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Dolphins

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For the past couple of years, the idea that we are communal animals has become more and more evident. The pandemic has really shown us how important it is for us to interact in groups. Even the most reclusive person needs that human contact that is such an important part of our essential being.

That cooperative spirit allows us to accomplish incredible things. We are most successful when we work together to accomplish goals. Often in this column we’ve looked at cooperative programs that relate to the beachfront where different people or groups have combined efforts and resources to create an outcome that is much greater than each individual part. Survivor Support Network, Wave Watchers, Galveston Marine Response, all the various groups that protect, clean, maintain, and provide services on the beachfront, are all examples of this concept.

To me, one thing that is especially awe inspiring is when we not only work together to help people, but when people work together to help our fellow animals. Not much demonstrates this concept better than the Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

This amazing group of mostly volunteers coordinates rescues of dolphins and whales along the Texas coast. We as lifeguards often have the privilege to work alongside our partners in the Coastal Zone Management department of the Park Board to help save stranded animals, and to manage the care of their bodies when they don’t survive a stranding.

The Marine Mammal Stranding Network is dedicated to the Conservation of Marine Mammals through Rescue and Rehabilitation, Research and Education. The Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network (TMMSN) provides a coordinated response to all marine mammal strandings along the Texas coastline.

Most of what we see in our area are bottle nosed dolphins swimming, playing, eating, and occasionally will wash up on the beach.  From time to time a tourist will mistake their dorsal fins for a shark’s and panic. Normally you don’t see shark fins from shore, but a shark has a triangular fin and dolphins have a curved fin that rakes back. Dolphins are incredibly intelligent with larger brains and more complicated language than we humans possess.  They are even more communal than we are and are usually in small groups called pods swimming so close together that they often graze each other. Using echolocation, they are so aware of each other in the water that they often coordinate their movement to the point where it seems they have one mind. Being air breathing mammals stranding themselves when sick, injured or dying is a way to avoid drowning.

They often come up to their human counterparts who are swimming, surfing, boating, or fishing. It’s a bit unnerving to be in the water and have something so large and powerful come up and stare at you out of an eye that radiates curiosity and intelligence. But I’ve never heard of them injuring a human and there are plenty of stories of them helping us. So maybe the wonderful work of the TMMSN is a small way of paying them back.

 

 

Please visit dolphinrescue.org/rescue for more information.

  • The first thing you can do to help a marine mammal in need of rescue is to call the TMMSN 24 hour hotline at 1-800-9MAMMAL (1-800-962-6625).
  • Dolphins and whales do not usually wash up on our beaches unless they are sick, injured, or orphaned, so it is important NOT to push them back into the water.

Coastal Zone Management

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The world is asleep. At 4am the sanitation truck pulls out of the Park Board Coastal Zone Department lot and hits the beachfront, working by headlights along an empty beach.

By the time the traffic starts getting heavy they’re usually gone. At 6 the beach crews head up to the beachfront to hand pick the trash off the beach. They are comprised of full-time staff members, but in the summer months they bring in 15-20 contract laborers a day to augment the normal crews and run two trash trucks. They also go from 5 eight hour shifts a week, to 4 six-hour shifts and two eight-hour shifts. Additionally in the summer they run an afternoon crew on the seawall that tips cans and cleans both sides of the street. Meanwhile the mechanics breathe life into the machines and other workers do projects at “the yard”, and the crew rallies for various special events on and off the beach throughout the year.  During the summer, there’s a night squad that runs the beaches picking up the abandoned canopies that tourists leave behind. The work never ends.

The past couple of years have brought new challenges because of the marked surge in beach use. Previously a trash truck was dumped out every 2-3 days. Now both trucks they run in summer are dumped daily. The sheer tonnage they pick up annually is mind boggling, and now its more than doubled.

These men and women work hard. By the time most of the world is prying the gook out of their eyes and getting that first cup of coffee, they’ve already gotten through half a workday. And they do it in crazy hot, cold, rainy, or sand-blasting windy weather.

Right now, they’re taking advantage of the “slow” time to fix bollards at the beach access points, rejuvenate the recycle bins and port-a-let enclosures, and straightening signage along the beach. They put up the holiday decorations downtown, worked the Dickens and Biker Rally events, and are doing all kinds of smaller projects.

I’ve had the privilege of working alongside a lot of the Coastal Zone Management Department crew for years, and they never cease to amaze me with the pride they take in the job and the amount of work they can muster when the need arises. They’ve had a good thing going there for decades and that translates into efficiency and hard work and clean beaches and money coming into our economy.

At the center of it all is Larry Jackson. Larry is a good manager, great person, and has an interesting past. He spent years making a living from fishing as a commercial fisherman, a guide, and as the host of a fishing show. He even used to have a giant tank that he’d bring around on a gooseneck trailer for special events, business openings, and fishing lessons.

We’re so lucky to have Larry and his incredible crew.  If you’re up early enough tell them how much their labor of love means to the island!

New Boat

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As the sun touches the horizon, a stiff wind pushes spray off the peaks, causing them to take on a copper tone. A lone jet ski churns through the choppy water searching for a missing swimmer, as we attempt to locate what may be a missing swimmer, pelican, piece of wood, or a float being pushed out by the offshore wind.

This is a scenario that plays itself out multiple times each year. Often, we don’t have confirmation from anyone on the shore who is missing anyone, no unoccupied vehicles near the scene, and no indication that anyone left articles on the beach before going out for a dip.

The judgement required to make the appropriate decisions about when to continue searching into the night, discontinue the search, or modify the search using different resources is very sophisticated and requires both experience and critical thinking skills. We always err on the side of caution when human lives are potentially at stake, but we also must consider the human and equipment resources at our disposal.

Evening calls are particularly difficult because we rely so heavily on jet skis. Our staff is highly trained on them, and we have them deployed all over the island. They’re powerhouses in surf, have a very shallow draft for the many shallow bay calls, and can be beach launched. But as versatile as they are, by law they can’t run at night. Night calls can be more technical as well, requiring GPS, depth gauge, both running and spotlights, and at times radar. For this we need a proper boat, which requires quite a bit of additional training.

Each rescue truck is driven by a supervisor, who is certified as a “Personal Rescue Watercraft (PRWC) Operator. All our “wet seats”, mostly comprised of Senior Lifeguards, are certified as “PRWC Rescuers”, which means every truck has a jet ski rescue team on board. These could be full time or seasonal employees, although almost all our supervisors work full time.  But because of the training time required to competently operate the boat, only our full-time employees operate our 22-foot rigid hull inflatable boat, which is very similar to the ones the Coast Guard uses. So, in the scenario we opened with, if we needed to continue the search into the night, we’d have to get our boat launched somewhere with a proper boat ramp and get staff on board who were trained in boat operations. Hard to do if it’s a busy summer weekend with several emergencies happening at once.

Recently we purchased a piece of equipment that will help fill this gap. This new watercraft has a rigid hull with inflatable sides and a cut out in the back for a jet ski to fit. Once the jet ski is secure, it becomes the engine. It drives, handles like, and requires the training time of a jet ski. It also has the advantages of a 20-foot boat, while still operating in less than a foot of water.

Adaptable solutions providing for a quick rescue response.

One Beach One Lifeguard

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The small 5-year-old, brown skinned, dark haired girl played in the sand with her little sister on the beach. Their fully clothed mother and grandmother laid out a tablecloth and set the china place settings out with well practiced movements. It was a summer day in 1943 at the beach by Murdoch’s Bathhouse.

Barbara, the older of the two, looked off and spotted someone. Smiling, she asked if she could go visit her “friend”. Her mom, Alberta Stevens, said she could but to “hurry back and don’t bother him too much”. She ran as fast as her little 5-year-old legs could carry her up to the lifeguard chair and looked up to the mountain of a man sitting up there. He waved her up smiling. As she started to climb, he reached down and picked her up, tossing her into the air while she giggled. She snuggled into his lap as he kept a watchful eye on the swimmers. It was a calm day with light crowds, and both sat for a while comfortably relaxed.

After a time, she turned to him so he could read her lips and said, “Mr. Colombo, why doesn’t anyone ever help you?”  He made a sweeping gesture with his arm and held up his index finger. “One beach…” little Barbara said, as he then pointed to himself with his thumb and then held up his finger again. “…one lifeguard!” she squealed laughing, as she always did at this game.

Of course, I took a bit of “artistic license” here since it happened way before that little 5-year-old grew up and gave birth to me, but it’s based on stories Mom told me and a popular saying about Colombo that’s been passed down in beach lore. It does, however, exemplify a basic difference in lifeguarding philosophy (and public safety philosophy) that’s changed in relatively recent times.

Back when recreational swimming first became a “craze”, and modern lifeguards who could swim or paddle out to make a rescue came on the scene, the idea was that the rescuer was pretty much on their own. Rightfully so, since they generally worked alone and without realistic possibility of backup. When things go bad in the water it happens quickly, so if help arrives in time it would have to already be on the way before trouble started. In Colombo’s day, those kinds of resources were not a possibility economically or culturally. Someone of his swimming ability was the exception to the norm and that’s partly why he was so special.

The difference between then and now is that the profession has matured to the extent that we look at the whole rescue “chain”. Interdependence of lifesaving staff and between groups of emergency responders is an integral part of our philosophy. Safer for the rescuers and more effective.

It does, however, take a little of the magic away. “All for one and one for all” doesn’t have quite the pizzazz as “One riot, one ranger” or “One beach, one lifeguard”.

Photo courtesy of Signing Savvy
YOUR SIGN LANGUAGE RESOURCE
signingsavvy.com

 

Bikes and Training

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Whether you’re hunkering down with the groceries you bought before the crowds descended or out in the mix reveling in one of the largest events of this type anywhere, its hard not to notice its Biker Rally Weekend. I personally am a fan despite the inconvenience when moving around. I grew up riding as a kid on motocross style bikes, and rediscovered road bikes later as an adult. And as a professional people watcher I love all the different subcultures of the biker world out there.  Plus, the biker rally crowd typically don’t spend a lot of time in the water or driving their expensive bikes on the sand itself. We assist EMS and Fire with medical calls and help GPD a bit with the crowds, but it’s not a 4th of July kind of thing.

This week we started reducing our beach coverage somewhat and diverted some of our staff each day to the big job of tower refurbishment and repair. Considering weather and training breaks, this is scheduled to be a two-month job. We’ll also be focusing some training time on our typical operational winter training which includes medical, law enforcement, boat operations, and SCUBA training.

This winter is unique in that we’re going to focus our energy not only on external operational skills, but also internal training. We’re a hybrid organization in so many ways. We’re a public safety group that specializes primarily in ocean rescue and medical response, but also do a fair amount of code enforcement through both our peace officers and non-sworn staff. Most importantly, we have a lot of seasonal workers that aren’t part of the traditional public safety culture, have employees with over 50 years difference in ages, and a good mix of gender and ethnicities. Its critical that all these people work in a supportive environment in relative harmony, so that we can put maximum effort into protecting swimmers and responding to emergencies. And we all need to be able to communicate in a way that is respectful and isn’t misinterpreted. So, we are integrating training in intercultural competency, alcohol awareness, and in a program we started last year targeting resiliency for first responders. We’re also stepping up the training we’ve traditionally provided in leadership, workplace harassment, and other areas, and have formed a diverse committee to monitor culture throughout the organization.

In our lifeguard academy we stress the importance of a strong body, mental preparation through a well-developed and practiced skill set, and strength of spirit. With the first two we’re pretty adept at teaching and enforcing the practice necessary. But, although we allude to the importance of a strong spirit, we didn’t really have the tools to teach it effectively. But this new training will help us teach our staff to better support and take care of themselves and each other, so we can better take care of the public.

And despite our differences, our staff is incredibly united in the desire to be the best we can be to keep people safe.

Visit Galveston

Surf Roots

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At 10 my friend David Schutz and I bought surfboards. I think our moms were sick of us riding homemade skim boards in the ditch and both of us coming in for dinner covered in oozy abrasions. Mine was a smashed up 5’11” yellowed Dale Dobson and his was a 6’1” green Petrillo. Beautiful. It was 1975, short boards hadn’t been around long, and every board had one fin. We sucked. But man, we had fun! My mom took us up to the beach at 47th all the time, and we’d stand in waist deep water and push into waves thinking we were superstars.

In 6th grade I went to a new school and met surfers that lived near me. We’d ride bikes up to 53rd and surf together for fun and for protection from the older, better, meaner surfers. Our friend group grew and we got better. There weren’t a lot of surfers around then and we knew most everyone by sight if not personally.

Being the 70’s there was this sort of hippy vibe to the whole surf scene. Lots of the older, hardcore guys worked jobs that they could ditch when the fickle Texas surf came up. A bunch of them worked at the Glassing Factory or Freestyle Fins. Both of those places were pretty tolerant if you took off for a month or two to go down to Mexico or farther on safari. They also closed down on days with surf and they’d all hit the water. Some of the best local surfers worked there and it was pretty humbling if you were out in the lineup when they all paddled out together.

One day I drifted out too far with the rip into the lineup and got in one of the real superstar’s way. I dove under and heard the boards crack. “YOU STUPID KOOK!” he yelled balling up his fist. “I was here first!” I yelled/stammered, my little tween voice cracking. The older surfer looked like he was going to smash my face for a minute, and then seemed to think better of pummeling an 11-year-old. Instead, he paddled off, a deep gash on his leg trailing blood (which he ignored and kept surfing). He turned, glared, and yelled, “GET OUT OF THE WATER AND GO HOME GROM!”

Now, 47 years later, I’m intimately familiar with all the rules I broke. The person on the wave has the right of way. The person closest to the curl has the right of way. The first person to stand up has the right of way. Beginners (“groms”) should stay away from the pier, the rip current, and the pack at the end. And in every surfing pack there’s at least one “alpha”. That guy or girl gets their choice of waves and should be shown respect at all times.

Surfing culture has changed as the sport has grown and become more mainstream. Its more inclusive and less territorial. It may have lost some of its mystique, but the waves are the same.

Perfect Storm & Non Fatal Drowning

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Sergeant Andy Moffett and Supervisor Michael Lucero were powering up and down the seawall last Sunday moving swimmer after swimmer away from the rocks. The wind was howling, water was rough, there were strong lateral currents pulling people to the rocks, and the rip currents were really strong. On top of all that the beach was packed, the water and air were both in the ‘80’s, and only a handful of guards were able to come in to work.

They moved a woman away from the rocks on the west side of 17th street, explained the dangers, and raced to the next rock groin to make sure no one was getting too close since their last pass. They covered a zone that went from 37th to 10th street, but other trucks were working other zones along the beach doing the same thing. Even the 6 lifeguards in towers were busy just watching their one area.

A few minutes after they pulled away from 17th street, the 911 dispatcher came up on our radio reporting a call on a possible drowning. Moffett and Lucero raced back to 17th to find the same woman with bystanders having started CPR after finding her face down on the shoreline in shallow water on the opposite side of the rocks. They later learned from witnesses that she’d entered the water again a few minutes after they left outside of the “no swimming” area but was quickly swept to the rocks and got caught in the rip current. The rip currents caused a drop off so she couldn’t stand as the water pulled her away from shore. She struggled and went face down for a couple of minutes before the bystanders found her and pulled her up on the shore to begin CPR.

Moffett and Lucero arrived, ran to the crowd with their medical gear and quickly took over CPR. They got a heartbeat back with the help of the Galveston Fire Department. Police provided crowd control and got witness statements as she was moved up to the Seawall into a waiting ambulance.

By the end of the weekend, we moved about 2,500 people from the dangerous areas near the rocks and responded to quite a few emergency calls.

Monday was the last day for seasonal lifeguards. By the time you read this we will probably have all the towers off the beach for the rest of the year and will be working out of mobile patrol vehicles until next March. We still have quite a bit of warm weather ahead of us. Hopefully we won’t have another weekend like last one.

I am so proud of our staff for how they rise to the occasion when we have these “perfect storms” of warm water, crowds, and rough conditions. But we really hope that the people coming to the beach over the next few weeks realize that patrolling out of a vehicle is way less effective than having guards at each spot and take that personal responsibility to be safe upon themselves.

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October is the best month of the year in Galveston for the beach. If the weather was porridge in a Goldilocks story, we’d be the third bowl. Water is still nice and warm, but the air has cooled off just a bit, so you almost hate walking into a building and not spending every available minute outside. And, at least on the weekdays, the press of people has abated. So, when you go out to the beach you usually only share space with a handful of people.

Weekends will still be crowded for a couple of months, and our staff has been busy moving swimmers away from the deep holes and strong rip currents by the groins, making the occasional rescue, and have been getting quite a few after hours calls. Looking at crowd and climate trends we anticipate having some pretty decent weekend crowds to, and possibly into, December.

This is the last weekend for our seasonal lifeguards. We can only work them 7 months out of the year as “seasonal workers”. After this Sunday we’ll be covering the beach with mobile patrols each day. This means emergency response only on the west end, as we focus our efforts on the seawall areas with rock groins. From next Monday until the beach finally shuts down (aside from surfers, fishermen, and visiting Northern Europeans) we’ll be operating using just our year-round staff and will be able to run patrols of two or three trucks a day. These same staff members will rotate to cover “call”, meaning that someone will be available day or night all winter long for emergencies.

If you watch what one of our tower lifeguards does for a day on the seawall, you’ll see them watching swimmers and then getting down to move swimmers away from the rocks repeatedly. These preventative actions keep swimmers out of danger and keep our guards from having to make rescues that are extremely risky for both the victim and rescuer.

Working in a mobile vehicle is another story. We do the best we can to get to swimmers before they get too close, but we’re spread thin and covering a lot of ground, so end up making many more risky rescues.

We encourage you to get out and enjoy the best time of year in Galveston with friends and family. But when you do, remember the lifeguard presence is greatly diminished and the safety net is much smaller. This would be a good time to remind friends and family to stay far away from any structures in the water because they generate powerful rip currents. Know your limits and stay close to shore. Kids and non-swimmers should be in lifejackets. Designate a “water watcher” who is focused at all times on your group.

Lots of other safety information can be found at www.galvestonislandbeachpatrol.com and you’re welcome to get us on the phone or social media if you have questions. And, of course, for emergencies we’re only a 911 call away.

Preventative Actions

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For us, the big measure of how much work we do is “preventative actions”. This captures a range of activities anywhere from jumping off the rocks and swimming next to someone in a rip current around the head of the groin to a blanket announcement on a loudspeaker telling people to clear the water because lightning is moving into the area, to talking to a mom on the beach explaining the dangers in the area. We track all of these by calling the numbers in by radio to our dispatcher, who then enters it into our dispatch program. We have a specially designed system that keeps track of the numbers so we can pull out all kinds of statistical data which helps tailor our program to best use our resources in the places and times that are most efficient.

This year so far, we have already hit 293,602 preventative actions, and we’ve still got a ways to go. Last year the total for the entire year was 217,537, and in 2019 we hit 263,170. This is really eye opening, because 2019 was one of Galveston’s busiest years ever. Last year was still high even though the beaches were intermittently closed, and we missed quite a few potentially busy weekends and holidays.

Stats are weird in that you have to really tease out the contributing factors for them to be used for something as practical as to measure the efficacy of a lifeguard service or to measure workload. The number for preventative actions is a good measure of workload, but there are several factors that go into it. The amount of people on the beach is the obvious one, but that alone isn’t too significant since they have to get well on their way to trouble before we intervene. By that I mean, for example, that if a thousand people are swimming between the groins at 53rd and 51st street and the water is completely calm, we won’t have to move many from the rocks. If there is a current running and/or large surf with the same number of people swimming, we could be crazy busy and make hundreds of preventative actions in a matter of a few hours.

Water temperature is another variable. Thousands of people on the beach, but water too cold to swim in for long will keep stats way lower than a few hundred on the beach with warm water. Also, if the water is warm early in the spring and late in the fall as is the trend, our annual stats climb even higher because we’re having to work hard more of the year. In recent history, we’ve been looking at the swimming season as almost the entire year as opposed to just a few months.

And finally, the one that’s not immediately obvious is how many guards we actually have out there working in towers for how much of the year. More guards equate to higher stats related to prevention. Less means less prevention more rescues from vehicles and more drownings.

Whale

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The small whale thrashed on the shoreline as a representatives of the Marine Mammal Stranding Network tried to get in close to help it out by getting a line to administer medication with. By “small” I mean maybe 10-11 foot, so it was really dangerous for them to get close enough to help.

This particular whale looked like it had some facial trauma that may have been the cause of it choosing to beach itself. Whales and dolphins will do almost anything not to drown, so would rather spend their last moments on shore instead of dying in the open water. Unfortunately, in this case there wasn’t much of anything people could do to help, other than providing some small comforts like keeping its skin moist and just being there with it as it transitioned. I hope it was comforted by how much they wanted to help and how much those wonderful MMSN workers care about our mammalian partners in the ocean.

Whales are rarely seen in our parts, but dolphins beach themselves regularly. And they’re all over the place in the water. Most of the times people think they see sharks from the beachfront and run to the guard telling them to close the beach they’ve been lucky enough to spot a bottle nose dolphin’s dorsal fin as they surface to grab a breath. They are fun to be near in the water as the joy they seem to radiate as they play in the waves is infectious. There have been a couple of times recently I’ve been out training or surfing, and dolphins were riding waves and jumping way out to the water. If you’ve ever been close to one that comes up to check you out it’s a little bit unnerving. Its like looking into another person’s eye, not just because of the similarity in the eyes themselves, but because its so clear that they are intelligent and as curious about us as we are about then. And with language that is decidedly more complex than ours and their big brains, there’s no telling what they’re discussing. When they’re near, just go underwater and listen and you’ll hear them chatting away, no doubt talking about you.

Back to our whale’s story. Unfortunately, it didn’t make it. It was too big and too dangerous to move to the rehabilitation center, not that it had much of a chance anyway. But that’s not the case for many of the other cetaceans that come ashore. Many have been rehabilitated and returned to the ocean. And the ones that are dead by the time we see them get necropsied so they can better track the reasons that they die and understand our partners better.

I can’t say enough about the MMSN. They even teach classes about how to help when you encounter a stranding that our staff and our junior guards have gone through. Remember, if you’re interested you can learn more, volunteer, or contribute by checking out their website at www.dolphinrescue.org.