Perched on the lobster traps, I only had a fleeting moment to take a photo pulling into the parking lot at Captain Joe’s. While getting my camera out, the Hawk appeared to pop into a lobster trap. He popped back out, I took a snapshot under cover of car, then off he flew.
Raptors such as Sharp-shinned Hawks and Peregrine Falcons are attracted to lobster pots because the traps often house songbirds such as sparrows. The smaller birds eat the crusty tidbits found on the pots and the larger birds have learned to find a tasty meal there.
Sharp-shinned Hawk Range Map
Several years back when there was a male Snowy Owl at Captain Joe’s, a Peregrine Falcon flew on the scene, defending his territory by repeatedly dive bombing the Owl. The Falcon disturbed him so much so that the Snowy eventually departed.
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At the dock there are a couple of key pieces of equipment. The winch, the forktruck, the scales and the carts. Any one of these go down and we’re in serious trouble. We rely on them to work day in and day out. In the worst of all conditions.
You know how the fishing industry is the second most dangerous profession in the world behind coal mining? Well it might be the second most dangerous profession but handling saltwater fish is absolutely the deadliest profession for machinery. Salt, and saltwater, fish grease and massive tonnage being handled daily create the perfect storm of corrosiveness and opportunity for mechanical failure.
That’s why whenever I have an opportunity to secure a Fairbanks Cart to help perform our job at the dock I leap. This morning at 5:00 AM I drove a couple of hours to get my hands on the newest member of the Captain Joe and Sons Lobster Company Family. One of the best parts about the Fairbanks carts are the plug in caster systems. If after years you need new casters, you contact the company and they can ship you out new ones.
The decks are absolute beastly and handle incredibly poundings without skipping a beat. I routinely lower 400Lbs of lobster crates on them when offloading the boats and then add another stack of 400. No problem.
Here’s the new one. I put a couple of coats of linseed oil on the oak decking and greased up the greased fittings and she’s ready for servicing our lobster fleet!
Our “Old” Fairbanks cart that’s helped offload millions of pounds of lobsters through the decades and our newly acquired Fairbanks Cart with the pretty green paint.
For more than 125 years, the Fairbanks Company has been shipping quality material handling equipment from our manufacturing facilities in Rome, GA. Our facilities encompass more than 200,000 square feet of production and warehousing space. To maintain our leadership role in the industry, we have modernized our facilities with the latest in robotic welding, electrostatic powder coating and CNC machining of wood parts.
These techniques have resulted in the expansion of our product offerings, making us a premier supplier of casters, wheel, handtrucks, platform trucks and dollies.
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Lobster Boat Arethusa and Crèche of Common Eider Hens and Ducklings
You never know what wonderful glimpses of wild life you may encounter at Captain Joe and Sons. Sunday morning during the podcast, a crèche of fourteen Common Eider ducklings and their mother hens were spotted, bobbing in the waves and foraging at the edge of the dock.
Common Eider Moms, along with non-breeding “aunties,” band together for protection. The individual broods come together to form a crèche, which may include as many as 150 ducklings!
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Snowy Owl at Captain Joe and Sons, East Main Street, Gloucester
Audubon “Birds in the News”
By Leslie Nemo
November 17, 2017
Will this winter bring an irruption of the Arctic raptors to the continental U.S.? A few clues from up north have Project SNOWstorm predicting yes.
Four years ago, thousands of Snowy Owls stormed the northern United States, taking up posts in surroundings drastically different from the flat Arctic tundra over which they typically preside. Some whiled away the hours peering at dog walkers from suburban fences; one learned to hunt around a Minnesota brewery with mouse problems. In a typical winter, around 10 Snowies visit Pennsylvania, but in 2013 the state was graced by 400. They were part of the largest Snowy Owl irruption, or influx of a species into a place they don’t usually live, the U.S. has seen since the 1920s.
If you missed it, you might be in luck. Project SNOWstorm, a volunteer-fueled Snowy Owl-tracking organization founded after that irruption, predicts another wave of Arctic raptors will hit North America this winter, according to their most recent blog post.
Scott Weidensaul, one of the directors of Project SNOWstorm, says the clues point to a big irruption, but the group also fully admits there’s no way to definitively know how big it could be or if it will even happen at all. “There’s a little bit of voodoo and black magic in all of this,” Weidensaul says. Though Snowy Owl migration patterns are mostly mysterious, there have been some tell-tale signs that the birds are on their way.
For one, some Snowy Owls already seem to be retracing the last irruption’s process. Data are sketchy and variable, but it appears that big southward movements occur about once every four years. That’s because lemmings, their preferred prey, go through regional population explosions at about the same interval. In 2013, those little Arctic rodents had a banner year on the Ungava Peninsula in Northern Quebec, fueling a highly successful breeding season for the owls that flocked to that area. Sure enough, this past breeding season, Canadian wildlife biologists studying caribou reported an unusually high number of owls flapping around the same area, reports others have confirmed.
Our lobsterman Mike Tufts catches a rare orange#lobster. If we didn’t shoot the video to show it moving and alive you’d think it was cooked. He returned it to the sea once he let us shoot the video.
The 158 ton brig Union would have been very similar to this one. This is the 162 ton, 90 feet long, wooden brig Annie Brown, which trading around South Australia from 1875. Source: p. 136 of “Sail in the South” by Ronald Parsons, Wellington, AH & Aw Reed, 1975
A bronze pintle with three through bolts from the 1823 wreck of the 432 ton sailing ship Brampton. The item was recovered by Kelly Tarlton from the wreck site in the Bay of Islands. This item was sold at Webb’s auction no. 862 in November 2002. Note as photographed the pintle is upside down. The Waimahana Bay trademe pintle did not have through bolts but was fastened by rudder nails and lag bolts instead.
More Reading about Gudgeon and Pintles- whats interesting here is this one from
A Snow Brig. The Mountain Maid was a strongly built wooden snow brig. She had two square rigged masts and a smaller sail called a spanker, behind the main mast.
(Based on a line drawing from Ships Rigs & Rigging, H. A. Underhill. Nautical Press, Glasgow. Colorised by EFL.)
So I contacted my friend Will (Tugster) and he had a more intriguing information and photos to add to this-
Hi Joey–
Wow! My filing system works, and I located these photos about 5 minutes after I started looking.
The story is this: after a storm in spring (?) 1988, Mike Magnifico–then manager of Salisbury Beach State Reservation/Beach saw this as he was surveying beach erosion. He thought–he said later–those were gold, and the color is not exactly true in the photos. He called the Newburyport Maritime Museum, who called me, because I was Mr. Shipwreck before I was Tugster. I wet to Salisbury Beach, took the photos. A friend is standing in photo 1 to show scale.
I pursued it a while; a maritime archeologist up at Plymouth State (NH) looked it over carefully and declared the pintles made of “yellow metal” but further identification would likely not be possible. Last I knew, almost 30 years ago, Salisbury Beach Reservation kept them rather than donate to the N Maritime Museum.
Exciting. Feel free to post on GMG any text and photos.
Cheers
When you coming down to NYC?
Will
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Sharp-shinned Hawk Range Map
Good Morning Gloucester 