Posted on 02/10/2015 8:34:49 PM PST by Mozilla
SLE OF PALMS, SC - Thousands of starfish washed up on the beach at Isle of Palms over the weekend.
And it turns out, this happens a few times each winter on Lowcountry beaches.
Usually, strong off-shore winds push them onto the shore at high tide and they're stuck until the tide comes back in. Over the weekend, wind gusts were coming in stronger than 20 miles an hour.
Monday Night, we spoke with Mel Bell, the fisheries management director for the Department of Natural Resources who said this is pretty normal.
Bell said the last time this happened was in December on Fripp Island.
The problem? On the bottom of the ocean, Starfish can't really "stick" to the sand, so they end up going with the tides
Got recipes?
Only good for fertilizer. ;-)
We’d catch these in our crab pots off the WA coast as well.
“And it turns out, this happens a few times each winter on Lowcountry beaches.”
Why is this a story, then?
Decorations...
Some elected librat bum will find a way to tax people for this in 3.......2.......
Because it is a odd thing to have that many starfish washup on shore and they die if they don’t go back into water.
Did Patrick survive?
Now I know they’re not the only starfish in the sea.
The following is one of my favourite stories (author unknown) that never fails to inspire me in sustaining my belief in what I do as a Christ-follower, regardless of how insignificant it may seem to the eyes of others.
While walking along a beach, an elderly gentleman saw someone in the distance leaning down, picking something up and throwing it into the ocean.
As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, picking up starfish one by one and tossing each one gently back into the water.
He came closer still and called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”
The young man paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean.”
The old man smiled, and said, “I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?”
To this, the young man replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”
Upon hearing this, the elderly observer commented, “But, young man, do you not realise that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!”
The young man listened politely. Then he bent down, picked up another starfish, threw it into the back into the ocean past the breaking waves and said, “It made a difference for that one.”
You’ve gone full Cyrkle...
Local news started their report on this “You’ve see the starfish washed up on the beach ...”
Er, no. I live a few miles from there. It’s not a very populous place, especially in the winter. Plus that it’s cold. I imagine well less than one percent of the people their viewing area have seen this.
Yeah, but if it’s a common occurrence around the area, why would the local populace be surprised? The tone of the article suggested that the writer was uninformed about this “common” event.
They gonna smell REAL bad in a couple of days. Has anyone alerted algore so he can blame AGW?
The purpose isn’t to “inform locals”, it’s to get out on the wire, where the inference to everyone else who picks it up over the next few days will be “OMG, [man, Americans, etc...] have screwed something up again by [insert current liberal hand wringing subject here].
When the night shows
the signals grow on radios
All the strange things
they come and go, as early warnings
Stranded starfish have no place to hide
still waiting for the swollen Easter tide
There’s no point in direction we cannot
even choose a side.
Peter Gabriel - Here Comes The Flood
All our lives we had fun, we had seasons in the sun,
But the stars we could reach were just starfish on the beach.
(Somebody stop me!)
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