“Hey, I heard you scheduled a vacation along the coast this summer.”
“Yeah. Been going there off and on for decades. Thought we’d go to Beaufort this year. Popular spot for boaters. We’ll take ours.”
“Beaufort. Hmnn. I just heard something about that. Wait! Which Beaufort? Aren’t there two?”
“There’s one in North Carolina and one in South Carolina. Both neat little towns on the water. They don’t have beaches like Myrtle Beach or Hilton Head, but they are close to beaches if someone wants one. Quaint towns. We’re going to the one in North Carolina. It has a boardwalk.”
“Yep. That’s the one. I just read that it’s a hot spot for tunicates.”
“Tuni-whats?”
“Tunicates. Strange critters that attach themselves to hard surfaces in shallow water. They’re called ‘fouling organisms.’ You know, like barnacles, they attach to boats and piers.”
“So, aren’t those things common? Every time we pull the boat out of the water, we hose off the bottom as it sits on the trailer. Keeps it from accumulating those things. I didn’t realize that I had to do that at first. Usually, we boat on the lake. But after the first trip to the coast, we learned to clean before we leave.”
“Trouble in the waters of Beaufort, I read. Tunicates called Clavalena oblonga are taking over. They’re even trouble for other fouling organisms, crowding them out. And they don’t appear to have any natural predators. Invasive species. Probably because of their blood.”
“So, I’ll hose off the bottom of the boat as usual. Our boat isn’t like some craft kept in the water in some boat slip all year long. We’re in; we’re out. Vacation only. I don’t see a problem. Wait. What’s this about their blood?”
“Not a problem for you, but certainly one for those who do live in Beaufort and keep their boats in the water. But here’s the article I found online. * Let’s see. Look, it says that these tunicates disrupt the local ecology. They disrupt any recovery or natural succession of endemic life-forms. They dominate. They crowd out other species. They cut diversity. You know that their blood contains vanadium and sulfuric acid in vanadocytes, vacuoles in their blood cells? That’s probably why they don’t have predators. What critter wants to eat that? Small amounts of vanadium aren’t a problem, but tunicates like oblonga can concentrate it by millions of times over seawater solutions.”
“Bad for the locals, I assume. But, look, we’re just visitors. Nothing we can do. It’s a local problem.”
“See. That’s the problem with problems. Everyone thinks a local problem is a problem for locals. But what happens at Beaufort, North Carolina, will eventually happen at Beaufort, South Carolina. Same coast; same ecology; same kind of water, tourism, and same kind of boaters.”
“I guess so. But what’s your point? Am I not supposed to enjoy my vacation, knowing that as I plow through the waters of the coast, I’ll be spreading this oblonga critter to every pier or wharf?”
“No, you enjoy. Certainly, enjoy. But I guess now that I mentioned it, you’ll probably be thinking about the bottom of the boat as you wend your way through the Intercoastal Waterway. Sorry, I didn’t want to spoil the vacation, but I guess once we hear something, we can’t unhear it.”
“So, in this article, did you read about ways to get rid of this oblonga?”
“See, that’s the thing with any invasive group. They’re tough to eliminate once they get a foothold. This one travels by ships and boats to the entire western Atlantic seaboard, from Beaufort to Brazil. And getting rid of oblonga? Got to clean them away or figure how to introduce other organisms, but both are time-consuming and only partially effective. Anyway, it seems like a losing battle once fouling organisms get established. And what good is it to replace oblonga with other fouling organisms. They foul. They cover all the shallow water hard places. They’re like COVID in a way. Probably will always be with us in some form, attaching to humans wherever they get carried by other humans. For oblonga, it’s ships and boats and currents they ride from one place to another. People have been spreading problem organisms for as long as there have been people, and especially since we went from being nomads on the land to nomads on the sea.”
“Sounds like a losing cause for us.”
“Especially because we’re responsible for the spread of fouling organisms though we didn’t create oblonga. It’s not the same as the pandemic’s virus that some people suspect we created. It reminds me of the line Homer has Zeus say to the other gods who want to intervene in the Trojan War on one side or the other. Zeus says, ‘Man has only himself to blame if his miseries are worse than they ought to be.’ We’ve moved oblonga from Bermuda to Brazil by our activities, by our seagoing vessels. We’ve moved the viruses that cause pandemics. Heck, we might even have invented the viruses that we transport by land, air, and sea; remember those people on the cruise ships, stuck at sea after we learned some had disembarked on American shores.”
“I like that line you just said. What was it? Man has only himself to blame….‘”
“’Man has only himself to blame if his miseries are worse than they ought to be.’”
“Yeah. I can see that, but now I’m going to think about the bottom of my boat when we take it out at Beaufort. I’m going to spoil some of my fun by realizing I’m a ‘carrier’ so to speak, that I’m a spreader of misery without knowing it.”
“And consider that not only do we transport problems around the world, we concentrate them. We’re like those vanadocytes with high concentrations of vanadium, millions of times more abundant than the natural condition in seawater. Funny how we keep causing ourselves more problems, more complex problems, more problems we have greater trouble solving. Homer was right, and he didn’t even know that the very ships of the Achaeans were causing environmental problems or that when Odysseus plied the waves on a ten-year return to Ithaca, he was spreading tunicates. We ride the ship, unaware we carry the problem on the hull. There’s an underside to all, or to at least most, of our activities, and underside we don’t see unless we ‘take the boat out of the water’ of our daily limited focus.”
“Oh! So, now I’m like those ancient Greeks, just because my wife wants us to vacation in Beaufort?”
“Isn’t your wife’s name, Helen? Pretty woman, if I remember. Beaufort is fine. Just don’t take her to Paris.”
Note:
*Christianson, Kayla A. and David B. Eggleston. 23 April 2021. Testing ecological theories in the Anthropocene: alteration of succession by an invasive marine species. Esa (Ecosphere: An ESA open access journal). Online athttps://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.3471
https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3471
“Yeah. Been going there off and on for decades. Thought we’d go to Beaufort this year. Popular spot for boaters. We’ll take ours.”
“Beaufort. Hmnn. I just heard something about that. Wait! Which Beaufort? Aren’t there two?”
“There’s one in North Carolina and one in South Carolina. Both neat little towns on the water. They don’t have beaches like Myrtle Beach or Hilton Head, but they are close to beaches if someone wants one. Quaint towns. We’re going to the one in North Carolina. It has a boardwalk.”
“Yep. That’s the one. I just read that it’s a hot spot for tunicates.”
“Tuni-whats?”
“Tunicates. Strange critters that attach themselves to hard surfaces in shallow water. They’re called ‘fouling organisms.’ You know, like barnacles, they attach to boats and piers.”
“So, aren’t those things common? Every time we pull the boat out of the water, we hose off the bottom as it sits on the trailer. Keeps it from accumulating those things. I didn’t realize that I had to do that at first. Usually, we boat on the lake. But after the first trip to the coast, we learned to clean before we leave.”
“Trouble in the waters of Beaufort, I read. Tunicates called Clavalena oblonga are taking over. They’re even trouble for other fouling organisms, crowding them out. And they don’t appear to have any natural predators. Invasive species. Probably because of their blood.”
“So, I’ll hose off the bottom of the boat as usual. Our boat isn’t like some craft kept in the water in some boat slip all year long. We’re in; we’re out. Vacation only. I don’t see a problem. Wait. What’s this about their blood?”
“Not a problem for you, but certainly one for those who do live in Beaufort and keep their boats in the water. But here’s the article I found online. * Let’s see. Look, it says that these tunicates disrupt the local ecology. They disrupt any recovery or natural succession of endemic life-forms. They dominate. They crowd out other species. They cut diversity. You know that their blood contains vanadium and sulfuric acid in vanadocytes, vacuoles in their blood cells? That’s probably why they don’t have predators. What critter wants to eat that? Small amounts of vanadium aren’t a problem, but tunicates like oblonga can concentrate it by millions of times over seawater solutions.”
“Bad for the locals, I assume. But, look, we’re just visitors. Nothing we can do. It’s a local problem.”
“See. That’s the problem with problems. Everyone thinks a local problem is a problem for locals. But what happens at Beaufort, North Carolina, will eventually happen at Beaufort, South Carolina. Same coast; same ecology; same kind of water, tourism, and same kind of boaters.”
“I guess so. But what’s your point? Am I not supposed to enjoy my vacation, knowing that as I plow through the waters of the coast, I’ll be spreading this oblonga critter to every pier or wharf?”
“No, you enjoy. Certainly, enjoy. But I guess now that I mentioned it, you’ll probably be thinking about the bottom of the boat as you wend your way through the Intercoastal Waterway. Sorry, I didn’t want to spoil the vacation, but I guess once we hear something, we can’t unhear it.”
“So, in this article, did you read about ways to get rid of this oblonga?”
“See, that’s the thing with any invasive group. They’re tough to eliminate once they get a foothold. This one travels by ships and boats to the entire western Atlantic seaboard, from Beaufort to Brazil. And getting rid of oblonga? Got to clean them away or figure how to introduce other organisms, but both are time-consuming and only partially effective. Anyway, it seems like a losing battle once fouling organisms get established. And what good is it to replace oblonga with other fouling organisms. They foul. They cover all the shallow water hard places. They’re like COVID in a way. Probably will always be with us in some form, attaching to humans wherever they get carried by other humans. For oblonga, it’s ships and boats and currents they ride from one place to another. People have been spreading problem organisms for as long as there have been people, and especially since we went from being nomads on the land to nomads on the sea.”
“Sounds like a losing cause for us.”
“Especially because we’re responsible for the spread of fouling organisms though we didn’t create oblonga. It’s not the same as the pandemic’s virus that some people suspect we created. It reminds me of the line Homer has Zeus say to the other gods who want to intervene in the Trojan War on one side or the other. Zeus says, ‘Man has only himself to blame if his miseries are worse than they ought to be.’ We’ve moved oblonga from Bermuda to Brazil by our activities, by our seagoing vessels. We’ve moved the viruses that cause pandemics. Heck, we might even have invented the viruses that we transport by land, air, and sea; remember those people on the cruise ships, stuck at sea after we learned some had disembarked on American shores.”
“I like that line you just said. What was it? Man has only himself to blame….‘”
“’Man has only himself to blame if his miseries are worse than they ought to be.’”
“Yeah. I can see that, but now I’m going to think about the bottom of my boat when we take it out at Beaufort. I’m going to spoil some of my fun by realizing I’m a ‘carrier’ so to speak, that I’m a spreader of misery without knowing it.”
“And consider that not only do we transport problems around the world, we concentrate them. We’re like those vanadocytes with high concentrations of vanadium, millions of times more abundant than the natural condition in seawater. Funny how we keep causing ourselves more problems, more complex problems, more problems we have greater trouble solving. Homer was right, and he didn’t even know that the very ships of the Achaeans were causing environmental problems or that when Odysseus plied the waves on a ten-year return to Ithaca, he was spreading tunicates. We ride the ship, unaware we carry the problem on the hull. There’s an underside to all, or to at least most, of our activities, and underside we don’t see unless we ‘take the boat out of the water’ of our daily limited focus.”
“Oh! So, now I’m like those ancient Greeks, just because my wife wants us to vacation in Beaufort?”
“Isn’t your wife’s name, Helen? Pretty woman, if I remember. Beaufort is fine. Just don’t take her to Paris.”
Note:
*Christianson, Kayla A. and David B. Eggleston. 23 April 2021. Testing ecological theories in the Anthropocene: alteration of succession by an invasive marine species. Esa (Ecosphere: An ESA open access journal). Online athttps://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.3471
https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3471
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