Sharks are hot. As in the past few summers, shark sightings seem to be capturing a lot of headlines and attention of late. Ever since Steven Spielberg put the toothy fish on the silver screen several decades ago, the mystique and fascination continues to grow. Shark Week, now in its 30th year on the Discovery Channel, garners a whopping share of viewers every time it makes its summer run, just as people are flocking to ocean beaches. 

While sharks will make the big splash and are treated with Hollywood TMZ-like glitz, I believe credit should also be given to those fish that work behind the scenes and try to keep a low profile. These fish will never receive the marquee prominence that a great white shark (Tom Cruise?) gets. 

A case in point is the lowly oyster toadfish. No pack of paparazzi or high-powered agents follow this humble, stubby, slow-swimming fish. Just one look at the rather unsightly creature captured from mucky waters usually results in a quick “Throw it back!” yelp from the angler who catches one. No amount of time in the makeup chair is going to improve its outward appearance. The oyster toadfish has been typecast.

Small in size — rarely growing larger than 16 inches — oyster toadfish are generally found in shallow-water coves and muddy backwater creeks gently resting in camouflage mode waiting to inhale their next meal, usually another small fish or crab that comes too close. I used to catch a few on hook and line as a kid off Long Wharf in Sag Harbor and I still get a few every summer in my crab traps deep in the back cove. 

A very slow grower, oyster toadfish are also edible, but I’ve never seen one in a fish market, as there is just no focused commercial effort to harvest them. However, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation actually stipulates that anglers can retain three oyster toadfish per day over 10 inches, and only between July 16 and May 14, a most unusual time frame to be sure. 

Modest as it might be, the oyster toadfish did receive some rather high-profile media attention 20 years ago when NASA sent one into space to investigate the effects of microgravity on otolithic organs. That’s as big a story as there ever was on the toadfish. It’s no Neil Armstrong. 

Since its ride into outer space, it has remained outside the spotlight. Some fish are like that. Not everyone can be a shark.

Back on the local fishing scene, not surprisingly there were no oyster toadfish reports. “Nobody fishes for them,” remarked Harvey Bennett, the owner of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. “They are around, but they are always an accidental catch.” 

Bennett was enthused that small bluefish, better known as snappers, are getting larger and keeping kids happy. “Catching snappers is a great way for any child to start fishing,” he said. “There are also some tinker mackerel around with them. Lots of happy faces.” 

Bennett said that larger bluefish are around Accabonac Harbor, as well as at the Ruins at the northern tip of Gardiner’s Island. “Also, fluking is still good at Napeague, but there are some bigger fish now showing up at the Ruins,” he said. “Blowfish can be taken in Three Mile Harbor as well as in Fort Pond Bay in Montauk, along with large porgies. And don’t forget the freshwater scene. Some really big largemouth bass have been taken at Fort Pond in Montauk.”

“While the weather has been hot of late, the fishing is holding up,” said Sebastian Gorgone of Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle in East Hampton. “Porgy and sea bass are good at Gardiner’s Island, while blowfish are in Three Mile Harbor.” 

Gorgone smiled retelling a story about a couple of anglers reeling in small striped bass that were bitten in half while fishing from shore near the Montauk Lighthouse. “Still some pretty big sandbar tiger sharks around and they obviously love to eat bass, too,” he said. “The same group of people returned the next day with heavier tackle and shark rigs and caught a few of them. Some were over six feet.” 

“Fishing has been good,” agreed Ken Morse at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor. “If you want bluefish, they are pretty thick on the incoming tide at Jessup’s Neck,” he said. “Porgies are everywhere and there have been a lot of kingfish lately, too. Fluking has not been great, but sea bass are strong on the north side of Plum Island.” For blue-claw crab aficionados, Morse said that the crabs are large and plentiful in Mecox Bay. 

Back in Montauk, fluke fishing remains steady in all of the usual summertime haunts, but larger fish have shown up in the deeper water near the Frisbee and Cartwright grounds, located south and west of the lighthouse.

“Lots of bluefish on the north side from shore,” said Paul Apostolides of Paulie’s Tackle Shop in downtown Montauk. “Also, lots of schoolie-sized bass are on the ocean beach, but not many keepers.” Apostolides acknowledged that larger bass are around in good numbers for boaters off the lighthouse. “The fish are there, but they seem to be biting on certain parts of the tide now, unlike the way it was a few weeks ago.”

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

Humans are mammals. We Homo sapiens can carry on conversations in hundreds of different languages, keep legible diaries, write histories, sing, act, take tests, practice various vocations, go to schools and universities, indulge in marriage ceremonies and funerals. We are complicated and talented mammals, but in the final analysis, mammals.

Yet we are one of the few mammals that engages in combat. To a much lesser degree, one of our close relatives, the chimpanzee, will fight fellows of its species to the death, as will a few others, including the male African lion, which is known to kill and eat cubs that are not his own. But all other members of the class Mammalia, do not engage in mass killing of each other in the name of conquering or defending. In the first sense, we are the most advanced and most intellectual of all mammals when dealing with each other; in the second sense, the dumbest and cruelest. 

Another thing almost unique to humans is suicide. Very few mammal species take their own lives, save the lemmings and hoofed species that are known to follow the leader over cliffs to their deaths. It is still unproven, but some believe that whales commit suicide. Not all strandings or “beachings,” of whales are suicidal, but some are believed to be. Some whales are mass beachers: The stranding of 1,000 or so pilot whales in 1918 comes to mind, or the beaching of 450 pilot whales in New Zealand in 1985. Some readers may remember the dolphins that for some reason entered Northwest Creek, an arm of Northwest Harbor, in the early 2000s, only to mostly perish despite several days of efforts to get them to deeper water and save them.

We couldn’t talk to them, so we will never really know why they did it. Some cetaceans, such as baleen whales, are more solitary, but occasionally also beach and die. It’s puzzling why six humpback whales, all loners, have beached and died on Long Island since 2017. The Cuvier’s beaked whale is a solitary species that frequently beaches and some of these beachings are tied to naval sonar use. But if not suicide, why do so many beaching rescues end up with the creatures ultimately beaching again? 

Suicides in America are on the rise again after a momentary hiatus. At last count there were some 45,000 deaths from suicide every year in the United States. Yet for every successful suicide, there are about 25,000 attempts that are thwarted.

Murder is also on the rise across the world. While male lions sometimes eat cubs and chimps kill other chimps in raids, even if such are counted as murders, the rate is many, many times less than in humans. In India, Central America, Mexico, and many Caribbean countries, murder rates are very high. In  Scandinavia, England, and other European countries, they are very low.

Wars are another source of the loss of life. More than 35 million civilians and military personnel died in World War II, as many as 44 million in the internecine Taiping war of China in 1844. At last count there were more than 7.5 billion humans worldwide; 44 million is less than a half a percentage point of the world total, but losses from wars, suicides, highway deaths, murders, diseases, and other health problems add up, and the birth rate worldwide is dropping. We may see a death rate that equals the birth rate by the end of the century, and, thus, a stable world population.

Humans, perhaps rodents such as rats, as well as dogs and cats, may be increasing in numbers while almost all of the other vertebrates are either decreasing or have very low numbers to begin with. We have yet to see the havoc wrought by too many people, but we may be on that verge. It goes without saying that we should stop fighting with each other, stop competing with each other when it leads to more have-nots than haves, stop killing ourselves, and continue to progress in medicine, education, and economics. 

It’s been at least 3,000 years since Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the 10 commandments in tow, but they are still as good as any codes contrived today. The handwriting is on the wall, the question is, “Can we read it?” 

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

Last week’s unusually turbulent summer weather, which included extended wind gusts to over 30 miles per hour on several days mixed in with a few tropical downpours, certainly stirred up our local waters. Rip current warnings were posted up and down the coast for most of the week and weekend. It was best to stay out of the drink most days.

Without a doubt, it was not exactly the ideal “Hamptons” week that many of our short-term residents wish for, expect, and ultimately pay for around these parts. It truly was a very tough time if you happened to play or work on or near the water. But it happens. 

And who has the brains and guts to argue with Mother Nature? No matter the wager, I’ve got my money on the old lady. She knows her stuff.

In particular, the strong winds deterred most boats from venturing out to the distant Atlantis Canyon and the Tails east of Montauk to see if the bigeye and yellowfin tuna bite of a week ago was still on. Adverse weather usually alters the fishing scene, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

While the wild and woolly conditions put a crimp in many fishing efforts, as well as sunbathing in general, there was at least one positive I saw as the much-agitated ocean happened to stir up the bottom sufficiently to unearth a plethora of large Atlantic surf clams (commonly referred to as skimmer clams around these parts). Lined up by the dozens high and dry above the sand in a steady line at the high tide mark, they provided easy pickings for those in the know.

Large in size, the hard shells of this stout mollusk can measure nearly 10 inches in length and adorn many a patio or house as an informal ashtray or aesthetic nautical accouterment. 

While they provide a colorful, local detail to any abode, they are also edible in many forms. If you are old enough, remember the fried clam strips from Howard Johnson’s? Loved them as a kid. The clams have also made their way into sushi restaurants. Enjoy clam chowder or clam juice in your Bloody Mary mix? Most commercial manufacturers use them. Even up north in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and eastern Quebec, a burgeoning and lucrative surf clam business has expanded greatly in the past few years. Most of the harvest is shipped overnight to Japan and Asia. 

On the other end, the surf clam is an extremely popular bait to lure anything from flounder to striped bass to porgy to cod to a baited hook. Prices for the mollusks have skyrocketed as well. A few years ago, a bushel of surf clams would go for about $20. Last time I checked, they were selling for around $75 or more, if you can even get your hands on them. Unfortunately, the warming waters off Long Island and New Jersey, a traditional hot spot for over a century, have gradually moved the harvesting of the clams to more cool, northerly climates. Lots of people are clamoring for clams these days.

“It’s almost impossible to get fresh surf clams,” said Ken Morse at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor. “I ordered as much frozen product before the fishing season started to make sure I had enough on hand. I was not certain my supplier would be able to provide me with enough as the season went along.”

Sadly, by the time I got down to the ocean with a large bucket in tow the day after they washed up, the clams were all gone. You snooze, you lose. I missed my chance. Memo to self: Always keep a five-gallon bucket in the car. 

While striped bass fishing at Montauk continued at a good clip leading up to and after the full moon, the aftermath of the rough seas seemed to pick up the spirits of those focused on fluke fishing, as catches increased in both size and numbers.

“The fishing really turned on when the seas calmed down,” said Kathy Vegessi, the veteran shoreside support arm of the Lazybones party boat out of Montauk. “It’s been the best action we’ve seen all year, with some really nice fluke landed up to nine pounds.” Vegessi even took time to wet a line herself on Friday morning and quickly limited out with four keeper fish. The newly anointed Queen of Fluke donned her crown with pride, along with a big smile and gentle wave of her hand at the end of the trip. God save the Queen.

Over at the Tackle Shop in Amagansett, the owner Harvey Bennett was beaming over the fact that the baseball camp he supports for underprivileged children in the Dominican Republic with donated baseball equipment and clothing, won the local championship last week. “How cool is that?” he asked with a wide grin on Monday morning. “To see the smiles on their faces from the pictures and videos was priceless.” Bennett is still looking for more baseball wares and plans to head to the Dominican in November with his next delivery. “The response from people out here has been great,” he said. “But I’m still looking for more stuff to box up.”

When finally convinced to talk about fishing, Bennett said that the action has been excellent on many fronts. “Snappers are all over and larger blues have moved into the waters around Montauk,” he said. “Fluke up to seven pounds have been taken at Napeague and large porgies are everywhere. If you want blowfish, try the docks in Three Mile Harbor.” Bennett added that striped bass remain plentiful along the various ocean beaches and that a few sharks are around to spice things up. “Don’t forget to try a live snapper for bait if you go fluke fishing,” he finally added. “It’s the best bait around if you want to catch a larger fish.”

Back at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor, Morse said that weakfish can be had at the Middle Grounds and in Noyac Bay, while bluefish are taking diamond jigs at Jessup’s Neck on the incoming tide. “Fluke fishing has been hit or miss at Gardiner’s Island, but some nice sea bass are around there,” he said. “Plus, porgies of good sizes are there too, as well as over on the north side of Plum Island, along with sea bass.”

On the commercial side, the summer fluke season reopened on Tuesday after a two-week closure; however, the black sea bass season closed on Saturday and will remain closed through Aug. 31. Effective Sept. 1, the daily trip limit is set at a rather paltry 50 pounds for the over- abundant fish.

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

This column is about a failed plan to construct a failed recharge basin. It is another Humpty Dumpty story about engineers, town councils, town attorneys, contractors, and the like designing and trying to build a recharge basin to trap runoff water from a farm field in East Hampton on a site along Route 114 in 2010. 

The site was wrong because it was a piece of farmland put aside by the Suffolk County’s agricultural preserve program, in effect since the mid-1970s. One can continue to farm on such dedicated farmland, but you cannot build recharge basins, airfields, residences, and a bunch of other things on it under the letter of the law.

Rainwater draining southwesterly from the fields on both sides of Long Lane has been a problem since that area was first farmed. It became a bigger problem after the modernization of Route 114 and after a subdivision was created on the opposite side of the highway more than 38 years ago. A new culvert was installed during the modernization and the water was allowed to flow into a vacant weedy lot adjacent to that new subdivision. The undeveloped lot couldn’t handle it and some of the houses and lots in that subdivision were exposed to chronic flooding.

The East Hampton Town Board under Supervisor Bill Wilkinson tried to solve the problem once and for all with the help of the town engineer and an UpIsland engineering company, Sidney B. Bowne and Son. Then Councilwoman Theresa Quigley led the charge after the landowner gave permission, and the plan was put in motion. 

The project was put out to bid, and work began, but the excavation was barely a quarter done when someone from the county blew the whistle and the work came to an abrupt halt. It was the demise of the project. And yet water ran into it and from that day on the basin has remained almost full to the top while complaints from the subdivision across the street have been largely silenced. 

So in the absence of any remediation by the county, there is a new pond in East Hampton, one that is not in the town trustees’ jurisdiction and is not at all managed, but is truly a pond, perched well above the water table for all to see as they travel back and forth on that increasingly busy thoroughfare.

Over the years, I have noticed crows, even ducks, in the pond, but crows and ducks can be found in any disturbed area that holds water. The true realization that a pond had been born happened during the evening of July 21 when I attended a lecture at the Nature Conservancy headquarters just south of the pond on the same side of the road. Ironically, perhaps, the lecture was on water, particularly coastal waters and their rise.

After the lecture and discussion that followed, it was still quite light when I prepared to leave the area. Then I heard a familiar sound, in fact, lots of familiar sounds — the mating calls of the gray tree frog, Hyla versicolor. There must have been a good hundred or so, and on approaching the weedy berm on the south side of the pond, I saw them hopping here and there among the weeds. It is the male that calls. It was a perfect evening for reproduction, warm, sultry, and it had rained a day earlier.

Gray tree frogs are expert climbers. They are insectivorous and spend 90 percent of their time near the tops of trees sitting on the topsides of branches. They have one of those in-and-out sticky tongues for grabbing insects. They feed on mosquitoes, gnats, moths, ants, beetles, and the like. Their close relative, the spring peeper, breeds earlier, say in March and April. It is also arboreal and a skilled insect snapper-upper. I bet that if that same incipient pond had been explored in April after a rain, the shrill calls of the spring peeper would have been heard.

Male frogs of both species have expandable skins known as gular folds covering their chins, which they can inflate at will and which become the sound chambers, or amplifiers, for their mating calls.

The gray tree frog has a pretty monotonic warble in the upper C-clef range. It is also different from the spring peeper and a lookalike species, Cope’s tree frog, that is found elsewhere. The only differences between the two are our tree frog has 48 chromosomes while the other has 24 and our tree frog emits sound pulses at half the rate of the other.

The tree frogs aren’t the only opportunists to inhabit the pond and its immediate surroundings. In my brief time there, I also witnessed bullfrogs and dragonflies among the fauna.

The dragonflies are quick to find new breeding and hunting areas, but the frogs? Well, bullfrogs regularly leave one wet spot to find another. The tree frogs, however, are not great travelers. Could they have come from a pond on the south side of Stephen Hand’s Path just west of 114? 

Another thing I noticed about this drainage “mistake” is that this depression, less than a quarter of the size of the intended recharge basin, seems to be capable of handling most of the runoff that was causing the problem originally and was probably built at less than a quarter of the estimated bid price. If it were permissible to flatten out the steep berms on some of its sides, the pond would become an attractive feature along that well-traveled route. 

Alas, the “submarine” that inhabited the pond soon after the project was stopped — a practical joke — was not in evidence. It must have sunk!

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

For those who have followed my adventures in trapping lobsters over the past few months, I must freely admit that I have an even greater fondness (and appetite) for a rather close cousin of that popular staple of the summertime clam bake.

It’s the blue-claw crab. Ounce for ounce, nothing in our East End waters is more short-tempered, feisty, and downright nasty in its demeanor. Fast and agile swimmers, blue crabs are also blessed with keen 20-20 eyesight and are armed with a set of sharp pincer claws. If you’re not careful picking one up, the blue crab is more than happy to take a lightning-quick swipe at any careless fingers.

Trust me on this. I learned the hard way as a young kid when I made the immature mistake of teasing a large blue crab in a bucket with repeated waves of my finger. I underestimated its coordination and painfully learned the lesson that day to give the blue crab a lot more respect.

Since that close encounter of the crab kind, I discovered that the delicate meat of the blue crab, whether in hard or soft-shell form, is decidedly delicious, being both moist and sweet. To my taste buds, it is superior to lobster. When explaining this to my friends and family, I usually get a puzzled look in response. What could be better than lobster, most of them wonder?

While lobsters require a bit of work, it is easier to extract more plentiful meat from within their shells. Hard-shell blue crabs are smaller in size and require more effort and intricate knife work to get at all of the pearly white flesh, but the end result is a better payoff in my view. That said, I never refuse a chance to consume lobster.

Catching blue crabs is fun, too. There are a number of ways to pursue them, including the use of a baited wire mesh cage that’s usually left to fish overnight, when blue crabs are more active. However, the use of such traps comes with a significant drawback, as diamondback terrapins are also lured by the scent of the bait inside the cage. Once inside the crab trap, many terrapins can’t find the exit quickly enough to surface and breathe, resulting in death by drowning. Not good.

To reduce the mortality of terrapin in blue crab traps, this spring the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ordered that terrapin-excluder devices measuring 1.75 by 4.75 inches be installed on the entryways of commercial and recreational crab pots. The devices have been used in other states and have proven to prevent many terrapins from entering crab traps, without impacting the number of blue crabs collected. 

If you own one of these older traps and need a terrapin-excluder device, a small number of them (provided by The Nature Conservancy and Seatuck) are available free on a first-come-first-served basis from the D.E.C. More information can be had by calling the agency at 631-444-0429 or at [email protected]. 

In addition, the D.E.C. is encouraging recreational crabbers to complete a blue crab survey that will aid the agency’s efforts to manage the population. If you encounter a crab with a yellow wire tag across its carapace or upper shell, it should be reported to the blue crab tagging program.

While the blue crab season got off to a very slow start, activity has perked up a bit over the past two weeks as the waters continue to warm. Last season’s catch was exceptional in many of our bays, creeks, coves, and estuaries, and it lasted well into the fall. Only time will tell if history will repeat itself.

On the inshore fishing scene, striped bass action at Montauk continues to be good but has become a bit more dependent on the tides and baits used. Fluke, porgies, and sea bass remain decent in their usual summertime haunts in Block Island Sound and south of the Montauk Lighthouse.

Farther offshore, action on sharks — blue, mako, and thresher — remains consistent. The big news concerns the appearance of bigeye tuna, and the bite was solid until the winds came on strong over the weekend.

Lots of bigeyes were landed up until Friday, “when the bite turned off,” said Bill Campbell at Westlake Marina in Montauk. “With the strong winds this week, it’s doubtful that many boats will have a chance to see if they have returned.” Campbell added that bass fishing has slowed up a bit and that the fish have shifted their diet to sand eels. “Live eels are not the hot bait anymore,” he added.

“The weather was a bit tough over the weekend but there has been some really good fishing around,” said Harvey Bennett of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. “Lots of shorts, but Napeague has some really hot fluke fishing going on. Porgies are just about everywhere in either the bay or ocean, and stripers are still in the wash. The other day I weighed in a 41-pounder that was taken on a bunker chunk by an 11-year-old kid. He was thrilled. Snappers are in, too.”

Bennett was also aware of the bigeye bite offshore. “One guy I know landed 11 of them plus two white marlin,” he said. “Lots of bait and life out there, including whales and porpoises.”

An avid New York Yankees fan, Bennett continues his never-ending search for new and used baseball equipment that will ultimately be donated to underprivileged children in the Dominican Republic.

“The camp we donated to early this year is now in the playoffs,” he said, smiling from behind his counter on Monday morning, clutching a baseball that someone had just dropped off. “The pictures I have received the past few weeks from them wearing or using the equipment makes my day. Apparently, a scout from the Yankee system was there too. Wouldn’t that be something if one of the kids got drafted?” No word if Bennett will change careers to be a sports agent.

Beyond the baseball diamond, over at Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle in East Hampton, the owner, Sebastian Gorgone, waxed enthusiastically about the porgy fishing around Gardiner’s Island and in Three Mile Harbor. “Fishing has been excellent and some big fish are mixed in,” he said. “Fluking has been good at Gin Beach in Montauk, too.”

Gorgone also heard a report that blue-claw crabs were crawling about in Georgica Pond. Sadly, on Saturday, the pond was closed to fishing and crabbing due to a blue-green algae bloom.

The warmth of summer usually heralds the arrival of fish not normally found in our waters. And last week was no exception as a dusky shark well over 200 pounds was caught and released from a commercial pound trap in Little Peconic Bay, while a 100-pound tarpon was landed from the east side of Shelter Island. A sheepshead was taken from the commercial dock in Montauk. And while surf­casting at White Sands on the ocean on Friday afternoon, Daniel Fry came across an Atlantic flying fish.

“It was cool to see and I followed him along the trough for a while until he broke the surface and flew off,” he said while casting bucktails and bluefish belly for fluke, where he caught a number of shorts along the beach. “Another guy there caught a 25-inch striped bass on a whole clam, but I had to measure it for him and tell him to put her back.” Anglers are allowed one bass per day over 28 inches.

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

There are a ton of field guides for birds, butterflies, moths, mammals, fishes, seashells, flowering plants, trees, and even fungi, seaweeds, ants, and, beetles, but who ever heard of a field guide to the lowly slugs. 

Well, wouldn’t you know, there is one! “Field Guide to the Slug” by the Western Society of Malacologists was published in 2002 in paperback by Sasquatch Books.

What is a slug, anyway? Slugs rank right up there with sow bugs, smut fungi, rotifers, dung beetles, and no-see-ums in name recognition and popularity. There is yet no official list of world slug species, but it is estimated that there are at least 2,000 of them, compared to 100,000 or so snails, the group from which slugs derived. England has 40 different species, Kentucky 14.

Slugs are seldom seen. Most of them are nocturnal and only come out to feed and reproduce when the humidity is very high or after rains. The one word that describes them to most people is “slimy.” However few there are locally, they were out in force on Saturday and Sunday evenings following rains. It was 1 a.m. Sunday morning when Maryann Buquicchio, who lives in East Hampton, took her ailing dog out for a walk and came upon a leopard slug feeding on a mushroom. This slug, Limax maximus, is one of the world’s largest, as the scientific name suggests. Only a few other slugs, namely those of the banana slug group on the West Coast and elsewhere, are larger.

Leopard slugs are rather common in gardens and in rich landscapes. They feed on a variety of plant stuffs as well as fungi, of which mushrooms are most favored. They are readily identifiable by the black spots covering their five-to-six-inch bodies. One can go out into the dark on a damp night and find leopard slug slime trails sometimes glistening in the moonlight. By dawn they have mostly dried up and are not easily seen. Leopard slugs can move along at a rate of about six inches a minute, not bad for an animal without  legs or feet.

They make no sounds but have powerful olfactory senses, so it is by these mucous-y trails that the slugs find each other for socializing. 

The leopard slug’s head has two sets of antennae — one for sensing light, the other for smell. They breath air, but only have one lung on one side of the body with a breathing pore to the outside. Slug species are hermaphroditic and capable of self-reproduction, but mating is the preferred way of producing “sluglets.” Interestingly, their penises can be half as long as their bodies.

The fabled banana slugs of California have penises that are up to six inches long, so long that frequently after mating their intromittent organs get stuck and have to be bit off in order to free one slug from the other. They don’t grow back and from that time on sex is a one-way proposition. After fertilization, the eggs are laid in a damp, protected place, hatching out into little slugs three to five weeks later.

The banana slugs take the cake in size but not in manner of reproduction. The leopard slugs engage in one of the most bizarre acts of sex observed throughout the animal kingdom including in humans. Two mature leopard slugs climb up tree trunks, find a suitable branch on which to begin the act of mating, and then, using their rich combined mucous threads, slowly lower themselves down, consummating the sex act in midair, after which they lower themselves to the ground and go on their separate ways.

Hawks and eagles are capable of mating while airborne; one that cannot is a poor mate. Dragonflies and a few other flying insects also mate in the air, none the worse for speed and aerobatics as they go. Such aerial sex naturally selects for the fittest members of the species. 

 While some human sex acts are weird in their execution, nothing yet compares to the erotic antics of two leopard slugs in love. I suppose that one day in the not-too-distant future, during the midst of the ongoing worldwide sexual revolution, we will read in the daily newspapers or hear on the 6 o’clock news that an infant has just been delivered after being conceived in midair by two sky jumpers.

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

In life, sometimes you win. And sometimes you lose.

For the 18th time in a row — since its inception — my friends and I have participated in the Mercury Grand Slam fishing tournament out of Montauk. Held last weekend, the two-day event is presented by the Friends of Erin and the East Hampton Kiwanis Club. Henry Uihlein, whose family has owned Uihlein’s marina on the west side of Montauk Harbor for many years, is the host and it’s always a good time.

The tournament has a local and low-key feel. It’s not fancy, and it doesn’t have high-roller Calcutta side bets as some other tournaments do. Some of these events are real hard core. Money, not the pure joy of fishing or a day on the water, is the real focus. Not here. 

For the Grand Slam (which means prizes are awarded for a combination of the largest of four species of fish: striped bass, bluefish, fluke, and sea bass), laughter and camaraderie are the primary goals, and quite frankly, mandatory. In short, it is a slice of what Montauk used to be, a laid-back, quiet town, even in summer, where everybody knew everyone. Sometimes it’s best to keep it simple and try to relive it. And Henry does well to keep the tradition alive and retain as much of that old-town character.

My group of five friends fished both Saturday and Sunday under the guidance of the skillful Capt. Richard Etzel of the charter boat Breakaway. I’ve known Rick for several decades. He has worn two hats, that of commercial fisherman and charter boat owner, and is a seasoned veteran of the waters that surround Montauk and distant environs. He is one of the finest fishermen I have ever known.

Rick and I attended the same high school back in northern Nassau County, but he graduated about eight years earlier, so we didn’t know each other growing up. Still, I feel like I’ve known him my entire life. He has a wonderful family and his friendship is true. You can never know enough good people.

The fishing was not exceptional last weekend. Fluke were hard to locate, as they have been most of the season, but the sea bass action was consistent from Gurney’s all the way eastward to Block Island. Our largest sea bass was a shade over four pounds. Not huge but a rather decent-size fish. Tracking down a bluefish, normally a pretty easy thing to do, was a challenge. It took a few hours of time and effort on the troll to land a four-pound fish. 

The lone bright spot was the striped bass fishing. It was exceptional. While we only focused on stripers for less than an hour over the two-day period, we landed three bass over 35 pounds, including a whopper of 49.95 pounds, the largest bass ever weighed in the history of the tournament. 

Alas, our fish point total did not equate to a victory at the conclusion of the event. We were close, but we were bested in the charter/commercial division by Charlie Etzel, Rick’s brother. We lost to him last year by a single point. Still, we had no complaints as a great time was had by all of us. We have won the title a number of times in the past, and it’s nice to see that another great person took the honors.

In a true sense, there were no losers last weekend. We will smile at the memories of the laughs and good times again and again. 

Back on land, Harvey Bennett at the Tackle Shop in Amagansett was playing homage to the French as Bastille Day was celebrated on Saturday. “We owe a lot to the French people,” said Monsieur Bennett, who flew the French flag proudly outside his shop. “I got a lot of people who stopped by to ask about the flag. I gave them all a history lesson.”

As for the local fishing scene, Bennett remarked that some big bass continue to be pulled out from the ocean surf in Amagansett. “Some fish up to 35 pounds were landed in the past day or two,” he said. “Sharks continue to hang around chasing the schools of bunker close to shore in the same general area, while some weakfish were landed at Hither Hills, too.”

On the bay side, Bennett said that fluke fishing remains solid off Napeague and that porgy fishing is excellent off Gardiner’s Island and the Navy dock in Fort Pond Bay in Montauk. Want to catch a bluefish? Bennett said they were thick at the Ruins at the northernmost tip of Gardiner’s. 

And if you are looking to land one of those big striped bass, Bennett now has live eels for sale. “I call them bass candy,” he said. “If you want to catch a big bass, eels are probably the best bait around.” 

“Weakfish have been good in Noyac Bay, along with porgies,” said Ken Morse at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor. “If you want fluke, head out east of Gardiner’s Island. And striped bass fishing has been good at Plum Gut and the Race.”

On the offshore scene, the big story from anyone who has been out hunting shark and tuna is the amount of life out there. “Whales, dolphin, turtles, bunker, and sand eels are all over,” said Scott Jeffrey at East End Bait and Tackle in Hampton Bays. “Whales breaching near the boats are a real show to see. There are mako sharks around, but the new 83-inch minimum size limit is a tough one to make. As for bluefin, they have been holding in the area near the Coimbra wreck with some big fish mixed in.”

On the commercial side, the closure of the fluke fishery on Sunday will remain in effect through July 31. Afterward, the daily trip limit is set at 50 pounds.

—

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On Monday afternoon I went down to the ocean beach and walked between Bridgehampton and Sagaponack. There was the usual bunch of beachgoers enjoying the sun, but what I was there for was to examine the wrack line left by recent high tides and storms, such as the tropical cyclone Chris that brushed our shore last weekend. 

I also went there because my wife, Julie, and a friend, Jean Held, had visited the same stretch of beach and came back with blue mussels and other lifeless critters on which were copious tiny blue mussels, no bigger than an eighth of an inch in size.

The ocean beach there is very wide all the way to Water Mill, thanks to a coastal taxing plan initiated by the Town of Southampton several years ago. There was a brownish wrack line marking the reach of an extra high tide stretching in both directions for more than a mile. I examined that line: Everything was dead, including the seaweed called knotted wrack, or Ascophyllum nodosum, which is a common brown alga that attaches to rocks and grows in the lower intertidal zone. For every foot of wrack line there were more than a thousand tiny mussels, new offspring of the year, apparently doing well until big waves washed them, and the shells and seaweed to which they were attached, away.

I presume they had washed west from Montauk, where the rocks start and where blue mussels do well in an average year. Along with the tiny bivalves were an assortment of other marine creatures, skimmer shells, skate egg cases, tiny crabs (perhaps Japanese shore crabs, which have established along Montauk’s rocky shores in the last 20 years), conch egg cases, moon snails, sand crabs, and many more, hardly identifiable. I walked to the east about two-quarters of a mile along the wrack line until I came to a least tern colony.

At 1,000 or so per foot, there could have been as many as two or three million dead blue mussels. 

No part of the wrack line was alive, except for three six-inch-high sea rockets with five or six fleshy green leaves each. It used to be the practice to rake beaches with mechanized equipment to make them more attractive to the people using them. It has been found, however, that sea wrack lines are often the starting point for new beach plant growth that accumulates sand and builds up the height of the beach. Raked beaches, on the other hand, lose sand with each large sea tide accompanied with surf. This wrack line was almost a week old and had not been left alone.

We wonder, though, if the rocky intertidal blue mussel population will suffer as a result of lower recruitment. Blue mussel beds can form the way oyster beds form. Just as larval oyster fry settle out on live oyster or empty shells, blue mussels similarly recruit free-swimming mussel larvae to add to the overall size of a bed. Blue mussels, Mytilus edulis, are as marketable as oysters and a favorite in restaurants that feature seafood. So, empty mussel shells should be left in situ, just as we are now saving our oyster shells and returning them to the shallow coastal waters.

The knotted wrack is enjoying a bumper crop year, just as a closely related brown alga, sargassum weed, is in Caribbean Sea waters and those of the Gulf of Mexico. It has been written that when Columbus came to the Caribbean in the late 1400s, there was very little of it around. It could be that the increased flux of nitrogen products into our seas from septics and fertilizers, as well as from the local vertebrate fauna, is favoring the growth of these seaweed species. 

In fact, just as local groups and institutions are increasing oyster stocks artificially to chow down on noxious marine plankton that are not only choking waterways but can be poisonous when ingested, the Cornell Cooperative Extension and other entities are starting underwater kelp farms. Kelp not only removes nutrients from the water column but also is an important food item in different human subcultures.

What would be better than kelp, however, for serving as a habitat for bay scallops and certain fish species, including winter flounder, is eelgrass, Zostera marina, which once grew so thick in local waters such as Accabonac Harbor that it would foul outboard motor props. But those days are gone. With global warming heating up our estuaries, we are not likely to see a return in the next few decades.

I like the water and the sand, and I’ve been a clammer, crabber, eeler, and fisher, but never a beachcomber. One can learn a lot by walking the shoreline periodically. One time it’s hundreds of washed up skimmers, another time it’s the small brownish shell of molted horseshoe crabs, then again, several types of kelp can be found, as well as swarming insects, sand crabs, bunker, and, even in the early fall, monarch butterflies and dragonflies. 

Think of it. The beach is an ecotone between the sea and the land, and it occurs all over the world in one form or another, but always with a dominant substrate of sand. What was odd on Monday afternoon was that I was the only one of 75 or so people parked at the end of Ocean Road walking the beach. A few were on the water, most were on the sand, lying on blankets or towels or sitting in portable deck chairs.

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

A survey probably isn’t needed, but if you ask just about any experienced fisherman who shuffles along in his or her weathered oilskins and deck boots among the well-used docks and boats of Montauk Harbor who is the king of rod-and-reel commercial fishing (a “pinhooker” in local slang), most are likely to agree that John Rade, better known as Johnny, is the one who wears the crown.

The legend of Captain Rade’s unique ability to catch fish runs long and deep, more than half a century on the water to be precise, and at the age of 75, he is still at the top of his game. In commercial dockside talk, he is “high-hook” for the large catch of fish he packs out for market almost every day in season.  With a quiet and respectful low-key demeanor, whether on land or at sea, Rade has a sixth sense when it comes to knowing where, when, and how to fish. Few can touch his skill set. Fishermen respect him. Fish fear him. 

“He is by far the most respected man in the harbor,” said Capt. Richard Etzel of the charter boat Breakaway, who has known Captain Rade for several decades.

On Sunday evening, Captain Rade will witness firsthand the admiration of his peers when he is honored as the Fishing Legend of the Year at the conclusion of the 18th annual Montauk Mercury Grand Slam Fishing Tournament, presented by the Montauk Friends of Erin and the East Hampton Kiwanis Club.

Previous tournament honorees selected him to receive the award. “In the history of this tournament and award, Johnny is one of the most deserving to receive this honor and is a true legend in Montauk,” said Henry Uihlein, owner of Uihlein’s Marina in Montauk, headquarters for this weekend’s tournament and festivities. “He exemplifies what a real fisherman is by fishing by himself, on his own boat, with just a rod and reel. I’m personally honored to know Johnny. He is one of the nicest, most wholesome, and most respectful people you will ever meet.”

“I’m really surprised, but I’m very honored by this,” Captain Rade said on Saturday evening after unloading a catch of fluke at the Inlet Seafood dock in Montauk. “I just do what I do. I love fishing, especially bottom fishing. I may have slowed down a bit, but I don’t plan to stop.”

Captain Rade was born in Brooklyn, but his family moved to Montauk in 1945 when he was 2 years old. “Montauk was so simple then,” he recalled. “There were dirt roads and not many people out here, but the fishing business was getting off the ground.”

Drawn at a young age to the buzz of activity around the party and charter boats docked at Fishangri-la at the southeast end of Fort Pond Bay, where loads of New York City anglers would head after getting off the Long Island Rail Road, Captain Rade became a dock rat early in life. “I would do anything, like help clean fish,” he said. “It did not matter. I just loved being on the docks or on the water.”

After graduating from East Hampton High School, Captain Rade joined his father, and older brother, Richard, running the family-owned Marlin II party boat for 15 years. “We were mainly a porgy boat, but we also did a lot of early spring fishing for cod,” he said. “There used to be some incredible cod fishing around Montauk and Block Island.”

Captain Rade continued to sharpen his fishing prowess by working on other charter and party boats, including the Jigger II with Capt. Howie Carroll and with the Forsbergs on their Viking boats. He also fished and worked closely with Johnny Kronuch Sr., who owned Johnny’s Tackle Shop in downtown Montauk with his son for over 70 years.

“I paid attention and learned so much by working with all of these different people and boats,” he said. “I learned about tides, the moon phases, where and when to go, what baits worked best. I tried to absorb and study it all from everyone and I really tried to think like a fish, especially bottom fish like fluke, porgy, sea bass, cod, flounder, and blackfish.”

Taking that wide knowledge base and experience, Captain Rade took the plunge to go independent and bought a 16-foot skiff to fish with a rod and reel by himself. It’s a decision he does not regret. He is now on his fourth boat, a fiberglass 26-footer. While his boats have varied in size up to 32 feet, there has been one constant in all of the craft he has owned over the years. All have been named Starfish. 

“I saw that boat name in a James Bond movie and it has stuck with me ever since,” he chuckled. “It’s a simple name, but I like it.” 

When not on the water, Captain Rade has also worked at Inlet Seafood for the past 30 years packing out fish. “I guess it’s pretty clear that I was built to be working on the water,” said Captain Rade, who also happens to be an enthusiatic birdwatcher. Those fishing genes have been passed on to his son Brian, who gillnets monkfish and traps for lobster. His daughter, Judith, is a special education teacher at the Montauk School. Karen, Captain Rade’s wife of 49 years, retired as the director of the Montauk Library in 2014.  

“I love Johnny, his family, and I wish I had all of his fishing knowledge,” said Capt. Dave Aripotch, owner of the commercial dragger Caitlin Mairead, who has known Captain Rade since the early 1970s, when they did some gillnetting together. “It’s all of the little odds and ends that he knows. He catches fish like no other person I’ve ever seen. And he works as hard today as he did 30 years ago. Look at the great shape he is in. He is tireless and just a great man.”

When asked if he plans to fish on Sunday, the day he is to be honored, Captain Rade replied that “unless the weather is really bad, I’ll be out there. But I will pack my catch out and get to the ceremony in time. Don’t worry.”

Hail to the King.

To accommodate demand, the East Hampton Town Trustees, who manage most of the town’s beaches and waterways west of Montauk on behalf of the public, have added racks to store 40 kayaks at the end of Gerard Drive in Springs. 

The popularity of kayaking in the town’s waterways led to kayaks being left on the grass, which is a violation of the town code. “Last year, we did have Marine Patrol go there and ticket the ones in the grass,” Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk, said at their meeting on Monday. 

“They were in the dune there, on the grass,” Brian Byrnes, a trustee, said earlier on Monday, “and Ed Michels,” the town’s chief harbormaster, “said they had impounded a bunch because they were all over the place. We said, ‘Let’s set up some racks and clean it up.’ ” A contractor constructed them, Mr. Byrnes said, completing the job late last month. 

Kayakers are required to purchase an annual permit, which costs $200, to store a kayak on the racks. As of Monday, 36 of the 40 spaces had been rented. 

“It looks a million times better,” Mr. Byrnes said of the area, but there are practical reasons for the new setup as well, he added. “There really is an advantage to having your kayak on a rack. It stays clean, it’s off the ground, you can lock it up, and it’s safe.”