Gobies! Gobies! Gobies!

 Time:  Friday, May 26 6:30 a.m.

Water:  52.3
Air: Sun, clear blue sky, almost calm, also 52
Waves: Restless disordered heave from ESE
Clarity: Less than zero
Kru:  Showgirl, Lydia the Tattooed Lady, Lt MJ, HFON, Sunny Luna Laguna, Hollywood, Dragonfly.  All wetsuit; Linda the Lamprey, skin.

Shore support:  Gobies!  We'll get into this.
Next swims:  12 noon Saturday, Sunday and Monday, Memorial Day

The norther we'd had since Wednesday had substantially subsided and the air was so fresh and calm when I stepped outside this morning.  But the water viewed from the Hoan was not flat and smooth as I'd hoped. Instead it looked disturbingly unsettled.

Walking onto the beach, Lamprey and I were slightly behind the main group which suddenly emitted a collective sigh of dismay. Where we usually put our blankets at the high water line was a mass of dead fish. These were identified by TTL as Gobies.

 I  was not surprised to learn this was an invasive species, "Prohibited in Michigan" according to the internet, so, Lt MJ says, we got the castoffs? Present in Lake Michigan since the 90s, most likely carried over in ship holds from the Black and Caspian seas and such regions. Gobies are described as aggressive bastards that eat the eggs and young of other fish. Their one saving grace may be they also eat zebra mussels (maybe when there's no more perch?)

I also learned the Round Goby is a bottom-dweller (again, surprise?) that favors brackish water and we had that in abundance. It seemed like the norther dredged up all the putrescence from the bottom of the lake that had accumulated over the past decade or so, and cast it up on the beach.

An odor arose from this mess that made me want to retch just thinking about it in the middle of my swim. Imagine a Port-a-let left abandoned for a week or two in the sun, after Woodstock '99...

Getting into the water was questionable. It was an unsavory color, deep brown, with zero viz.  I and others elected to backstroke at least out of the cove; I also backstroked in at the end of my swim.  Others chose to walk in north of the rocks.  Visibility did not improve much as you went along. 800 yards and I still couldn't see my hand in front of my face.  The water felt cold, rough and unwelcoming, and I had such a sense of resistance, an I-don't-want-to-be-here, that I extended my swim by stopping frequently and just wishing it was over.  And yet, by the time I was done, I had almost started to adapt, in that I was less horrified by the conditions than at the start.

"Think of the people who swim in the East River," I consoled myself.  Lt MJ's aunt had done just that! She had gotten all the usual shots in preparation but still got infectious sores in her mouth, but "Nothing causing lasting damage," Lt MJ said reassuringly.

This was also a very birdy swim.  We have already seen how seagulls are attracted to corruption, and they like to discuss it at high volume.   HFON and Hollywood were eerily set upon by a large flock of seagulls somewhere North of Mudslide, like the Hitchcock movie, The Birds! said Hollywood. They wisely turned back, HFON said, not only because of the possibilities of being poop-bombed, but "What was there in the water, attracting all this interest?"

It was entirely reasonable for them to think they might be about to swim into something disgusting.... couple of corpses maybe, or just an amorphous glutinous mass, perhaps a decaying whale?

Gorgeous morning belies the brown mysteries...

Unmutated (so far) Klode Kru who survived the swim.  (Lamprey had already departed.)