Wednesday May 13, 2015 Jenner CA.
This morning as I pulled into Jenner I could see Ray across the river in his boat heading down towards the river’s mouth, so I put my boat in the water and met up with him down near the lower end of Penny Island.
There was a little wind today, but not bad and it got even better as the day progressed, getting down to just a breeze.
Biologists at work
We were headed towards the river’s mouth when I could see the biologists up ahead putting out their net to collect samples of what’s in the river.
Here you can see the guys in the boat at the left putting out a new white net. They used to use a green net, but now I see they are using a white net. I think the white net may be a lot lighter than the old green one they used? They put the net out in a circle with the boat, and then pull it into the shore where the guys are on the right.
In this picture the guys have come back to shore with their boat and all of them are hauling in the big white net. And just to clarify, there are both men and women biologists doing this, so guys means both.
Did we catch anything
They tighten the net and look to see what they have which they are doing in this picture.
They count pretty much everything they catch in the net and some stuff they weigh, measure and maybe even tag. Some fish they pump their stomachs to see what they’ve been eating. They are most interested in endangered species fish, such as the Coho salmon.
Here they are gathered with the fish they want to check out and record their stats before releasing the fish back into the river.
In the the near future, if I get a chance I will go ashore when they are doing this and get some photos of them doing their work.
River’s mouth area
Ray and I left them at it and continued on over to the river’s mouth which was open at the jetty.
There were plenty of harbor seals on the beach. These ones were checking us out as we paddled to the end of the river.
Little geese
Near those seals were these two geese. We watched as a raven dove on them several times trying to get at the little ones they are protecting. I think they were just born not long ago up on that big rock to the right called Haystack rock, as I thought there was a pair nesting up there.
Headed up the back channel
We hung around the mouth area for about an hour just watching things and then headed up the back channel of Penny Island. As you can see, the wind did die down.
We were following some cormorants diving and fishing moving up the river and there was a pair of geese just resting on the shoreline. A Great blue heron was also following the fishing cormorants getting in on some of the fish. This is what it all looked like as we paddled along.
A little walk to Swamp Rock
Ray wanted to go for a little walk, so we tried to get out on the upper end of Penny Island, but the tide was out just enough to make it hard to get out of our boats without getting are footsies wet, so we decided to continue on over to Swamp Rock area instead which was just a little ways up the river. If the water was down in the swamp, we could get to swamp rock.
Here we are walking through the swamp and there was some water up ahead, so we had to detour. Swamp rock is that big rock up on the hill in the left of the picture.
We were able to get around the water and onto the sorta trail that goes up to the front side of the rock.
This is what the front side of swamp rock looks like. There are some old rock seats up there from old times. There’s also some big cracks under the rock which we wanted to check out a bit.
Town of Jenner
Here’s the view from the front of swamp rock looking across the river to the little town of Jenner.
Exploring cracks in the rock
While we were sitting up there Ray started looking around the rock for any place to maybe get into the big cracks under the rocks. I started looking around too and thought I found a place. I took my hat off to get down and maybe crawl into it to check it out, but when I got down, I realized if I crawled into that with my sore back, I might have a hard time pushing myself back out, so I changed my mind on that one. Later when I got back to the river I realized I’d left my hat up on the rock. It will be there the next time I get back there.
Something old and mostly buried
Anyway, we started back across the swamp and were looking for a better way to get through the part with water when Ray says there something metal under here. He pulls out some real old rusty steering box. We investigated and discovered there was an old car, truck or tractor buried in the swamp in this spot. We could see parts sticking up through the mud, mostly very rusty.
This thing on the ground is an old steering box with shifter shafts on it’s side and there’s part of a transmission too just behind Ray out of sight.
What is it?
Close by that was this piece sticking up too. I didn’t recognize it from anything mechanical I’m familiar with? It was about three inches wide.
On the way back we hunted for some black berries and only found a few to eat.
From there we headed on in to the boat ramp and went on home.
Another nice day messing around on the river.