Dying Fisheries and Lakes - Good Times

 

It's a slow Sunday at Steepmeadow. December has cooled off the projects. The overriding worry now is whether or not we will have enough wood to make a serious dent in our heating bill. I'm also worried about dying crab fisheries and how best to keep the walks safe so you don't fall down without salting the local lakes in the process. And, of course, the never-ending worry about the baggage retrieval system at Heathrow Airport.

In the interest of planning a canoe camping trip to the Quetico wilderness in Canada next summer with my kid, I'm reading a book to learn more about it. The only problem is that Kevin Callan's A Paddlers Guide to Quetico and Beyond is a bit on the dull side.

I roped off a face cord of our wood to carefully log (see what I did there) how much we are using. Looking at the dwindling piles, I'm starting to think that two cords was woefully short. I'm starting to think that next year we'll want three or even four. November's power bill was $87. We used almost no gas (just for the water heater). But with the realization that the wood supplies are limited, we've begun rationing. Instead of running the wood stove 24 hours a day, we're running it 12, adding the electric space heaters periodically to keep the gas usage down. The furnace backstops us at 65. 

We're also planning for an Xmas celebration. Weird for a bunch of atheists, but it is the family's culture. My sister recently expressed that she'd like crab for dinner. 

I'm trying to dissuade her. Between the surveys conducted in 2021 and 2022, mature male snow crabs declined about 40%, with an estimated 45 million pounds left in the entire Bering Sea, and the fishing season's been cancelled. Overfishing & climate change. Traditions simply can't be maintained. You don't want to be munching down endangered species. It reflects the state of ocean fisheries in general, but "Billions of Snow Crabs Missing from the Waters Around Alaska" is not a cheerful headline.

Closer to home, we got a reminder from the city to be careful about how much salt we use on the walks to keep them from being a slippery hazard. Salt is a permanent pollutant. It is toxic to freshwater organisms in our lakes and streams. A single grain of the stuff 3" apart from the next grain is sufficient to keep ice off of a walk. So, I mixed up a batch of play-sand & rock salt that is mostly sand, with a little salt thrown in. Hopefully this will get the job done and stay out of the lakes.