News of the capture–and eventual release–of a great white shark on a North Carolina beach is circulating on the Internet, generating anger among conservationists because of the way the shark was treated.

The catch was made at the Outer Banks in October by Jeff Heglund, who used the moniker "Shark Man" when he wrote about his remarkable exploit last month on the Calvary Temple Youth Group blog.

Heglund’s story began to circulate after it was posted Wednesday morning on Facebook by the South Florida Shark Club, which claims to have documented land-based shark fishing “better than any organization on the planet.”

Effort being made to remove hook; photo via Jeff Heglund

SFSC stated that this was the first-ever shore-caught white shark on the East Coast of the U.S.

Of the nighttime hookup, Heglund wrote, “It felt as if someone hooked my line to an SUV on Highway 12.”

It took an hour with heavy tackle to reel the shark to the beach on the Outer Banks, and Heglund’s reaction was one of disbelief.

“It was shocking to see a Great White shark in the sand as we finally dragged this now exhausted monster by the tail onto the beach,” Heglund wrote. “He measured 87 inches long and we estimated his weight at over 180 pounds….

“As I studied his mouth I was terrified as I considered what the bible says of the enemy of our souls and judgment in hell. The bible says the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. This definitely seemed like a lion of the sea, and a juvenile at that!”

Shark being released

The shark was released, but it had clearly spent lots of time out of water, and that’s what is drawing the most criticism.

“This is a protected species in Atlantic waters,” stated the Marine Conservation Science Institute, a California-based group that studies white sharks, on Facebook. “That means you do not drag it up the beach for poses, gap the jaw, or lift the tail to get that winning shot.

“What you do is cut line and release immediately, especially if you are not removing hook or tagging. Sad to see this juvenile in this state. Hopefully he fully recovered.”

From Melissa Michaelson, a shark conservationist, on the White Shark Advocacy’s members-only Facebook page:

“This is a protected species and it’s against the law to land in our waters. There was no reason to drag it further up the beach, take multiple poses, and gap the jaw twice... There was no tagging involved here, nor was hook removed. Heres a tip: if you’re scared of sharks maybe you shouldn’t be fishing for them!?”

It is illegal to target and kill white sharks, and those that are hooked inadvertently should be released as quickly as possible.

Reaction to Heglund’s catch was mixed in the comments section beneath the Calvary Temple blog post.

From a reader named Sue: “Then why did you release him if you saw him as ‘devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour”’… I would have killed the guy. I know a lot are against that, I am fascinated by sharks, even great whites…. but I would kill them.”

Heglund’s response was quick and pointed: “It is against the law to kill them. I was a very big surprise to see it on the end of my line!” Great white sharks are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

However, a recent study found their numbers to have been increasing in the Atlantic, thanks to fairly recent conservation measures, and an increase in seal populations.

Hopefully, East Coast beach anglers, with their heavy tackle, are not targeting the important apex predators intentionally.

 

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"Love" and "affection" are terms not commonly used to describe encounters with large sharks, but they’re used repeatedly by Jim Abernethy to narrate his recent get-together with a large tiger shark known as Tarantino.

The intimate reunion at Tiger Beach in the Bahamas was videotaped and the footage shows Tarantino swimming into the arms of Abernethy and seeming to crave his caresses much like an affectionate dog craves those of its owner after a prolonged absence.

As Abernethy and the shark are swept down current, he returns to the camera and Tarantino follows, again swimming into his arms. This happens twice in the footage.

 

Video screen grab

“I could tell she had missed it,” Abernethy says of an apex predator he refers to as an “old friend.”

 

To be sure, Tiger Beach is a special place, known as a destination where close encounters can be enjoyed in what many consider to be a relatively safe environment.

The predators are fed during commercial dive operations, and many distinctive sharks have been given names. Veteran divers such as Abernethy, who runs Jim Abernethy’s Scuba Adventures, claim to have developed special relationships with some of those sharks.

Abernethy’s footage seems to illustrate this phenomenon as well as any.

His video began making the rounds on Monday  on shark-themed social media sites. On the White Shark Cafe Facebook page, Drew Scerbo asked members to share their comments, asking, “Is this a beautiful interaction? Is this tempting fate? What’s the perspective on this video?”

There were no negative comments as of Tuesday morning. Wrote one person who has been to Tiger Beach: “If you stick to ‘the rules’ they are quite wonderful animals to interact with.”

Another comment reads, “Wow! That shark just wanted some love and not once did it open its mouth or try to nip or bite him.”

Though there are bound to be critics of people “tempting fate” with such close interactions, Abernethy, who was once bitten by a lemon shark, was hoping his footage would send a message.

“I wish there was some way that I could get the world to see what these beautiful creatures are really like,” he says, “so we could end the needless slaughter and keep our oceans healthy, not only for them but for our own existence on the planet.”

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Humpback whale images are courtesy of ©Carla Mitroff

By Pete Thomas/GrindTv

The Thanksgiving holiday weekend was stuffed with excitement, as far as Southern California whale watchers were concerned.

Two types of killer whales–one from the south, the other from the north–were spotted hunting sea lions in what were considered rare sightings.

But the greatest spectacle seems to have involved a juvenile humpback whale that breached 30 times, at one point launching completely out of the water, close to shore off Laguna Beach.

The sequence shows the large cetacean seeming to levitate briefly before re-entry.

Mitroff described the day as "one for the record book," and explained that Capt. Tommy White had been looking for killer whales, or orcas, when the humpback whale first breached in front of the 95-foot boat, in about 200 feet of water.

"We kept our cameras ready in case it breached again, and a minute later it did!" Mitroff said. "And again and again... we counted 20 times."

After the whale took a short break it breached eight more times, then twice more as White began to guide the Dana Pride back to port.

“For one little girl it was the first time she had seen a whale,” Mitroff said. “She called it Harry because all the barnacles hanging from its chin looked like a beard.”

Mitroff, a naturalist with the Orange County chapter of the American Cetacean Society, posted these and many other photos of the series of breaches on her Facebook page.

Photos also appear on the Dana Wharf Whale Watching Facebook page.

Alisa Schulman-Janiger, a Southern California whale researcher, said that while humpback whales are known to breach and sometimes breach multiple times, this event is rarely observed or captured by a photographer.

Humpback whales have been spotted for several weeks off Dana Point, which also is unusual.

As for the killer whales spotted over the last several days, one group is from Mexico (known as Eastern Tropical Pacific orcas). These orcas have rarely been documented in U.S. waters.

The other pod is comprised of transient killer whales, more commonly spotted off Monterey in Central California.

Transients were last seen off Dana Point in March of 2013, according to Donna Kalez, general manager of Dana Wharf Whale Watching.

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