Gogarty wrote:
Most of the time I am a tree hugger, or close to it. But on this issue I am a
libertarian. I mean, I watch six boats in a huge lagoon, wetlands stretchin
beyond for miles, filled with fish and sea birds and shellfish -- guys over
there on the beach with their rakes -- and an eight-foot tide twice a day, and
those boats are going to cause a problem?

Probably not.
Absent the 8 foot tide... which occurs relatively few places and for
damn sure not on the Chesapeake or LIS... and then what?



At this place up to about five years ago you could get bushels of oysters by
just picking them off the beach at low tide. They have disappeared at about the
same time lobsters disappeared from Long Island Sound.

???

Now you're going into pure fantasy. Oyster (and other commercial
fishing) on LIS took a steep downturn about 1900, and has never come
back up.

If you like analogies, here's one for you... The only water supply you
have is a pond. It has a certain amount of things already living in it.
It also has a group of people dumping their toilet into it. How large do
you want that pond to be? How much of it's shoreline should be wetlands
or marsh?

You could hypothesize an 8 foot tide if you like, but that will just
move the crap around within the pond.

OK, you've got the ecological balance to your liking, and you're happy
with your drinking water. Now have somebody come and dump their toilet
right over your water intake. Does that change things?

Regards
Doug King


And this over a time
when park people made boaters ever more unwelcome. Many fewer boats these days
than ten years ago. But clams are still plentiful. Something done 'em in. But
somehow, I don't think it was sewage discharge from recreational boats. (It's
those 22-footers with a girl sticking her bottom out over the stern you have to
look out for anyway. Pretty picture.)