Last Monday morning, while lying flat on my back on a cold, narrow, operating room table in a Manhattan hospital, an inordinate number of thoughts raced through my mind. It’s not an everyday situation to find yourself in, and your brain tends to go into overdrive.

Unlike being on a boat trying to catch dinner, being in a hospital, especially an operating room, is not fun. Most of us, at some point in our lives, will be in such a position. Life and health, no matter how hard we try, are impossible to predict. 

It’s a paralyzing feeling when you are on that sterile table. You are in the hands of a surgeon and more than half a dozen nurses and medical technicians, all wearing the same light blue gowns, gloves, and masks. They are faceless. It’s hard to discern who is male or female. You are emotionally helpless.

The lighting was bright and clear as I looked upward and to the side at the myriad medical equipment. There were wires, monitors, tubes, syringes, and mounds of white gauze everywhere, as my ears took in the rhythmic beeps of the machines that surrounded me, and were ultimately there to help me. It felt surreal.

My eyes were open and I was introduced to my surgeon, who would shortly begin to insert various needles into both of my arms in preparation for addressing the concern a nuclear stress test uncovered with my heart a few weeks ago. It’s a vital organ and sadly I’ve been on that table to address it several times in the past. 

As I was prepped by numerous rubber-clad hands, my thoughts drifted in many directions. Did I remove the cushions from my boat last week before it was pulled out of the water? No. Did I suspend the delivery of the morning newspaper? Again, no. Should I buy that tennis racket I fancy and a few more lobster traps? Let’s see how the surgery goes first. How many stents will my heart need today or would they need to do a bypass? 

“Relax, we are giving you a sedative now,” one of the nurses said to me, interrupting the random thoughts running through my head. “You will be more comfortable.” 

Looking to the left, I could see my heart and arteries pulsing vividly on the large-screen monitor. It’s a rather creepy and uneasy feeling. The surgeon, his voice calm and clear, barked out a few numbers and words that were foreign to me, but made perfect sense to the rest of the people in the room. 

After about 30 minutes of probing my heart, the surgeon asked how I felt and said I was doing well. “Things look good so far,” he said in a steady voice. “But we still need to look at some other arteries.”

Another half-hour passed. Time seemed to slow down and my back began to stiffen from lying in the same position. 

“We’re done, Mr. Diat,” he finally said to me, while removing his mask. “There are two moderate blockages, but they are not in areas of concern. It’s not worth putting in stents.”

A wave of relief came over me and I smiled. Expecting the worst, I was surprised by the results. I already have six stents in my heart, so I automatically assumed I would only add to my collection.

A few hours later, I was home, but tired. I’m very grateful to those who helped me that day. The older you get, the more appreciative you become. That morning in that cold room, I received an early Christmas gift: life itself. 

As for life on the fishing scene, it has seen its ups and downs, depending on the species.

The surprising run of haddock that developed east of Block Island unfortunately evaporated over the past week. Whether the fish will reappear is anyone’s guess. It’s been more than a half-century since they have appeared in our local waters in any great numbers. 

Cod, porgies, sea bass, and a few pollock have filled in for the lack of haddock, but even that fishery has been a struggle on most days. However, those who focused on blackfish were met with better success on the Cartwright grounds south of Montauk, with fish up to 10 pounds landed in recent days, mixed in with a few cod and ling.

“Still a good amount of small striped bass on the ocean beaches,” proclaimed Harvey Bennett of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. Bennett is hopeful that the run of bass continues until Saturday, the final day of striped bass season, where he once again will hold a contest for the largest fish landed.

“Just take a picture or weigh or measure it,” he said of the honor system rules. “We had a great turnout last year and people had a lot of fun.” The entry fee is $20 and also includes entrance into a raffle for a surf rod and membership in the Amagansett Sportfishing Association. Proceeds from the event go to underprivileged youth in the Dominican Republic, a charity close to Bennett’s own generous heart.

“I shipped off four boxes of baseball equipment, clothes, shoes, and school supplies early last month, but three of the boxes got lost,” he lamented. “I spent a ton of hours over several weeks trying to track them down. Thankfully they showed up a few days ago.” Donations are still being accepted, as Bennett hopes to send more supplies before Christmas.

“We truly appreciate Harvey’s efforts for the boxes we received,” said Alex Monegro, a recipient of the gifts who operates a baseball camp for children in San Francisco de Macoris, a city several hours north of Santo Domingo. “It brought smiles to all of the children here. It felt like Christmas.”

I know that feeling well.

We welcome your fishing tips, observations, and photographs at [email protected]. You can find the “On the Water” column on Twitter at @ehstarfishing.

A feather is a heck of a thing. Yankee Doodle stuck one in his cap and called it “macaroni” almost three centuries ago. Native Americans used feathers at the end of the arrows to make them go straighter when launched from the bow. Feathers are used far and wide and during the kill-for-plumes era here in America, several plume bearers such as the egrets almost became extinct, which led to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 in the United States, which banned almost all forms of plume hunting. Thereafter, our brilliantly plumed birds were protected by federal agents enforcing federal law and their populations began to recover. From then on ladies’ hats would become plumeless, boas would become a thing of the past, and feather dusters would be replaced with synthetic bristle brushes.

I know a thing or two about feathers. At six years of age I began plucking chickens on my grandfather’s white leghorn poultry farm next door in Mattituck. I became the fastest chicken plucker in town, and with the earnings was able to buy my own penny candies at Gildersleeve’s market in Mattituck on my way back from grade school each day.

The individual feather is not only a finely crafted thing of beauty; in its heyday it had a variety of human uses, everything from sweeping dust off the floor to keeping one warm at night. The down from the female eider duck is the softest and most costly of the world’s feathers. You won’t find any in my pillow.

On birds, the feather serves as a sex symbol, nest softener, water shield, insulator and thermal regulator, and, of course, as a flight enabler. 

Reptiles in the age of dinosaurs evolved feathers as early as in the Triassic period, some 200 million years ago. Without feathers there would be no flying vertebrates, there would be no flying birds, which developed from flying reptiles. The first feathers were derived from early reptilian scales; both are composed mostly of beta-keratin. Scientists have been working on modern alligator scales in various ways and have thus far succeeded in getting them to develop into primitive plumose structures.

The first reptilian feathers found in Chinese fossils were probably used for thermoregulation and body armor protection, among other things, but reptilian feathers used for flying came much later, as in the fabled archaeopteryx. In order to use feathers for flight, the sternum has to have a keel for the attachment of muscles needed to drive flight. Archaeopteryx had a keel, as do all flying birds. Ratites — the ostriches, rheas, emus, and the like — have feathers but lack the sternal keel.

Some of the early reptilian feathers were pigmented, suggesting that colored scales came later. Both sexes of cassowaries of the Southeast Asian islands are brilliantly colored, but these ratites, like the others, cannot fly. Strikingly colored plumes are mostly restricted to the males of bird species, which make males more obvious to detect by would-be predators such as bird hawks.

Of the modern vertebrates, the classes of fishes and birds are the most colorful and the most species-rich. There must be an obvious evolutionary advantage to hued scales and hued feathers. Birds are more advanced in some respects, as they can molt colorful feathers and grow less colorful ones as we see in the Baltimore oriole, several warbler species, and many ducks. The less colorful plumage offers more protection against predators and signals to females that males are not in a condition to mate.

In reptiles such as snakes, when it comes time to get rid of the old worn-out scales and take on new ones, the entire skin is molted at once. The bird feathers are molted one or two at a time. When you see a crow, mourning dove, or herring gull that seems to be missing a few wing feathers fly over, it is a signal that the bird is replacing old primaries with new ones. Mammals shed their old fur and replace it with new fur imperceptibly, say as they leave summer and head into winter or leave winter for spring.

Evolution, they say, is forever ongoing, but as far as I can tell in my lifetime there have been no completely new structures developed from older different structures, say feathers from scales, fingernails and toenails from claws, flippers from paws, long tails from no tails and vice versa, and the like, suggesting that in nature it takes a very, very long time for a new anatomical feature or organ to evolve from an older one. Such is probably going on, but to see it we would need a million-years’-long time-lapse photographic study of an older form as it very gradually changes into a newer more advanced one. 

We only see such rapid change when it comes to inorganic evolution, in trains, planes, automobiles, phones, computers, radios, energy generators, and so on.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

Last Thursday was a rather blustery, chilly day mixed with intermittent rain. The dampness ran through my many layers of clothes and ultimately my body as I rummaged around in my garage securing my fishing tackle and gear for what would likely be my final fishing trip of 2018 the following morning out of Montauk. 

The marine weather report noted that the easterly winds would veer slightly to the southeast overnight and slacken, thereby bringing in some much-needed warmer temperatures. That said, I made sure to pack my thermal gear, oilskins, and a few heavy sweatshirts for protection against the increasingly chilly ocean waters. Better to have more clothes than fewer this time of the year.

Waking up at 4:30 on Friday morning, I noticed from my bedroom window that the clouds had broken and the stars shone brightly, highlighted by the vivid clarity of the planet Venus to the south in the early morning sky. As predicted, the wind, too, had dropped off. It was going to be a nice day on the water.

When I arrived at the docks of the Star Island Yacht Club, the temperature was a rather balmy 41 degrees. Only two boats were still in the water, including the Bluefin IV, a well-seasoned, six-pack charter boat under the guidance of Capt. Michael Potts, who has owned the beamy 41-foot wooden craft since 1975. 

While I’ve known Potts for nearly four decades, I had not set foot on his boat in several years. I had a few invites to fish with him earlier this season, but something else had already been planned, negating a day of fishing.

“We fished yesterday at Cartwright and the C.I.A. grounds, and the action was not great,” he explained to me and five other anglers in the main cabin, speaking of locations south and west of Montauk. “Today, I think it’s best to go southeast of Block Island and try it.” The plan was to focus on blackfish and perhaps catch a cod or two.

After throwing the lines off at 6:15, it was still dark as we exited the jetties that protect Montauk Harbor to begin the 90-minute ride. Hot coffee, small talk, and jokes were exchanged in the cabin as we looked forward to the day ahead. 

The ride out, as Potts warned, would still be a bit bumpy as a result of the previous day’s breeze, but the seas were slowly settling down as we crept up to one of the five, 600-foot-tall wind turbines three miles southeast of Block Island. 

Passing underneath the giant wind fan gave us chills as we all took out our cameras and iPhones to capture the moment in the bright early morning sun. Looking upward, the massive structure overtook the sky. It was immense yet streamlined in its monstrous, aerodynamic shape. 

About 20 minutes later, we had reached our first stop. It was time to get serious, drop anchor, and fish. 

Joe Garsetti, the first mate aboard, ensured we had enough fresh skimmer clams for bait, as well as an assortment of green, white, and hermit crabs to impale upon our hooks. No doubt about it, the fish waiting on the rocky bottom below us were going to have a nice selection to choose from.

Unfortunately, only a few blackfish were in residence, as the fish were fussy and off their feed, with the bites few and far between. For the next seven hours, we bounced around from rock pile to rock pile looking for better action. A few fish here and a few fish there was the best we could manage. That ultimately comprised a true mixed bag, including cod, blackfish, pollock, ling, cunners, porgies, sea bass, and mackerel. 

Between bites, we were entertained by a few giant finback whales, their spouts of water periodically blowing high into the air, but for whatever reason, the fishing just never took hold. The fish gods had spoken. It was not to be.

Indeed, the reports from other boats in the area echoed our frustration. “One party boat to the east at Cox’s Ledge only got one cod, a haddock, and some small porgies,” Potts relayed from atop his fly bridge in the early afternoon. “We’ll keep trying different pieces here and try to pick away.”

Finally, at 2:45 and with the sun now obscured by clouds, it was time to pull up the anchor for the last time and head westward for the long ride home. We caught enough fish to secure a nice dinner or two. Not every day will come with excellent results. It’s what makes fishing the challenge we appreciate.

“Depending on the weather, I will probably keep the boat in the water until the end of December and pull it out then,” said Potts at the helm of the stout craft, which was built by the noted local boatbuilder Ray Chichi in his garage in Greenport in 1970. “I hope to be back in the water in early March, when there hopefully will be some codfish around.”

March can’t come soon enough.

At the Tackle Shop in Amagansett on Sunday morning, the owner, Harvey Bennett, was in a jovial mood readying for his end-of-season holiday raffle drawing. Bennett was also in the midst of confirming the results of the largest striped bass taken on Saturday, the final day of the season, as well as finalizing the end result of the heaviest fish landed over the past month.

In calm conditions, Saturday’s striped bass contest had many anglers plying the nearby ocean surf. Alas, unlike last year, no fish were landed. 

“We had good conditions and many people fishing, but it seems the fish have moved out of the area for good,” surmised Bennett. 

The lucky winner of the raffle was a combined entry of the East Hampton trio of Tony Sales, Sam Doughty, and Shelly Becker, who will need to decide amongst themselves how to split a 10-foot Shakespeare surf rod and matching reel in three pieces. John Micena of Hampton Bays also won a portable Coleman cooler.

Doughty kept his fishing hot streak alive when he captured the largest fish taken over the past month with an eight-pound codfish, besting your said scribe, with a fish that was a few ounces heavier. Doughty earned the prize of a Penn 706z surf reel. Not to be outshined, Rick Spero of East Hampton came in third with a huge, six-pound largemouth bass. 

Money raised from the raffle and contests will go to underprivileged youth in the Dominican Republic. Ever the charity giver, Bennett remains in a holiday rush to ship a few more boxes of baseball goods, shoes, clothing, and school supplies to a school in the Caribbean country before the end of the year.

“Some boxes I sent back in early November got there, but unfortunately, three were lost or stolen and have not been recovered,” he lamented. “There was probably around $3,000 of goods in those boxes, including a bunch of stuff that was donated by Dick’s Sporting Goods. I’m devastated.”

Bennett has filed a loss claim, but it is unsure if he will receive any compensation. “It will take months if this ever gets resolved,” he said. “That’s why I’m in a huge rush to get some more donated goods there as quickly as possible. The truck to pick up the stuff is coming not long after Christmas.”

Happy holidays.

We welcome your fishing tips, observations, and photographs at [email protected]. You can find the “On the Water” column on Twitter at @ehstarfishing.

On Dec. 15 one of the oldest Christmas Bird Counts took place in East Hampton, the Montauk Count. Seven territories were covered by different observers — Montauk Point north, Montauk Point south, Lake Montauk west (including Hither Hills), Napeague, Accabonac in Springs, and the annual plum, Gardiner’s Island. In an unofficial tally of 5,501 birds, a total of 118 species were seen and counted under the direction of Karen Rubinstein. 

Among the winter-resident birds counted were 477 white-throated sparrows, 8 white-crowned sparrows, 40 snow buntings, 136 juncos, 5 purple finches, 1 redpoll, 45 pine siskins, 35 fox sparrows, 2 tree sparrows, 27 yellow-rumped warblers, 38 hermit thrushes, 5 winter wrens, 13 saw-whet owls, 1 snowy owl, 1,898 razorbills, 4 Iceland gulls, 281 gannets, 2 rough-legged hawks, 6 red-necked grebes, 71 horned grebes, 496 common loons, 2,469 red-throated loons, 1 Barrows goldeneye, 2 harlequin ducks, 1,445 common eiders, 830 long-tailed ducks (formerly, old squaw), 283 bufflehead, 74 ruddy ducks, 3 common mergansers (a low), 31 hooded mergansers, 43 greater scaups, 8 canvasbacks, 458 surf scoters, 961 black scoters, and 2,806 white-winged scoters. In duck hunter parlance all scoters are called “coots.” 

It is not surprising that of the 4,225 scoters in total, more than half were in the Gardiner’s Island area, which sees comparatively less waterfowl hunting than the six other survey areas. The same can be said for horned grebes (not a game species). More than half were observed in the Gardiner’s Island count area. Scoter species are usually found in high numbers during the winter in the Long Island area, but the 1,445 common eiders counted is unusual. Global warming may be stunting some local species with respect to breeding, but it seems that common eiders may be given a breeding boost. The same may be said for the 281 gannets observed.

Global warming may account for the large number of spring and summer breeders such as the large number of stay-behind robins (673), song sparrows (585), catbirds (56), and red-winged blackbirds (53) counted. 

Many bird species that used to show up in the winter on earlier counts that I attended on Gardiner’s Island — purple finch (5), red crossbill (0), common redpoll (1) — were either lacking altogether or in very short supply.

Lastly, those birds that are generally here all year, such as crows, herring gulls, and the like, were in good supply. There were 381 of the former and a whopping 1,795 of the latter counted. There were 481 chickadees, 88 tufted titmice, 431 blue jays, 186 Carolina wrens, and 247 mourning doves observed. Only one of the latter was seen on Gardiner’s Island, where birdfeeders are very few or none at all.

Some of the unusual occurrences were the two ravens observed in the Accabonac area, the two pipits counted in Montauk south, and the four tree swallows and one rough-legged hawk on Gardiner’s Island. Birds that are not “natives,” such as the starling (623), mute swan (21), house sparrow (133), and rock dove (219) from Europe, and the house finch (101) from the southwestern United States, are apparently holding their own.

Wild turkeys, which used to be here on Long Island but were missing for almost 200 years, are back in good numbers now. Seventy-five were counted in all, 43 on Gardiner’s Island, where they have been since the early 1960s. 

Pretty good day’s work, don’t you think? Nice job, Karen!

Here we are starting a new year and who knows where it will take us? I’ve been an optimist all of my life and I don’t know why. Was it because I was born at home and attended to by Dr. Luce of Riverhead who made more house calls than he had office visits? These last few years, however, I am beginning to see the world through blurred lenses. Sure, we have made a lot of progress locally, we’ve saved a lot of woods, fields, wetlands, sand dunes, ponds, and creeks, but we have a long, long way to go.

When I started writing this column in the early 1980s, East Hampton and Southampton Towns didn’t have laws protecting wetlands. Woodlands were being cut down and turned into housing projects. The local fishermen, who had for centuries provided fresh fish for thousands of customers by working together haulseining, were losing their longstanding rights at a rapid pace.

We’ve come a long way since that time with respect to saving our natural lands and our farmlands, but it took a lot of effort to achieve these milestones. The Peconic Land Trust under John v.H. Halsey’s leadership, which for more than 40 years has already made untold gains in saving our historical farming way of life, continues to work with the East End’s farmers to farm more and build less, while the fishermen are still faced with several impasses and their fate is far from rosy.

We are facing rising sea levels and an increase in the frequency of tropical cyclones and northeasters. Our traffic congestion problems grow worse each year. Our sole source aquifer continues to degrade as our water quality laboratories continue to expand testing and gifted volunteer groups continue to test the local surface waters, but still we often find out much too late that we have been drinking and washing in well water laced with this and that chemical for several years. The nitrogen and other contaminants from septic systems have been increasing and slowly dumping into the local estuarine waters, sullying them more and more.

The air we breathe is clogged with chemicals from exhaust, furnaces, vehicles, and other energy use sources. We have even learned lately that our ozone levels, because of the heavy volume of exhaust from traffic on Long Island roads, are among the highest in the nation. And there seems to be a phenomenon called global warming afoot that some say will change our way of living forevermore.

Here are some practices that are already in use that can be expanded to improve the outcomes for our air and water: 

1) Let green grass lawns turn into moss lawns, which don’t require water or fertilizers to grow and stay green and weed-free all year around. Such transformations will happen on their own if we let them.

2) Rake, don’t machine blow, leaves to manage them. Compost the leaves or let them lie to compost on their own.

3) Walk more, bike more, take fewer auto trips, and use public transportation when and where available.

4) Don’t flush medicines and other personal-use chemicals down the sink or toilet.

5) Use energy saving non-incandescent lights and stop lighting up the world around you with lights that send their rays beyond your property limits. Turn lights off when not in use!

6) Solarize your roofs to lower your use of burning-fuel-source electricity.

7) Eat as much raw food as cooked food.

8) Go to bed earlier; get up earlier.

9) Don’t shower every day.

10) Carpool when possible.

And most of all, enjoy nature!

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

It is the time of the year when migration at sea is almost over for the bluefish, striped bass, and marine turtles. The marine turtles — green, leatherback, loggerheads, and Kemp’s ridleys — are sluggardly in their movement south and don’t swim faster than most people walk. The endangered ridley, the smallest of them all, is the slowest and very often gets cold-stunned and washes up on our shores before it gets to warm water. If you find one dead or alive, please call the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation.

There is a fifth local turtle — the eastern diamondback terrapin — that is semi-marine and an inhabitant of our local waters, especially those subject to dilution with freshwater. It’s been here as long as the first European settlers. It frequents lagoons and tidal creeks. If you wait long enough at, say, Accabonac Harbor, Hog Creek, Northwest Creek, or Georgica Pond, you are liable to see one come up for air.

Across the bay in Mattituck, where I grew up, the diamondback was still called a torrup, a local Native American word of Algonkian origin. It is a smallish turtle, rarely a foot long, and is flatter than the familiar box turtle, which is almost strictly terrestrial. Come winter it behaves like the box and our freshwater turtles, finding a quiet spot in the mud and staying there until spring. You begin to see its head bobbing up here and there by the end of March.

Come May and June if you walk on Sammy’s Beach at the mouth of Three Mile Harbor you may find a female making its way inland, up and down over the low dunes, looking for a spot to lay her eggs. The eggs are half the size of a chicken egg and have a leathery coating rather than a hard shell. If you don’t find a turtle in the flesh, you may find a set of turtle tracks leading from the water into the sand or parts of turtle eggs from a nest that has been savaged by a raccoon.

They have a reproductive cycle comparable to that of the box turtle and snapping turtle. Females excavate a shallow nest in a sunny place and deposit their eggs, covering them with some sand to protect them from would-be marauders. The eggs are laid in May and June and hatch out the end of August or in September. 

As with other aquatic turtles that hatch in land nests, then seek waters to grow up in — as the snapping, painted, spotted, mud, and musk turtles — the hatchlings are about the size of a silver dollar and somehow know how to make their way to the nearest creek, bay, or lagoon, where they take up their aquatic lifestyles.

On land they can be preyed upon by foxes and raccoons. They can’t defend themselves like snapping turtles, and they can’t pull all their limbs, tail, and head into the shell and seal the edges of it as the box turtle can.

Some of these hatchlings find themselves stranded and succumb or are predated. Jean Held was at Havens Beach in Sag Harbor last Thursday and found one that seemed to be lost. The area was loaded with gulls, which would find such an object fit for eating. So, after photographing it, she let it go in Little Northwest Creek in a safe spot where it runs under the road on the way to the Sag Harbor Golf Course. 

Every once in a while there is a massive diamondback terrapin die-off similar to a fish kill when the water becomes too befouled and the dissolved oxygen level reaches dangerous lows. Such a die-off happened in Flanders Bay in the Peconic Estuary three years ago during a harmful algae tide in May and massing of menhaden in shallow coastal waters. 

Diamondbacks are also caught in crab and conch traps, and hit by the props of motorboat engines. 

Once a common ingredient in soup, diamondbacks were formerly fished for money, but their populations dropped to the point where the various Atlantic states put them under protection. In Rhode Island they are considered endangered, in Massachusetts threatened, and in most of the other coastal states from Florida into Canada they are a species of “special concern.”

New York State has lagged behind the others, but as of May 1 of this year, diamondback terrapins can no longer be harvested commercially.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

The clock is ticking. The fishing season for private boaters is quickly coming to a close. 

While it felt like summer was just here, it is now sadly time to find the snow shovel. The days continue to get shorter and winter is rapidly approaching. 

I was hopeful that there would be one final fishing excursion before finishing up the season, along with a few more days to dredge up some highly-treasured bay scallops. It can be hard, or impossible, to extend the season, no matter how much we try. Mother Nature always holds the upper hand.

However, last Monday was a rare day out on Block Island Sound. The main reason was that for the first time in what seemed like weeks, there was barely a breath of wind. Sadly, since Labor Day, it has seemed like a giant fan was turned on and somebody forgot to turn the switch off. 

The winds of fall have been constant and unrelenting. Charter boat captains I know in Montauk have lamented the high number of cancellations. There was a lot of lost income for many. But at least for one day, despite the nippy 28-degree temperature that left a dense coating of frost on the dock and on my pilothouse windows, a nice, early morning of fishing was finally at hand.

The ride to the blackfish grounds of Fishers Island to the northeast took well over an hour. With nary another boat in sight en route, it was an opportunity to take in the abundance of waterfowl life on the waterways in which we traveled, including gannets, scoters, cormorants, eiders, and more.

In addition, a continuous parade of Canada geese also flew overhead, all making their way west in their classic V formation. There were birds everywhere we looked. We also witnessed several harbor seals on the nearby horizon. Their black, curious bulbous heads bobbing gently up and down like a piece of old cork, they were only there to take a quick glimpse of me as I passed.

Finally, arriving at our destination and setting anchor in 50 feet of water, I took note of the crystal-clear visibility. It was so exhilarating it practically hurt your eyes when scanning the horizon. 

About eight miles away to the north, I could distinctly make out the tractor trailers passing along on the I-95 bridge that spans the Thames River between New London and Groton, Conn. It was a rare day in the late fall season.

But while the conditions were perfect on so many levels, the fishing was not. For some reason, the fish were not on the feed and the action was painfully slow. While the tide was expected to flood in about half an hour, we resisted moving to another location. We were anchored on prime real estate. And fishermen know they need to have patience at such times.

We stuck to our game plan. The tide finally changed, and the action ultimately did indeed improve. The only problem was that the fish landed were small, very small, some no larger than five inches (blackfish need to be at least 16 inches to be retained). 

Between me and my two other guests, we ultimately combined to land seven keepers, but it was not an easy task. The keeper-to-shorts ratio was at least 15 to 1. The bite was intense, and while we switched over from green crabs to the highly-prized hermit crab for bait, the size of the fish remained pretty much the same. The fishing gods above us had clearly spoken. Not every fishing trip will be an outstanding success.

The radio chatter among the dozen or so boats gathered in the immediate area echoed the same frustration. Fishing was decent, but the majority of the catch was made up of small fish. The action on much larger blackfish we witnessed the week before was not to be replicated. It’s what makes fishing a challenge, and it helps keep the seafood stores in business. 

At noon, we decided to weigh anchor and headed back for the long ride home. The sea was still flat calm, but the sun’s rays were now dimmed by some high cirrus clouds. The quickly darkening sky heralded the approach of another low-pressure system, and ultimately, more gusty wind.

The old salt Harvey Bennett at the Tackle Shop in Amagansett also lamented the windy weather that has put a damper on fishing activities over the past several months.

“It’s been blowing for sure,” he nodded behind the well-worn countertop at his establishment on Sunday afternoon. “The wind has been nonstop.”

But Bennett regained his enthusiasm and verbal octave about the striped bass bite occurring along the nearby ocean beaches, where the fishing has been excellent of late, despite the wind.

“Now is the time to fish if you want some action,” he said. “Lots of bass are in the wash. Take some light tackle and have a ball.” Bennett added that some blowfish are still hanging around and that squid can still be had in Fort Pond Bay and Three Mile Harbor.

Bennett also reminded me that he has a popular contest underway at the behest of his namesake establishment.

“There are three ways to win,” he explained. “For $20, anglers can weigh in any fish they please. Plus, on Dec. 15, the last day of striped bass season, another gift will be awarded for the largest fish landed. In addition, all entries will be entered into a raffle for a Penn 706z surf reel.”

Bennett also wanted all to know that all money raised from the contest will go to underprivileged children in the Dominican Republic, a cause he has devotedly supported for several years. As well, everyone entered will gain entrance into the exclusive Amagansett Sportfishing Association for one year. Membership has its privileges as they say. 

“We had a great turnout last year on the final day of bass season for the contest,” recalled Bennett. “I hope we get even more people to participate this year. It’s a lot of fun.” 

Ken Morse of Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor agreed that there were lots of bass on the beach. “There were some keepers early last week, but most of the fish are on the small side.” 

Morse added the blackfish reports have been scarce. “Too much wind most days,” he said with a deep sigh. “It has been a very frustrating fall season.”

“Still a ton of striped bass down at the ocean,” extolled Sebastian Gorgone of Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle in East Hampton. “But they are all small. However, it’s been great action and the bite has been very consistent every day. Bring out the light tackle.”

While talking about the latest on the local fishing scene, Gorgone was beginning to pack up his gear as he prepared to drive to Baltimore to celebrate Thanksgiving, as well as playing a gig with his former hard-rock band mates. 

“We haven’t played together in about 10 years, but it should be great fun,” the talented guitarist said with a wide grin. “I can’t wait to get down there.”

Turkey dinner and good music always make for an excellent holiday combination. No cranberry sauce required. Rock on.

Since we are talking turkey, are you tired of handling that frozen Butterball bird for Thanksgiving? If so, you are in luck as wild turkey season opened last week in Suffolk County, a good opportunity for some excellent eating.

The season comes to an end on Friday, Nov. 30. Obviously, no defrosting of the turkey is required.

We welcome your fishing tips, observations, and photographs at [email protected]. You can find the “On the Water” column on Twitter at @ehstarfishing.

The jarring blast of chilling arctic winds that we experienced last week also abruptly created a thin glaze of ice on many freshwater ponds, and even a few saltwater coves and creeks. Most important, it served as a stern warning to me that having the very last boat still in the water at the marina may not be the smartest thing.

I have been in deep denial of the change in the weather. It’s hard to ignore, but it is real. It is getting colder day by day.

While I still plan to make a final trip or two for a late-season haul of bay scallops this week, I have reluctantly succumbed to the fact that my boat needs to be removed from the drink for a few much-needed months of sleep. By this weekend, it will be high and dry, ready for its winter-long slumber. 

Over all, my boat served me well this year. It was a good season on many fronts. According to my logbook, I used my 30-foot, Novi-built craft more than I have in the past 10 years. It was great to be on the water as much as I was. My entry into retirement, also known as the golden years, does indeed come with certain privileges. And yes, I do carry my AARP card with me at all times. At some point, I’m sure it will come in handy.

Looking back at the year on the water, it was interesting to review the ups and downs. There were many positives. But, like life itself, there were some lows as well.

On the bright side, while I had serious doubts about the prospects for the bay scallop season, which started a few weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised at how good it has been. As recently as Monday, I was still easily dredging up my daily bushel basket of the tasty bivalves, and best of all, there seems to be a plethora of little bugs that should make for a bountiful harvest next November, providing that Mother Nature cooperates. Only time will tell.

Trapping lobsters was also a success this year. Having not set my pots in nine years, I did not hold out much hope, as the lobster population, according to many accounts, has been on the decline for the past two decades in our local waters. But, as with scallops, the catch was steady and consistent from March until the season came to an end in early September. It was also nice to witness a good number of egg-bearing females as well as many undersize lobsters mixed in with the keepers. Lobsters exhibiting shell rot were also at a minimum. 

I can’t say with certainty that my catch will improve going forward, but it was a pleasure to see that the tasty crustaceans are around if you know where to go. In addition, I rediscovered that it doesn’t get much better than consuming a steady diet of fresh steamed lobster or enjoying a satisfyingly buttery lobster roll every week. Life is good, and tasty.

On the fishing side of things, it was a bit of a mixed bag. Fluke fishing was up and down, but over all, it was not as productive when compared to other seasons. Fluke are a rather unpredictable group. When you expect a good season, you are most likely to be let down, as I was. It will be interesting to see what 2019 will bring.

Porgies remained plentiful over all during the season, but the early May run of super-size fish on the spawn has steadily declined from its heydays as recently as five years ago. Laden with eggs, the spring porgy fishery in the bays has taken a pounding from anglers and has seemingly thinned out the group of fish that frequently weighed up to four or even five pounds. The catches of the past few years have paled in comparison to what was witnessed. And I don’t see any signs that it will rebound anytime soon.

As for black sea bass, the population continues to explode. If the fish had legs, they could easily overtake town hall. They were everywhere.

On many days, it was hard to escape them when pursuing other quarry. Sadly, New York anglers have also been needlessly restricted to a short season and lower bag limits for sea bass when compared to neighboring states. I’m beginning to wonder if New York will ever receive an equitable share of its quota for this popular fish. While it’s nice to see such a rebound in sea bass stocks, proper marine fisheries management is sorely needed to help balance the imbalance.

If you are a lover of bluefish, you were most likely disappointed in what you caught this year. For whatever reason, bluefish were scarce in 2018 for just about all of Long Island. Commercial fishermen, who would sometimes not even bother to sell or ship the oily-fleshed fish due to extreme low prices, saw the price paid to their wallets near $2 per pound at certain times.

Striped bass aficionados were in their glory during most of the summer months out in Montauk. Many large fish, some weighing up to 60 pounds, were landed on a consistent basis. However, by the time mid-October rolled around, disappointment was the rule, as the fish, once again, bypassed the famous port on their annual migration to south.

“Thanksgiving weekend used to be one of our busiest days for fishing and some of best days for striped bass,” recalled Capt. Michael Vegessi of the open boat Lazybones on Sunday. For nearly 40 years, the Bones has focused on bass and blues once the run of fluke ended in September. 

“But ever since Superstorm Sandy happened over five years ago, the bass have bypassed Montauk on their migration,” he said. “For so many years, we were catching bass up until Christmas. Not anymore.” 

Vegessi sailed his final trip on Nov. 19. “I did not mark any bait or fish at all,” he said of what he witnessed that day. “It’s frustrating that the pattern has changed. I can’t explain it.”

The Bones will re-enter the water next May in the pursuit of fluke once again.

We can speculate all we want about next year, but we can be assured that there will be a surprise or two. 

On the current fishing scene, a few bright spots could be found.

The action for sea bass, along with a sprinkling of cod, has been consistent south and east of Block Island. Blackfish too, many of them reaching 10 pounds, can now be had on the Cartwright grounds, located due south of Montauk. Mixed in with them have been a few cod and red hake.

“Tons of bass are around on the ocean beaches,” said Harvey Bennett, the owner of the Tackle Shop on Montauk Highway in Amagansett. “Most are rat-sized, but I did weigh in a striper of 39 inches on Saturday. A few keepers are around, and the action has been great. The season is not over by any means.”

Bennett wanted to remind anglers that he will once again hold his year-end striped bass contest for the largest fish landed on the last day of the season (Dec. 15). “We had a great turnout last year,” he said. “You don’t even have to weigh in the fish. Just take a picture and I will consider it.”

The $20 entry fee also gains entry to a raffle to win a 10-foot surf rod, as well as membership in the Amagansett Sportfishing Association. 

However, the real winners of the contest and raffle are underprivileged children in the Dominican Republic, to whom Bennett has boxed and shipped off countless containers of clothes, shoes, school supplies, and baseball equipment. Donations are still being accepted.

“The contest is for fun and supports some very deserving kids,” he said. “I’ve spent so many hours doing this every week. But I love it. It’s great to see the pictures of the kids wearing or playing in the clothes and equipment that was sent to them.” 

Pointing to a recent photograph of a dozen or so children on a baseball diamond wearing some of the donated wares brought a broad grin to Bennett’s face. “Look at the smiles on their faces,” he beamed. “They are wearing everything that we sent to them. That is so cool.”

’Tis the season to be thankful.

We welcome your fishing tips, observations, and photographs at [email protected]. You can find the “On the Water” column on Twitter at @ehstarfishing.

Water and air. Two of the basic elements of our planet, and when the water occupies the surface they are intimately related. These two forms of matter exchange gases both during the day and the night. Such exchanges occurring throughout every second of every day no matter whether cold or hot and are the chemical reactions responsible for the existence of earth’s life and life functions. Not only that, they interact in many other ways, one of which is making waves.

There is never a moment when somewhere in the world, air and water are not creating waves, big or small. The height of every wave is chiefly determined by two factors, moving air and the size of the water body. Thus ocean waves are larger than lake or bay waves, lake or bay waves larger than river or creek waves, river and creek waves larger than pond and stream waves. The last are rarely more than mere ripples. When waves wash ashore or suddenly encounter a shallow bottom they may momentarily rise up before falling or waning.

Some ocean waves travel thousands of miles before reaching the coast. As long as the wind driving it doesn’t die out, a single wave can start out, say, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and travel all the way to Asian or American shores without losing amplitude or velocity. The speed and direction of the wind determines a given wave’s height and bearing. 

When you look at one of these far-traveling waves on its way to shore, you get the impression of massive movement and, perhaps, think that the water about to break traveled a very long way to get here, but it never does. The wave is a wave; it travels toward you, but not the water it represents. The water merely moves up and down vertically. The wind and the particles of air and dust that accompany the wave often come from far away. If the water actually traveled with the wind, the water at the edge of the shore would become thousands of feet deep. Instead, after the wave breaks, it becomes shallow again.

The break of each wave is different from the break of every other wave that follows. One might observe the curling over of the wave, its subsequent collapse onto the near shore, the spume rushing up onto the beach and its quick retreat back into the ocean. The larger the wave the larger the backrush of water, thus the dangerous rips that can carry you off and out to sea if you are not on your guard. If it weren’t for large ocean waves there wouldn’t be the very popular sport of surfing. Have you ever seen someone surf in Gardiner’s Bay or Three Mile Harbor?

An expert surfer or kayaker could travel mile upon mile starting way out at sea and surfing down and up the slopes of the waves as they move toward land. But beware of the last 30 feet or so, especially should the shore have rocks mixed in with the sand.

If the waves approach the shore at an angle, such that they break in a line one after another, a long-shore current can form. If at the Montauk ocean beach the waves are driven by a southeasterly wind, for example, the easternmost will break the first, followed by the next easternmost and so on down the line. Such lines of waves during tropical storms and northeasters are capable of moving not only sand toward the west but also small rocks caught up in the long-shore current. It is these large storms with easterly winds that account for most of the erosion of the Montauk headlands and the net movement of sand from east to west. The ocean beaches of Amagansett capture much of this sand, but very little in the way of rocks and stones, which leave the drift west early on.

Bluff Road in Amagansett is so called because in very early times it was a duney bluff south of which the sea began. In the notorious Hurricane of 1938 the water came up to Bluff Road, 300 to 400 yards north of the beach and dunes it passed over on its way. In fact, the famous Double Dunes are actually lines of dune ridges that ran to and ran up upon the fertile fields — now mostly developed with houses — south of Further Lane between the Village of East Hampton and Napeague. As long as they continue to receive sand and other soil particles from the east they will retreat only a minuscule amount if at all.

Some of the sand from the east washes back out to sea when the waves are hitting the shore head-on in a line from east to west. The back currents get them 100 feet to 100 yards offshore, where they come to rest as sand bars or reefs. They can slowly move back onshore and replenish the beach when conditions are right — there are no large cyclonic storms and the waves are moderate, particularly so in the summer.

If our eyes and minds were capable of stop-action in the way that modern cameras are, we could easily see that each wave when it breaks is different. Each wave’s impact on the shore is thus different, if even minutely so. Dell Cullum, an East Hampton Town trustee and wildlife rescuer and rehabber, is also an excellent videographer and photographer. He has spent many hours capturing the breaking and subsequent splashes of hundreds of waves hitting local beaches in stop-action. Thus you can see how each wave’s crash pattern is different and also beautiful. He has compiled some of his best shots in three small photographic volumes titled “Aquatic Ballet.”

After slowly perusing the photographs in these little books you will see and experience ocean waves in a very different way forevermore. 

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

In biology there is something known as sexual dimorphism; the two sexes are different in one or more ways. It even applies to some insects such as the swallowtail butterflies. Almost all vertebrates exhibit some form of sexual dimorphism. It is easy to tell us humans apart; girls and women just look different from boys and men. But it isn’t that easy for many other mammalian species.

Male members of the deer family have antlers, but some female members, say caribous, also sport them. The male lion has a bigger head than the female and more fur on it, including a furry mane on the neck. However, it’s not so easy to tell a male cheetah from a female cheetah, or a male leopard from a female leopard, or a male cougar from a female cougar. Even common house cats are difficult to tell apart by the naked eye.

Almost all male frogs and toads have a gular pouch, which they fill with air to use as a sound chamber in order to amplify a mating call. Otherwise, except for size differences, the sexes are very hard to tell apart. In some snake species, the males are more colorful than the females. In box turtles the bottom shell, or plastron, is concave for mounting the female’s conical carapace. Even so, during the reproductive act the male has a very slippery perch and often falls off backward while still attached to the female.

Of all the vertebrates, birds exhibit the greatest degree of showy sexual dimorphism. Such color variation is carried to extremes in warblers, ducks, pheasants, and many tropical rainforest species. Take the local wood duck: The male is about as colorful as any other male waterfowl, except perhaps the mandarin duck of Asia. 

The famous Big Duck monument on the side of the road in Flanders is all white, and so were the famous Long Island ducks, both males and females, that were sold there in the distant past. You can hardly tell the male geese and swans from the females, while male mallards, mergansers, buffleheads, shovelers, and teal easily stand out from their female mates. Sparrows are much less colorful and in song sparrows, it is hard to tell a male from a female, except when the male is singing. In fox sparrows, which are settling in now to spend most of the winter locally in the manner that hermit thrushes often do, the males are almost identical in color to the females, except a bit brighter.

The duller colors of female birds may protect them better from predation. It only takes a few males to service females, as in the red-winged blackbirds, which practice polygyny: The male courts and copulates with more than one female. Take our wild turkeys: Except for the absence of a wattle, females look very much like the males. Both female and male turkeys are very big birds and are not easy to predate. 

Both male and female cassowaries of New Guinea and other south sea countries and islands are very colorful and hard to tell apart. This nonflying species is second only to the ostrich in size and can defend itself with its specialized knife-blade middle toes. Yet the ostrich male’s plumage, while not as showy as the cassowary’s, is bicolored, dark on light, making it easy to distinguish from the female. The difference between the two species might have to do with their difference in preferred habitats — the cassowary is a creature of the dense rain forest, while the ostrich struts its stuff on the plains.

Fish, on the other hand, are puzzling. It’s hard to tell the sexes of the brilliantly colored coral reef fishes, and most of our coastal species — though not nearly as colorful as those first named — are also difficult to tell apart by sex. Fish such as striped bass, bluefish, pompano, bonito, mackerel, and menhaden that travel in large schools are similarly hued, whether male or female. In a nonschooling fish group, on the other hand, male members of the stickleback family are more colorful than females, especially when breeding. The colors, as in birds, are somewhat dependent on the male hormone testosterone.

While at the University of California Santa Barbara I studied the midshipman, Porichthys notatus. Their common name comes from the array of photophores along their sides, which resemble midshipman rows of buttons. These photophores light up when the fish is agitated and during reproduction. The females have photophores, but are reticent to use them. The males make long monotonic hums as long as 60 minutes or more that can be heard from above the water’s surface, while the females can grunt but are mostly silent. Thus, midshipmen exhibit two different forms of sexual dimorphism. In some species, Homo sapiens, for example, the males and females differ in many ways.

Sexual dimorphism is found in a high degree in the apes, especially in the human ape. It has become advanced in Western civilization to the degree that sexes in humans can be differentiated by appearance including dress, speech, gait, size, and body shape. The emphasis on sex appearance is, up until lately at least, found more in the female sex than the male one. The fashion business is largely built around female preferences, and there are a number of magazines built around these, almost all of which stem from corporations run mostly by men, so the emphasis on fashion and attractiveness is a kind of pandering by men to women. In many third world cultures, however, females are much less showy in dress, cosmetics, language, and the like. Some third world countries are following the same model, thus you have Bollywood from India, a spinoff of Hollywood.

But change is in the air as we see in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Even in Muslim countries women are beginning to free themselves from constraints imposed upon them by men and their religion. I am optimistic.

On the other hand, I don’t know what we can do about men, especially, the Caucasian kind. They’ve had it their way so long, they don’t know whether they are coming or going. They are still in charge, however, and, presumably hanging on until their knuckles turn bare. What will we do if the women leave us to fend for ourselves? That may become the conundrum of the century, even bigger than the global warming conundrum. 

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].