A Site for Shore Eyes

By now, pretty much everyone knows that a killer whale killed a trainer at Sea World in Orlando. The animal grabbed her and thrashed her around until she drowned.

I watched an interview with a former trainer who knew the deceased woman, and she said the trainer would not want anything bad to happen to the whale because of this. She said that the other trainer loved these animals and treated them as if they were her children, which she incidentally, didn’t have. Oh, by the way, this whale had already killed two other people.

That’s one of the problems with some people in modern society – they think animals are the same as humans and should be treated as such.

Most normal individuals wouldn’t spend much time blubbering about what to do – they would already be stocking up on lamp oil. This would not sit well with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which busies itself by ramming Japanese whaling ships with its vessel.

The International Whaling Commission (IWC), placed a moratorium on whaling in 1982, and Japan agreed to its terms in 1986. However, Japan still practices what it calls a “scientific whaling program,” with the purpose of assessing stocks, although this has nothing to do with investing.

So now you’re probably wondering, “What does any of this have to do with the 2010 Olympics”? and you would be right, the two are not vaguely related. Any events featuring whales would be more aptly suited to the summer Olympics.

But this article isn’t about the Olympics, it’s about a page or so longer than it should be.

The point is, we have to stop treating animals the same way we treat people. Unlike humans who kill, animals will sometimes kill again, if given a second chance, or maybe a third chance. Okay, so maybe they are a lot like people in some respects.

It’s my opinion that this creature does not deserve a fourth chance. It never should have been back on the streets after it killed for the second time, and that’s a sad commentary on our judicial system.

This reminds me (with even more tragic circumstances), of Roy Horn, of Siegfried and Roy fame, who said, on his way to the hospital after being bitten by one of his tigers, “Don’t shoot the cat!”

Maybe the duo can start construction on a very large aquarium at their home.

The state of New Jersey keeps trying to pass a bill that would require registration for salt water fishing. The reason for this is so residents of the state won’t have to pay a national fee for a license.

Sometimes I just yearn for the good ole days, when all a kid needed was a fishing pole and some bait. A mother and her son used to stay at our rooming house once a year, and, using just hand lines, caught their fair share of fish.

I did a lot of fishing during my fish cleaning days, meaning before I became a teen. We fished while waiting for the party boats to come in, and caught massive amounts of fish. Many were too small to keep, and we also caught more than our fair share of eels and oyster crackers, which we threw back.

A pint of surf clams back then cost thirty cents, and if we didn’t quite have enough money to buy them, we bought individual clams at the back door of a restaurant for a nickel apiece.

A lot of people fished back then, both from piers, the ends of streets, and from party boats, which were usually crammed to capacity. The only people making money from fishermen were party boats and bait and tackle shops. No one else had their hands out, saying, “Give us some, too!”

The regulators fear overfishing, which is why they think it’s important to register and to pay a fee. The problem is that it’s not the average angler depleting fish populations, it’s the big commercial boats. People demand seafood, and they mostly want to get it from either the supermarket or in restaurants.

It’s way too confusing these days to bother with fishing, at least for me. Each year you need a new chart explaining the sizes of each type of fish, how many you’re allowed to keep, the dates of the open season, and how to measure the fish or shellfish (it’s not always the same for all fish). The chart also explains where you’re allowed to fish for some species, such as the striped bass.

For 2010, the winter flounder season ends on May 21, and the summer flounder season starts on May 23. The recreational fishing person is allowed two winter flounder at twelve inches, and six winter flounder at eighteen inches. You see, I wouldn’t know a winter flounder from a summer flounder even if one was wearing sunglasses and flip-flops and the other was sporting a ski mask. I assume that pretty much the same bait is used for each, but maybe the winter flounder prefer their clam dipped in a cup of hot cocoa. No, don’t write me and tell me that shiners are the best bait for flounder. I’ve caught a bunch of them that way back in the day, although my uncle preferred shedder crab. I don’t know what that has to do with anything, though.

I can’t even identify half the fish they’re catching these days, so it’s a good thing I gave up cleaning them over fifty years ago. The party boats used to bring in a lot of porgy and bass (no, it’s not an opera), as well as spots (Cape May goodies), and ling cod. Now, croakers seem to be all the rage. We were fishing a few years ago in Delaware Bay and kept catching those things. They’re something like miniature drumfish, I guess, because they make a similar noise.

I just might fish some this year, if I can untangle the regulations. Maybe I need to take a laptop with me so I can figure out which ones I can keep. That 30-cent pint of clams is now up around five dollars, and that would be about right, except it’s considerably less than a pint these days. It wouldn’t be so bad if there was a chance of catching something I could legally keep. Anyway, I don’t have to worry about fishing for awhile now, because the woodchuck has made his prediction and we’ll have six more weeks of winter.

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day, 2010, and we all know the significance of that date. That’s when the wild boars come out of hibernation in the ground to check out the weather. Wait. . . my research assistant just informed me that they’re not really pigs and can be eaten by people of all meat-eating religions. I’m glad we got that cleared up!

Actually, only one groundhog of importance comes out of its hole, and that happens to be in Punxutawney, Pennsylvania, and it doesn’t really come out on its own, but is yanked out by someone dressed up in a suit, including, of all things, a top hat. I suppose that differs somehow from a bottom hat. Well, there are other notable groundhogs, including General Lee in Lilburn, Georgia.

The important thing to note is that if the groundhog in question sees its shadow when it comes out, it gets scared and goes back in its hole, thus predicting six more weeks of winter. If it doesn’t see its shadow it remains out of its hole and is likely to be eaten by a nearby predator. That somehow signifies an early spring. The predictions gathered from the various groundhogs of note have proven, through the years, to be about as accurate as the local five- or ten-day forecast from your favorite weather prognosticator.

The groundhog is also known as a woodchuck. This is because the old ditty, “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, etc.” just wouldn’t sound right if you used “groundhog.” Try it: “How much wood would a groundhog chuck if a groundhog would chuck wood?” As you can see, it makes no sense at all, thus someone came up with an alternate name to fit in the ditty, or whatever the heck it is. It would be interesting to see how much wood a woodchuck would chuck if someone knew what chucking was, but there’s still no guarantee that the woodchuck would do it even if it knew what it was, or had that capability. Who knows? Who cares?

In more important business, Morey’s Piers is putting up a “mystery ride” on Mariner’s Landing this year. It’s hard to say why it’s such a big secret.

As kids we made frequent trips to the boards on our bikes during the winter. Nothing they erected during those times ever escaped our observations. I remember us watching the test run of The Wild Mouse, on Marine Pier, now named Mariner’s Landing. A worker wearing a hard hat took the first ride, and he waved, but not necessarily to us. I would check out the mystery ride on my bike, except I’m not sure what the woodchuck’s prediction will be. I may have to wait six more weeks, and maybe by then they’ll be finished replacing this year’s block of boardwalk.

They’re also proposing a new roller coaster to run on two piers, with a suspension bridge between the piers. A preliminary model was unveiled a year ago, when they held the Golden Nugget farewell thing. It will be a couple of years before they even start building this coaster. They say the estimated cost is $10 million. I guess they’ll have a hard time getting their tax assessments reduced, as they did in the past, now that we know the real value of just one coaster. Well, maybe it qualifies as two coasters. . .

Personally, I preferred the old days, when tickets were a nickel apiece and a book of 24 tickets for each pier cost a dollar. Now they pretty much expect you to buy into the theme park “ride all day” scenario. If you want to go on only one ride, it’s almost cost prohibitive.

The Morey family has bought all the piers and eliminated the competition, so they can do pretty much whatever they want. This is supposed to be better, sort of like a big funnel connected to all the piers and channeling all the money into one big bin, at least figuratively speaking. Now they’re also adding fancy bars and restaurants to some of the piers.

In the past, one person or family never controlled everything, but some had more influence than others. William C. Hunt owned Hunt’s Pier, the Starlight Ballroom, The Wildwood Leader (a weekly newspaper), and all the movie theaters on the island. His sons, Bud and Guy eventually took over the operations, and eventually everything was sold to others.

Gil Ramagosa owned the Casino Arcade, Sportland Pier, Sportland Pool, the boardwalk tram cars, and Five Mile Beach Electric Railway, meaning the city bus system, which was not electric once the trolleys were removed. The buses were reliable in that they ran every day, mostly along Pacific Avenue, but walking was often faster. The tram cars ran along the boardwalk, conveniently between Sportland Pier and the Arcade. The only pier shut out from the service was Fun Pier, at the south end of the boardwalk.

Ramagosa’s company also manufactured amusement rides, but the track record on safety wasn’t that great. Several fatalities occurred on a few of his rides, including the Up ‘n’ Atom (later renamed the Flying Fish), the Meteor monorail roller coaster, and the Mars dark ride. The latter was tragic in that three children died in a fire when they were unable to get out of the building after the ride stopped. The only good thing that came out of this was that a new law required all doors in dark rides to open from both directions.

One owner for all piers can be a good thing, however, and it seems that the Moreys care about both safety and appearance for the piers. All that’s left to do now is to wait for the groundhog to unravel the secrets of the mystery ride.