Double goose, triple pelican [rowing wildlife]

It's starting to get light before the alarm goes off at 5 am. Solstice approaches!

Lots of wildlife on the BAP (Berkeley Aquatic Park) this morning. The geese didn't leave much poop on the dock, so I didn't have to sweep, but there were (was?) a handful of mussel shells down at the end of the dock, left by gulls who land there to pry them apart and slurp up the tasty innards.

At the end of my first lap, I watched three white pelicans huddled together, bobbing their beaks underwater. I also noticed a number of white egrets, and one of the smaller heron varieties standing quietly along the shore.

Iz is out of town this week, so J showed up to row in her single instead, and together we made a plan to spend our third lap doing intervals of 90 seconds on, 30 seconds off. About 10 strokes into the first interval, I wound up in the middle of a flock of geese, and managed to hit two geese, one with either oar, at almost the exact same time. Urf! One stroke later, I hit a third goose. Come on, geese! Get it together! Of course I blamed J for sabotaging me. Other than that we got in some good work. J's faster than I am, but she only managed to creep up to my bow deck over the course of each 90-second segment.

We also watched a ray surface for a minute or two and stick its fins out of the water. I thought it was a seal at first, but didn't see any seal head, so I think J's right about it being a ray. She also rowed right over it and probably got a better view.

I think I also saw a white, translucent jellyfish hovering in the algae.

Maybe I should start bringing a camera out with me.

Creating safe spaces for thoughtful and productive conversations online

I am just going to put a couple of things here instead of on other social media venues because this seems like a better place for productive conversation.

After hearing about the horrible bike crash in Kalamazoo last week that killed 5 cyclists, I got to wondering again about where automobile crashes sit on the list of preventable causes of death.

The Wikipedia page provides some perspective, although it contains a note that the chart for the US is very much out-of-date. There's some additional information in a more recent CDC report (pdf), where automobile crashes are lumped into the category of "Unintentional injuries." There's a trend towards progress in terms of automobile crashes, although of course this depends on what one considers to be an acceptable level of preventable causes of death. And were firearms scrubbed from the record? I did not poke at this especially hard so I am still probably poorly informed.

Overall, human beings are terrible at being scared of the things we should actually be concerned about, because so many of these things are things that we are in contact with or experience over the course of everyday life, and so we just come to see them as something normal. In contrast, think about the extreme safety measures in place for airline travel. I also still see bicycling as a really good tool for reshaping these lists in a positive direction.

Also, this is mostly unrelated, but I am incredibly happy to see this article about bridging indigenous and scientific knowledge in Science. I am happy because it's a beacon of hope, and to me it's a wonderful form of trendy "Citizen Science" because it validates indigenous peoples' way of life.