THE SHARK IS GONE

Yesterday morning I had to leave early to go out of town.  I received a phone call after I left from a local contractor with whom I had left a phone message requesting that he and his crew remove the fish tug, Shark.  The tug has been sitting outside the museum since 1999.  Despite efforts to preserve this last hand-made fish tug left intact in the Great Lakes region, she could not be saved.  Given that the wood in the tug's hull has been giving away causing her to list dangerously to the east, she has become a liability.  I decided that rather than risk the tug falling on somebody -- she had to go.  I just did not expect the contractor to come yesterday while I was out of town.  Maybe it was a good thing that I was not there to watch.  I would have been very emotional.

Apparently they used a large excavator to lift the tug up and onto a flat bed trailer.  They then hauled her away.  As soon as I arrived home and received the message -- I drove over to the museum and she was gone.  I went back home and called the contractor to find out if she was still around Grand Marais.  Sure enough, she was so I went over and recovered a few momentous.

Below is a photo of the Shark the day of launch in 1940.  Shown in the picture is the museum founder, Axel Niemi, on the left and his dad, Otto, on the right.  It took Otto and his four sons (when they were home and available) two years to design and build the tug.

The Niemi family used the tug from 1940 until 1953 when fishing no longer was viable on Lake Superior due to the reduction of the fish population caused by the lamprey eel.  Otto retired and Axel started the Gitche Gumee Museum.

A college thesis was written by Jim Williams about the Niemi fish tugs.  At the end of his paper he summarized:

The story of the Shark’s later years remains incomplete. She sat on her marine railway outside Niemis net shack for three years. In 1956, two men from Cheboygan, Michigan, who had the idea of fishing for sturgeon in Lake Huron, approached Otto about buying the Shark. He told the “you can have it for a song.” Shark went off to Cheboygan on a flatbed semi-tractor after Axel helped load her. According to Axel, the men tried for two years, but never caught one sturgeon.


Shark reportedly saw some use as a pleasure boat after her time in Cheboygan. She then spent several years fishing out of St. Joseph, Michigan. Along the way, one of her owners took out the Fordson engine, re-powering her with a Perkins diesel with 60-70 horsepower, coupled to a Chris Craft transmission. Robert Trowbridge, of South Haven, acquired the boat, by now called Tug Her, in order to get the engine. He, of course, ultimately gave her to the Michigan Maritime Museum.

In 1999 I went looking for the Shark after I heard that she may still be intact.  I found her and was given the Shark by the Michigan Maritime Museum that had never used her in their exhibit.  She sat for many, many years in South Haven -- unprotected -- before I was able to acquire her.   I paid a professional boat hauler to move the tug from South Haven to Grand Marais.  Then through grant money and the help of volunteers -- we did our best to preserve her.  In 2005 I paid to have her professionally painted in another attempt to preserve her.  Unfortunately, time has finally done her in.

A picture of the Shark when I acquired her in 1999 is shown below.  Axel's brother, Arvi, is standing with the tug.

Below is a picture I took after the second time she was refurbished.

Below are a few photos I took today after she was hauled away.

Below Tim Swift is shown helping me recover an artifact from the tug.

Good bye, Shark.


Shark's Vital Statistics:

Length Overall	33 feet
Beam	10.6 feet
Depth	3.8 feet
Number of Ribs	96
Hull Material	White Oak
Horsepower	44
Main Engine	1919 Fordson 4 Cylinder
Back-Up Engine	Model T
Net Lifter	Pentwater
Capacity	11 gross tons - 7 net tons
Crew	2

Sable Lake Area Hike

Yesterday Lois Fite and I decided to hike one of the cross country ski trails to see if the hiking bridge has been repaired.  We parked at the Sable Visitors' Center and hiked Trail A toward Sable Lake.

Actually, this first Sable Lake photo was taken the other day during a different hike.

Downed wood on Trail A....

White  birch trees along the trail....

The beavers have been very busy.  Their efforts are working as the water is backing up behind their dam.

The bridge has been fixed....

This is some of the water backed up by the beaver dam....

The waves were rolling on Sable Lake....

Since we could get across the bridge, we decided to hike up the dunes for additional exercise....

In Lois's garden, the Easter Lilly recently bloomed.  We wonder if the warm weather and daylight equivalent with the Easter time of year confused the plant.

New NASA Cassini photos

As some of you know, the NASA space probe, Cassini, recently had a close encounter with one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus.  This is the planet that has what scientists think are water geysers shooting off its south pole.  The space probe flew within 30 miles of the planet, right through the plumes.  We are waiting for the final analysis of the data, but the photos are amazing.  These photos are posted on the NASA website http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured the above photo as it neared icy Enceladus for its closest-ever dive past the moon's active south polar region. The view shows heavily cratered northern latitudes at top, transitioning to fractured, wrinkled terrain in the middle and southern latitudes. The wavy boundary of the moon's active south polar region -- Cassini's destination for this flyby -- is visible at bottom, where it disappears into wintry darkness. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 28, 2015. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 60,000 miles (96,000 kilometers).

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

During this closest ever dive past the active south polar region, Cassini quickly captured glimpses of the fast moving terrain below. The image was taken on Oct. 28, 2015 from a distance of approximately 77 miles (124 kilometers) above Enceladus.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Planetary Science Institute

Researchers modeled eruptions on Saturn's moon Enceladus as uniform curtains along prominent fractures that stretch across the icy moon's south pole. They found that brightness enhancements appear as optical illusions in places where the viewer is looking through a "fold" in the curtain. The folds exist because the fractures in Enceladus' surface are more wavy than perfectly straight.


Phantom jets in simulated images produced by the scientists line up nicely with some of the features in real Cassini images that appear to be discrete columns of spray. The correspondence between simulation and spacecraft data suggests that much of the discrete-jet structure is an illusion.

Curtain eruptions occur on Earth where molten rock, or magma, gushes out of a deep fracture. These eruptions, which often create spectacular curtains of fire, are seen in places like Hawaii, Iceland and the Galapagos Islands.

kNASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Following a successful close flyby of Enceladus, NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured this artful composition of the icy moon with Saturn's rings beyond. This photo was taken on Oct. 28, 2015at a distance of approximately 106,000 miles (171,000 kilometers) from Enceladus.




According to the wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus, Enceladus (pronounced /ɛnˈsɛlədəs/) is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn. It is only 500 kilometers (310 mi) in diameter.about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Enceladus is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, reflecting almost all the sunlight that strikes it and making its surface temperature at noon reach only −198 °C. Enceladus has a wide range of surface features, ranging from old, heavily cratered regions to young, tectonically deformed terrains that formed as recently as 100 million years ago, despite its small size.

Enceladus was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel.but little was known about it until the two Voyager spacecraft passed nearby in the early 1980s.In 2005, the Cassini spacecraft started multiple close flybys of Enceladus, revealing its surface and environment in greater detail. In particular, Cassini discovered a water-rich plume venting from the south polar region of Enceladus.Cryovolcanoes near the south pole shoot geyser-like jets of water vapor, other volatiles, and solid material, including sodium chloride crystals and ice particles, into space, totaling approximately 200 kilograms (440 lb) per second.Over 100 geysers have been identified. Some of the water vapor falls back as "snow"; the rest escapes, and supplies most of the material making up Saturn's E ring According to NASA scientists, the plumes at Enceladus are similar in composition to comets.In 2014, NASA reported that Cassini found evidence for a large south polar subsurface ocean of liquid water within Enceladus with a thickness of around 10 km^.

These geyser observations, along with the finding of escaping internal heat and very few (if any) impact craters in the south polar region, show that Enceladus is geologically active today. Enceladus is, like many satellites in the extensive systems of giant planets, trapped in an orbital resonance. Its resonance with Dione excites its orbital eccentricity, which tidal forces damp, resulting in tidal heating of its interior, and offering a possible explanation for the geological activity.

Botanical Garden Flower Photos and More

While down state for the Mason show, I stopped by my beloved UofM Botanical Gardens to take some pictures of flowers.  As you regular blog followers know -- it is one of my favorite things to do.

Behind the main greenhouse there is a new section of the gardens outside that I have not before explored.  One of the exhibits there is a bonsai garden....

A few things were still in bloom in the other part of the outdoor garden...

There is also a new kid's garden....

Back inside in the desert room....

And more flowers and plants......

As usual, I had to capture the full moon....

Thanks to my friend, Marsha, for putting me up for a couple of nights.  Here is a photo of her teepee....

And some of her sunflowers...

Late Fall Beach Fire

The other day friends, Jamey and Lois, and I decided to have a late fall beach fire.  Due to the recent storms, there is a lot of driftwood on the beach.  So this time we decided to stay in town and went down to First Creek.

We were not sure if the last storm took out the teepee, located west of Sable River between there and the Log Slide.  So I zoomed in with my camera and there it was:  it is still standing.

When we arrived down the beach, there was a group of people making another one just west of First Creek.  We were not sure if it is a teepee, or a pile ready to torch.

The last storm deposited a lot of rock on our beach.  It is nice when that happens since most big storms undertow rocks back into the lake.
 

A freighter traveled by going east to west.