A Paddle a Walk and Three Dead Dog Sharks

Wednesday October 14, 2015 Jenner CA.

I looked to see if any harbor seals where eating any salmon today as I put my boat in the water. I didn’t see any action of this type, not even any seagulls waiting around for scraps.

I put my boat in the water and paddled over to this little channel on the upper end of Penny Island and I still didn’t see any big fish action, even after I sat in this spot for a half hour or so.

I did see these mallard ducks feeding in the channel as I entered. They moved out the other side and continued feeding.

Just on the other side of the channel an egret was fishing. It took off as I got closer.

Headed down river

I finally decided to head down to the river’s mouth area, so I headed down along side of Penny Island and stopped in this spot for a spell.

Pounding ocean

I could hear the ocean waves pounding on the sandy beach and sometimes could see the big waves splashing too. That’s Penny Island on the left, looking across to where the closed river’s mouth is by the big splashes. The fog started to move in as I watched.

This pied billed grebe came pretty close as I paddled by. It’s been diving in the grasses as there’s some green grasses around it’s neck.

Closed river mouth

I paddled on over to where the river’s mouth usually is at this spot and sat and watched. There were mostly seagulls resting on the beach and in the water today. That wave is coming over the beach from the ocean on the other side of the sand. There wasn’t much foam in the river today, indicating, not too many big waves had broken over the sand lately, not like yesterday.

Walk on Penny Island

After awhile I headed on over to the lower end of Penny Island where I put my boat ashore so I could go for a little walk.

This is the lower end of Penny Island where I landed my kayak in the grasses.

My plan was to walk in the grasses going through here.

A big ol redwood skeleton has been sitting here a long time. Interesting enough, there are still some of these big monsters around so we know exactly what they looked like. :O)

I heard some honking overhead and watched as some geese broke out of the fog headed up river.

I was doing a circle around the lower end of the island and was headed back towards my boat through this area. That’s what I call the back channel of Penny Island on the left.

It’s always nice to find your boat right where you left it when I got back to the lower end of Penny Island. The fog was waffling around mostly coming in.

I was headed on in along the island side. These coots were diving for weeds in the water to eat. They show up in the fall just to eat river weeds.

Dog sharks not sand sharks

I made it to the boat ramp and took my boat out of the water. As I was leaving Jenner, I saw the lady that runs one of the kayak rental places in Jenner so I stopped to talk a bit. I asked her if she’d seen any dead Sand Sharks. She said, you mean Dog sharks …………………………. OK.

She said yes, they had spotted a dead one on the back channel of Penny island. I forgot to ask what day that was.

But now we know at least three Dog sharks died in the estuary for some reason. If we found three of them, that means there were likely more of them.

So, I called them Sand sharks in my earlier posts which is ok as this is a journal and what’s in it is what I’m thinking at the time, right or wrong.

I then went on home where I had some plans to do some digging, but I just couldn’t get it going so I just enjoyed the rest of the day sitting around in my yard after a good nap of course.