Entries tagged with trinidad

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First visit

It was 40 years ago today that I first set foot on Trinidad pier: a then-inconsequential event that ultimately changed the entire future course of my life.

From 1980-1982, I published a national newsletter that focused on the conservation of river otters. I wanted to write an article about otters in California, and the only person studying them at the time was a grad student at Humboldt State University. I'd actually met Kent Reeves at a research workshop in Florida two years before, so when I wrote and asked him if I could interview him for this article I was planning, he said come on up!

Kent of course had hoped to show me some otters during my stay, but when we visited his study site on Redwood Creek, none were to be found. On our way back, though, he made a side trip to Trinidad. He told me he hadn't seen otters here, himself, but several people told him they had, so let's give it a try. We drove through town and ended up at this fishing pier, and I thought to myself, this guy's crazy – this is the ocean – there won't be any river otters out here. (Shows you how much I knew about otters back then.) We stood and stared at nothing in the freezing cold wind for about 15 whole minutes before I told Kent I wanted to go. Big waste of time, or so I thought.

Anyway, at the end of my visit, I expressed disappointment that I didn't get to see any wild otters, but Kent said all that means is you'll have to come back this summer and we'll camp out on Redwood Creek and we'll see otters then for sure! I did, and we did! Long story short, only 16 months later, I was living in Humboldt, myself, and saw my first otter at Trinidad on June 6, 1983. Wound up studying wild otters and freezing my ass off in the wind here for 25 more years, so in the end, who was the crazy one? ;)

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New Trinidad Pier

The newly reconstructed Trinidad Pier opened to the public at the beginning of July. I visited it for the first time yesterday evening.

The design is attractive and functional. The railings are all aluminum, and the deck is a continuous solid slab of concrete that slopes slightly downward from west to east and from south to north to allow for drainage.

The ramp leading down to the floating dock.

It's supposedly wheelchair-accessible, but someone would have to be very strong indeed to keep an occupied wheelchair from gaining too much momentum and getting out of control on this long, steep slope.

The new pilings are steel, coated with a non-reactive polymer.

Look at how thin that angled white PVC drain pipe is. That's going to get swamped fast in a downpour.

A great deal of strength would likewise be required to push a person in a wheelchair up this ramp.

The lights come on automatically as dusk approaches.

The commercial section of the pier.

So now, not only is my otter family gone, so is the entire old pier from where I made all of my observations. Every physical trace of my former life with otters is now vanished off the face of the earth...

I didn't see any of the beasts yesterday evening, but I ran into one of my old otter-spotter friends, and she reported that she has seen the otters often this summer; as many as 10 in one group. Based upon some of her behavioral descriptions, I think it's highly likely that Slick is still alive! Excellent news! I really wish I could visit Trinidad more often, but I'm poor as a churchmouse now, and there's no way I can afford to make the trip, even just once a month. Hopefully, I'll get to see some otters sometime this summer. It's been almost a year since my last sighting.

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Trinidad harbor, circa 1910

I obtained a very rare image via eBay this past week. It's a century-old photograph of Trinidad harbor – the otters' home.

The picture was taken from the side of Little Head on the bluff where the whaling station would be built c.1920. The present pier extends about 350 feet out from the notch in the foreground, passing just to the left of those offshore rocks (which still look exactly the same today).

In the background you can see the remains of the old Ryder Wharf on Trinidad Head. That burned in 1914, so this photograph has to be at least 93 years old.

Here's a closeup:

I have other pictures of the Ryder Wharf, but none that show the profile of the far end of the landing with this much detail. Sidenote: some of the old wharf's post holes are now catchpools for fresh water where the otters drink!

I don't believe there were any otters living here then, though. The nearby Yurok village of Tsurai was still settled in the first decade of the 20th century. This tribe made its arrow quivers out of land otter pelts, so I very much doubt that the kind of stable and visible population I witnessed here in the '80s-'90s could have existed in this area during the period of aboriginal settlement.

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In other news, the other day I saw a male sleeping right out in the open next to a communal rubbing area. This kind of behavior is a sure sign that there's an estrous female in the vicinity. My fingers are crossed that it's Nova!

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Late Fall Update

I know I haven't updated for a while. Not very much to report, really. On the 3rd, I saw an otter for the first time in a month. That's not to say otters haven't been here. I only go to Trinidad every third day now, you see; my opportunities to observe them have been cut by 2/3, so it's no wonder. Anyway, it was Mystery Male the other day, on his own (as usual).

As MM swam by the pier, some piece-of-shit recreational fishermen deliberately tried to catch him with their baited fishing hooks. They weren't locals, of course - it's never anyone in Trinidad who tries to hurt the otters, it's always some stranger who doesn't know that we actually like having the otters here. It's especially troubling to me to see this kind of thing now because we only have two resident otters remaining! I really wish the pier's owners would ban recreational fishing here. The tiny number of people who fish off the pier contribute nothing of substance to the local economy, and what's more, there's no fish to be caught there anyway. No one who's local fishes there. The place is a joke. Everybody here knows that.

That evening before the attempted hooking, however, I had hiked up Trinidad Head to take some panoramic pictures of the bay. Prisoner Rock (foreground) only sees the twilight during this time of year, and I wanted to get a nice picture of that. Fortunately the sunset was truly golden. Trinidad Bay is always beautiful, but this particular evening was exceptional. This is a view of the entire bay, from the town of Trinidad on the left, to Camel Rock and Moonstone Beach at far right:

Off to Trinidad now...