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THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, dEcEmbER 16, 2021
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IN ONE EAR • ELLEDA WILSON
A HOME FOR HADDIE
At last: A lobster story with a happy, not boiling,
ending.
“This is Haddie!” Get Maine Lobster posted on their
Facebook page on Nov. 9. “She is a cotton candy lob-
ster who was caught over the weekend by Maine lobs-
terman Bill Coppersmith …” The critter was found in
Casco Bay on Nov. 5, and is pictured, courtesy of Get-
MaineLobster.com.
FoxNews.com reported that as soon as the fisherman
saw Haddie (named for his granddaughter), he let the
CEO of Get Maine Lobster, Mark Murrell, know about
his amazingly rare find.
“This is the first cotton candy we have discovered,”
Murrell said. “Finding one like this is a true gift. It shows
Mother Nature’s true artistry.”
True gift, indeed. “The odds of a cotton candy lob-
ster being caught is 1 in 100 million!” the Facebook post
noted. “Because of this, we want to preserve her.”
The lobstering company left her in a tank on the wharf,
and put out feelers for a permanent home. “We want to
make sure she lives the rest of her life in safety and com-
fort, since rare colored lobsters have a harder time surviv-
ing in the wild.”
Near the end of November, she was officially adopted
by the Seacoast Science Center in Rye, New Hampshire,
where she will safely spend the rest of her days — which
may be a while, since lobsters can live to be 100.
A FIRST
The world’s first zero-emission, no-crew all-elec-
tric container ship, Yara Birkeland, completed her
maiden voyage from Horten to Oslo, Norway, via fjord,
in mid-November, MarineLog.com reports.
Upon her arrival, she was greeted by Prime Minister
Jonas Støre and several other notables, including Svein
Holsether, CEO of Yara International, the fertilizer com-
pany that owns the 120 TEU (20-foot equivalent) vessel,
which is pictured, courtesy of Yara.
The Birkeland will not be ocean-going. Instead, she
will be used to transport mineral fertilizer between the
Norwegian cities of Porsgrunn and Brevik, around 8
miles. Using this ship will replace 40,000 trips by die-
sel trucks per year, which is expected to eliminate about
1,100 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Yara Birkeland now starts a two-year testing period.
If all goes as expected, she’ll be officially certified as an
autonomous, all-electric container ship. Which is good
for the environment, indeed; but a not-so-great harbinger
for future mariners.
ASTORIA’S MAGIC
“In 2017, my wife Alexandra and I were living in Lon-
don, and quite happy,” Portlander Pete Harrington wrote
in an email, “when all of a sudden we received the news
that the visa that Alexandra had applied for, after being
head-hunted for a job in the U.S., had finally come through.
“… However, due to the vagaries of the U.S. immigra-
tion system, despite having a job offer, she still had to join
the visa lottery system and sit tight. That process took two
years!
“… And why Portland you might ask? Well, one of
Alexandra’s sisters lives in Portland, and Alexandra had
applied for a job here to be closer to her and her young
family. I had just started a new company, and could work
from anywhere (how pandemic of me), so all in all, it felt
like a good opportunity for adventure.
“Visa wrangles aside, we had visited Portland in fall,
2016, to get a feel for the place, and someone suggested
we visit Astoria. So we did! And it was wonderful, and
whimsical, and romantic and everything else that you, of
course, already know.
“Not that we had a thought to having a child then, but
when we started trying for a family in 2019, and began the
names quest, it started and stopped with Astoria! I guess
we wanted to somehow impart a bit of that magic to our
daughter — presuming it was a girl, and it was!
The most beautiful thing about the name is whenever
someone asks what the name is (after invariably mistaking
her for a boy), they light up and, to a person, recount their
own Astoria story. ‘Oh, my mum lives there now, she loves
it!’ or, ‘I grew up there!’ or, ‘I want to live there!’ Things
to that effect.”
“So,” he added, “it seems her name is a catalyst for
sharing stories, so perhaps the magic we had hoped to
impart has begun to gravitate out.”
HERO OF THE HOUR
GIMME SHELTER
Fun rerun: Alice Nelson spotted what she called a
“tsunami escape ball” for sale recently at The Planter
Box, in Long Beach, Washington. She posted her photo
of it (pictured) on a local Facebook group, noting that the
price was $6,900.
Her post caused quite a stir of interest among the local
group members, who wondered if it was the same tsunami
rescue pod that Jeanne (Johnson) Brooks, of Ocean Park,
Washington, bought last year. She was the first U.S. con-
sumer to obtain one.
Nope, different company, although both are in Wash-
ington. The item at the nursery was a Rescue Pod, made
by Reliable Emergency Shelters (tsunamipods.com) of
Vancouver, Washington.
“I still have my original two-person Survival Cap-
sule in my garage,” Jeanne noted. “I am trading it in for
a four-person to accommodate for guests, in the event of
emergency, as soon as Julian Sharpe, president of Sur-
vival-Capsule.com (in Mukilteo) has the four-person U.S.
version available.” (In One Ear, 4/6/2018)
VEXED
The editor of The Daily Morning Astorian was far
too vexed over an article about Astoria in The Northwest
Monthly Illustrated Magazine’s December 1885 edition to
entertain any holiday spirit during his tirade on Dec. 16, 1885.
A blistering review of the writer was followed by calling
the story a “journalistic abortion.” All of this venom led up to
a rave review of an in-depth article about Astoria in the June
1883 edition of West Shore magazine — ironically not con-
sidered outdated, in the editor’s opinion.
The Astoria story, which includes several illustrations, sits
in a prime spot, and runs first in the periodical, which can be
read at bit.ly/WSM1883. All in all, it’s a fascinating view of
what Astoria was like in that era.
West Shore extolled Astoria’s many virtues, among them
the port, the booming fishing and canning industries, the tim-
ber industry and the resulting saw mills, ship-building and, of
course, Astoria’s tourist attractions and proximity to sought-af-
ter coastal beach locations in Washington and Oregon.
“In conclusion, we will say to him who has capital to invest,
or who is possessed of sufficient industry, pluck and energy,”
West Shore summarized, “Astoria and the surrounding coun-
try offer splendid inducements.” One can almost see the editor
contentedly smile after reading those words.
HABITAT HITCHHIKERS
A TRUE ASTORIAN
An interesting tidbit: An old blog posting from 2008
titled, “A true Astorian … Oregon, that is,” written by
Matt Crichton, who goes on to enumerate 60 identifying
“true Astorian” factors including:
“You know what a hill rat is … you know what sea
lions sound like … you’ve thrown popcorn at Sneak (not
Snake) at ‘Shanghaied in Astoria’ … you occasionally
slip up and say ‘uff-da!’ … you really have to walk uphill
both ways to get somewhere … you remember when there
was no roundabout … you’ve been sledding on Eighth
Street …
“You know at least five different words for ‘rain’ … you
know the difference between a banana slug and a regular
slug … (and) you always said you couldn’t wait to get out
of Astoria, but you still live there, or go back often.”
The Spokane Daily Chronicle, on Jan. 1, 1901,
described the heroic actions of one of their own, Frank M.
Miles, who had recently moved from Spokane to Woods,
an unincorporated area just north of Pacific City.
On the afternoon of Dec. 23, 1900, Miles was taking a
windy walk on Woods Beach with some small boys when
he spotted the schooner Pioneer, carrying 500,000 feet of
lumber, drifting aimlessly in the rough seas, distress sig-
nals flying. Miles sent the boys to a nearby settlement for
help and, most importantly, ropes.
The schooner finally ran aground about 300 yards from
shore, just as it was getting dark. The heavy seas com-
pelled the sailors to climb the rigging, where they stayed;
the Pioneer was being battered apart beneath them.
By then, Miles was ready. He threw off his clothes, tied
a rope around his waist, gave the other end of the rope to
the people who had arrived on the beach, and ran into the
water. Incredibly, he made it to the vessel in the pitch dark,
and called for one of the sailors to jump in and join him in
the water.
As soon as the man was nearby, Miles grabbed him,
tugged on the rope, and the two men were hauled ashore.
Miles kept on with his grueling mission until he had res-
cued all nine men, which took until 5 a.m. There was no
sign of the unfortunate captain.
Without Miles’ help, the men would have eventually
been forced off the rigging and drowned. Or, if the ship
had broken apart before they went into the water, they
would have been battered to death by floating lumber.
“Mr. Miles,” the newspaper proclaimed, “… was the
hero of the hour.”
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a 610,000 square mile
area containing 79,000 metric tons of trash, swirls around in
the Pacific Ocean.
A recent study, NewAtlas.com reports, has shown that land
creatures that normally live on the coast are hitchhiking a
ride on debris and traveling through the open ocean to colo-
nize the garbage patch, and are competing with open-ocean
organisms already in residence.
Surprisingly, the runaway critters are not only surviving,
but thriving in their new habitat, but no one is sure how. Scien-
tists guess the travelers drift into “hot spots” in the gyre where
they can find food, or perhaps the floating plastic acts like a
reef that attracts sources of food.
“The open ocean has not been habitable for coastal organ-
isms until now,” scientist Greg Ruiz said. “Partly because of
habitat limitation — there wasn’t plastic there in the past —
and partly, we thought, because it was a food desert.”
Will these vagabonds manage to reach new coasts to colo-
nize? Just how this change in the garbage patch’s marine envi-
ronment will evolve remains to be seen. (Photo courtesy of
The Ocean Cleanup)