00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediator's World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we can review with Ryan kel Kelly in now Here's Kel Red Sky at night Sailor's delight Red Sky at morning, Sailors take Warning. This basic rhyme implies you can predict the weather based on colorful sunrises and sunsets. If you haven't heard this one, I want to know where you've been hiding. Spencer new Hearth tackles this one as part of his fact Checker series, which you can find only at the Meat Eater dot com. This divine adage made its first written appearance in the Bible in the Book of Matthew. In a confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees over their demand for a sign from heaven, Christ offers up a tongue in cheek meteorological tip. When it is name, you say, it will be fair weather, for the sky is red, and in the morning it will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. Bizing, the text implies this was already established wisdom, making it at minimum to millennia old. It's most often viewed as a saying for mariners, but there are other iterations of the phrase that replace sailors with shepherds. Weather systems generally travel from west to east around the United States and Canada, So when the sun rises and illuminate its approaching clouds to the west, there's a system headed your way. On the contrary, when the sun sets and illuminate its departing clouds to the east, it means the storm is beyond you and fair weather will follow. Here's a complex explanation. When the pressure is low, the atmosphere will have lots of cloud and a few aerosols. When pressure is high, the atmosphere will have few clouds and lots of aerosols. Because of its long wave lengths, red light is more easily scattered by clouds. Because of its short wave lengths, blue light is more easily scattered by aerosols. So red light indicates low pressure and bad weather, while blue light indicates high pressure and clear skies. Thirty to sixty degrees latitude and both hemispheres experience westerlies. This means the winds blow from west to east zero to thirty degrees latitude, and both hemispheres get easterlies. This means the winds blow from east to west. This saying, then only applies to northern North America, southern South America, most of Europe, and part of Asia. It would be backwards for Central America, most of Africa, all of Asia's islands, and most of Australia. This fund rhyme is surprisingly accurate for part of the world, but it doesn't address scenarios where systems move from north to south, south to north, or east to west, or get pushed around by mountains and bodies of water. It also doesn't account for other particles in the atmosphere that could alter sky color, like dirt from a farmer working up a field or smoke from a burning mountain side. In other words, uh, you're still guessing the weather on the big map. Where's my map? It's just green. There's a map there. Look look at the monitor. Run where's my legs? Where are my legs? Your legs are there. I don't have any legs. Run, But I'll do you one favor here and give you an old guide tip. When you say this one, say it with confidence and follow it up with as little talking as possible. The old timey feel of this old adage match with the fact that you were either starting out early or coming home late, leads to very few follow up questions. After all, those are for meteorologists. For war tips like this, check out Spencer New Harris fact checker column at the meat Eater dot com. This week we've got conservation history, fish hooks, giant sunfish, and so much more. But first, I'm gonna tell you about my week. I went full out on a remodel project at my place that I told myself I shouldn't do. But here's the deal. Cooking without event over your range that actually vents the grease, smells and occasional smoke to the outside is just no fun. So I figured, instead of constantly cleaning the grease that was being redistributed throughout my kitchen, I just tear it all out, pulled out the cupboard, screwed um in garage for more shelving, ransom ducting to a proper hood had it punched through the wall than My friend Nicole Daily, who has an interior design business called Haven spelled h A v N Designs and check that out on the Instagram, rounded up a bunch of stuff that she referred to as things adults have and deck the place out while I essentially saying at a table for two days. Now I have a real hood that vents to the out of doors and the exposed shelving, which in my mind makes for a much more efficient workspace. U Plus, I got rid of a ton of stuff, and I even got to use my clean, quiet, battery operated steel chainsaw to make some essential cuts. I've said this many times, but one of the best things about a battery power chainsaw is you can use them at night in your garage, in your neighbors. Don't complain anyway. Plenty of tanker and left to do. But I hope that this is the last weekend dedicated to non hunting or angling activities. I've been slacking in the archery department, and the season is just around the corner. With all of this COVID stuff and staying home, I did a great job at cleaning out my freezer, which is a good thing. But by the time September rolls around, I should be in what we call a real meat crisis, a hungry hunter hunt. It's best. It's another old adage for you. Last week we talked about soft plastic baits or spbs. I gotta follow up email from Berkeley Power Bait with a one sentence response stating, yes, they are biodegradable, so still more research to do there. I also got a question from a listener that is fitting about hooks. It is common in my circles anyway to cut the line as close to the hook as possible when dealing with the fish that has taken your bait or fly or whatever in way too deep or close to the gills, which means you probably weren't paying attention when fish bit. Anyway, the fish swims away relatively unharmed, and we hope the odds of survival are higher than they would be if you attempted to rip the hook out. Wire metal hooks rest the fastest, they will eventually go away. Plated metal hooks or stainless steel hooks hang around a lot longer and in that order, but everyone could probably figure that out on their own. I was unable to find any real solid numbers as to the rate at which fish hooks decay, but suffice it to say it probably takes longer than we would like. Here's some anecdotal fish tails for you. Back when I was living and catchum Idaho, I would go and fish the Big Wood River. If you are suppressing a chuckle over fishing the Big Wood, keep in mind many anglers, including myself, also fancied the Little Wood for fishing session as well. Yes, significant shrinkage anyway, there's a really consistent midge hatch that happens anywhere from about eleven AM to two pm or so on the Big Wood River all through the winter. The trout seemed to be really potted up during the winter months, meaning anglers focused on fewer areas that contain the majority of the fish. While catching. In some of these spots, you were bound to catch a rainbow with a snout that came up pre stuck with one, two, or sometimes three tiny midge patterns. This was likely not a result of an angler choosing to cut the line, but of a line break. Either way, these fish were happily feeding on the afternoon hatch despite being you know, pierced. For a saltwater version of this, while fishing in Panama a few years ago, we pulled up some sharks that had like three to six hooks in their mileths apiece, all in various stages of degradation from rusty to shiny. These sharks obviously did not alter their behavior at all, but it did make me think that there was a potential limit as to the amount of hooks in one's face. Although it would take time, it wasn't much of a stretch to see how the right tackle could inhibit a shark's ability to feed and often cited. Study from two thousand fifteen out of the University at Carlton's Cook Lab looked at how the northern pike's behavior changed when it was hooked in the lower jaw, deep in the back of the throat, and when both jaws were hooked, as is often the case when a pike chooses to and gulf a bait with two or sometimes three travel hooks. Using tagged fish and tagged crank baits and a small pond, researchers were able to monitor the fish's behavior against unhooked pike in the same lake, including when the crank bait was dislodged from the pike's face. The results of this singular study showed that fish hooked in both jaws and deep in the back of the throat shed them within a couple of days, while the pike hooked only on the lower jaw could retain the bait, sometimes for the same amount of time. The conclusion they came to, which sounds reasonable, is possibly due to the fact that the pike were unable to feed by ignoring the situation when the bait was hooked in both jaws or in the back of the throat, which meant they expended the energy to get the bait out and it took a couple of days while the pike with the bait and its jaw could still feed, and thus Lee chose not to expand the energy of dislodging the bait right away. Barbalous baits were dislaw very consistently within the first twenty four hours. The behavior of the hooked pike also didn't differ much, if at all, from the unhooked pike. Lots of tales about anglers catching the same fish multiple times, so like most things, a common rule here is, if it feels like you're doing something you shouldn't like you don't want someone to see you ripping a bait or hook or a lure from deep in a fish's throat, don't do it. Cut the line as we have covered here before. Our waterway has faced many, many issues that could have much larger population level effects, things that could change fisheries or stop them forever. But recreational angling, no matter how you prefer to do it, isn't likely one of them. So long as you buy your permits and licenses, follow the rules and regulations, pick up your trash, which includes preventing things from becoming riverside or river bottom or oceanside or ocean bottom trash h then you know we're gonna be right. Something like you know you can fish for trash fish and cook trash fish, but don't replace fish with trash. Moving on to the conservation history desk, the Sierra Club, one of our country's oldest conservation groups, recently announced that it is coming to terms with its founder, John Muir. Muir is more than just the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club is an organization that now boast more than three and a half million members. John Muir is considered one of the founding fathers of what we call conservation and the National Park System, specifically Yosemite. So for all that good stuff, these enduring legacies that we love today, what the heck could be the beef with John Muir. Well, amongst a lot of the good ideas regarding land, water and wildlife conservation, where some profoundly bad ideas and beliefs regarding the so called proper order of the races masked and selective breeding science called eugenics, which was an idea that has been around forever in agriculture, taking the animals that make the healthiest offspring and keeping them in the herd. But if you took a look at how eugenics was applied to humans, something the Nazi Party really picked up and ran with. It included the sterilization of races. There is such a thing as modern eugenics, which involves altering human genomes on an individual basis, and I'm sure beyond anyway. Now, at this point you could say that Muir was just committed to science and the science was flawed, But that just isn't the case. Just like what we see today, science is a little word with many meanings that can be used for good and for bad. In this case bad as again, it was a way to discredit, oddly enough, every race, at least to some degree, other than Anglo Saxon. He ever noticed how in these like cult type situations. There's always someone or a group of someone's who decides it's better for all if they alone take on sexual reproduction for all. That's just a side note anyway, Muir wasn't alone here. Many of our notable figures in conservation shared similar beliefs, Theodore Roosevelt being another. In fact, one of my favorite conservation organizations that does an incredible amount of good for everybody, The Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership or t RCP, is obviously named after him. Roosevelt fought for national for US, champion the idea of preserving wilderness and national parks, but he was a white nationalist. Roosevelt despised slavery, but didn't think America was for the blacks. He gave the Native Americans up for people that would go extinct, which he likely thought was rightfully. So so what does all this mean? No, we don't part take and cancel culture on this one. We don't throw away our national parks or national forests because they were founded in part by men who didn't see them as what we see them for today, which is a place for all. A listener wrote in with a link to a very well written article that can be found at melanin base camp dot com titled Challenging the White Narrative of Conservation written by A moth Jufe. Among many well written points, the author lays out the fact that black Indigenous peoples of color are largely not choosing to recreate or visit national parks because at the inception of these foundational acts that of national parks, there was not an even playing field. There was not a welcoming precedence set from the beginning. Black Indigenous peoples of color were not welcomed from the get go. In fact, forceful removal of indigenous people had to occur in most of these places in order for a national park to be conceived of in the first place. Consequently, within BIPAC families, multiple generations did not visit national parks. So when we look at participation levels amongst the BIPAC communities now, according to a study published by David Scott and Kang Fee Jerry Lee using US Census Bureau data and National Park Service Visitor services data, less than two percent of national park visitors were black and less than five percent non white, Hispanic or Asian. That study was published using data compiled until the year two thousand fifteen. I think it is important to note that national parks have experienced record attendance year after years since this paper was published. But there would have to be a pretty darn monumental shift in habits for those numbers to change significantly. Now, if you were saying, as I will tell you I did, how does this make sense? Public lands are open to all people. Why aren't members of the BIPOC community taking advantage of all the things that I take advantage of. I think part of the answer to that lies in the historical context, which again the author I'm off du lays out pretty darn well, which kind of gets wrapped into like the heritage argument for me, Like your family started going to national parks, it became a tradition, and that's what you did every year, like just once a year, or sometimes a bunch of times a year. You know, if we look at the issue of recruitment among hunters and anglers, the challenges sometimes go up when we have generational gaps within a family, and that can be boiled down to simply like we lose stuff, all right. Second generation hunters and anglers have access to mom and dad's stuff. Third generation hunters and anglers have access to mom and Dad's plus grandma and grandpa's stuff. In this case, if Dad's generation didn't fish or hunt, but the grandkids wanted to try it out, Grandma and Grandpa's gear maybe outdated and dusty, but it's still in the garden shed or the garage drafters right, meaning that typically it's harder to say no to try and something new when you have some tools at your disposal. The case that a moth do you, the author of Challenging the White Narrative of conservation lays out is some of these national parks, from their inception, starting with the ideals of their founders, were not welcoming to several generations of the Bipoc community, Meaning the tools of the trade, the traditions of visiting a national park have not been in a family since before the great grandparents. The pictures, the picnic baskets, binoculars, road maps just don't exist in some trunk or forgotten shed at this point, making again the decision to try something new much harder because it's not foundational to the family. A well written article and there is a whole lot more to it, you can find it in its entirety at melanin base camp dot com. Thank you to Heather P for sending that one in to ask cal at the meat eater dot com. Next up the access desk, and this is a big one, the Meat Eator Land Access Initiative. That thing where all proceeds from the purchase of Rinella who tell us campaign merchandise will go to providing more hunting and fishing for America. Well, we finally picked a spot that will indeed provide more hunting and fishing. This one is all the way out in Maine. I've been working with Brent West of the High Peaks Alliance to get the full picture of a not too big piece of ground called Shiloh Pond, which is located outside of Kingfield, Maine. So why why this spot that I already said isn't all that big? Well, for some context, the state of Maine has long been vacation land. This is where the original American destination hunters and fishers would escape to from the big, nasty, stinking cities. Although of the state is privately owned, state law at least for now allows de facto trustpass, meaning if the land is not posted even though it's private, people by default can trustpass upon that land. As these large tracts of land have been divided and sold over multiple generations, more and more of these properties have been posted. The traditional way of main hunting the Big Woods white tailed deer stocking is at risk. The longtime residents of Maine who live the hunting and fishing life could foreseeably lose their traditional hunting and fishing lands with the introduction of new state legislation as in changing that trustpass law, or if a new tradition of posting your property as no trespassing is instilled in the big famous Maine north Woods, which again are largely private. Shiloh Pond and the road to it currently provide multiple use access. The property is two acres sixty eight point two acres of wetlands, twenty acres of Shiloh Pond itself, and there is a smaller adjacent pond on the property of about one point six eight acres. There's free spawning brook trout, there's loons, shore birds, moose, bears, beavers, amphibians, white tailed deer, ruffed grouse. I saw lots of pollinators in the form of bees and butterflies, Most importantly, this is where many folks from the local area learned to paddle and fish. The property is spectacularly clean, the people's self police they take pride in. I believe that this is an ideal little spot to start with for meat eaters land Access initiative. Even though it is small, it has the potential to start a new tradition of securing public access on actual public ground. We will have a lot more details and some fun exciting ways for everyone to get involved coming to you from the Meat eat Your dot com as well as our collective social channels. If you listen to this on Sunday or Monday, be looking for all sorts of info on Wednesday or Thursday, and last but not least, from the Cool Critter Desk. Just a fun one to send you off with. There are three species of ocean sunfish or mola mola, all of which can be found but are not exclusive to Australian waters. The ocean sunfish is a free swimming bony fish that can reach twenty two hundred pounds and six ft in length. This is an odd looking fish as it can be as long as it is tall. In fact, the mola moola has the fewest vertebra in its spined body ratio than any other fish. It is often described as a head with the tail. Here's a fun fact for you. The ocean sunfish produces more eggs than any known vertebrate. They're capable of produce was saying three million eggs in a single spawning cycle. That is a lot of eggs, and until recently we were not entirely sure where they went, which seems kind of odd for such a big fish. Well, recently researchers in Australia were examining tiny larvae samples which, out of curiosity, were checked against a bump head sunfish and found them to be an exact match. The larvae were, in fact the tiny offspring the developed eggs of the sometimes hundred pound ten ft long Mola Mola, and they measured only about a six of an inch. This discovery means a couple of things to me. All those Australian surfers while they're out dodging great whites probably inhale, these could be giant fish or get them shot up their noses when they get tumbled in a wave. And of course, big mysterious things can come in small packages. I was at the ball, I was at the poll. That's all I've got for you this week. Thanks for listening. As per usual, you can find me. You can let me know how i'm doing, what I'm missing, what is going on in your neck of the woods. By writing in to a s k c. A L. That's asked Cal at the Meat eater dot com. I'll talk to you next week.

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