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| Sunset, Indian River Lagoon |
Sunsets on the Indian River Lagoon south of New Smyrna Beach in Canaveral National Seashore. Every sunset is unique and stunning. In the image below a dolphin surfaces near the center of the image.
Phillip on Twitter @philzcatz
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| Sunset with Dolphin Indian River Lagoon |
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| Warm November Afternoon Looking Toward Eldora Ghost Town Indian River Lagoon |
Winter on the Indian River is idyllic and perhaps a little like what drew settlers to this place in the 1800s, without the speed boats, crowds, and noise of summer.
The 24-mile long Canaveral National Seashore beach is the longest undeveloped beach on the east coast of Florida. The park is home to more than 1,000 plant species and 310 species of birds. Winter afternoons finds the beaches mostly deserted.
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| Canaveral National Seashore |
Eldora Ghost Town
Founded in 1877 in what today is a part of Apollo Beach (Canaveral National Seashore) south of New Smyrna Beach, Eldora was named after two of its pioneer residents, sisters Ellen and Dora Pitzer. Nestled between the Atlantic Ocean and Mosquito Lagoon, the town was in the heart of the water route that took many settlers south. It thrived in the roadless era.
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| Eldora Ghost Town State House |
Eldora's soil was rich and fertile, bearing bountiful crops, and its forest was full of animals and fowl that were hunted for food. The lagoon provided clams, oysters and plenty of fish, not to mention a means of transportation and trade.
The town boomed. Although early tax records show 50 to 75 people lived there, tales from early settlers push it to more than 200. The main industry was citrus and an unusual business of collecting and drying saw palmetto berries, which were then bagged and sent to New York. There, they were made into a medicine called Salmetto, supposedly good for what ailed you.
Buried under palmetto thicket, the foundations of some of the early pioneers' modest homes remain today, faint evidence of a town that was once a popular stopover by boat on the way to Miami.
One home, "The State House," has been partially restored (below).
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| Eldora State House |
Wading among rattlesnakes, mosquitoes, and the sharp-edged leaves of dense-growing saw palmetto to bring in the annual September harvest of berries was dirty, hot, dangerous labor. The men in this photo, taken near the drying yards north of Eldora, wear heavy woolen clothing to protect them from the harsh environment of their work.
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| Harvesting Saw Palmetto Berries |
A charmed moment captured by a member of the Wells family while visiting an island in Mosquito Lagoon. The photo hints at the values that are today held in trust for visitors to Canaveral National Seashore.
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| Island Hopping, Indian River Lagoon Then-called Hillsborough River |
An early sunset and low winter sun capture the spooky mood of this place (below).
Hottest Year Ever
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| Pelicans in a purple November sky |
November continues incredibly hot and dry across most of Central Florida. The promised cool and rains of El Niño have not yet materialized.
Earth’s surface temperature has surged high into uncharted territory, thanks to a record-strength El Niño event combined with the long-term rise in temperatures due to human-caused global warming: October 2015 was Earth’s warmest month on record by a huge margin, according to data released by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). October 2015 was the second consecutive month with a new all-time warmest month record: September 2015 previously held the record for the largest positive departure of temperature from average of any month among all 1630 months in the historical record that began in January 1880.
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| Brown Pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) |
October 2015's 0.98°C (1.76°F) departure from the 20th Century average beat the next ten runners-up by an unusually large margin, underscoring the unusual and extreme surge in global temperatures this year.
NASA also rated October 2015 as the warmest month in the historical record by a large margin, again defined as the largest positive departure from average.
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| Sargassum and shells Canaveral National Seashore |
October 2015's warmth makes the year-to-date period (January - October) the warmest such period on record, according to both NOAA and NASA. October 2015 was the sixth consecutive month a monthly high temperature record has been set in NOAA's database, and the eighth month of the ten months so far in 2015.
Monster seaweed takes over Mexico's Caribbean beaches.
The potent El Niño event in the Eastern Pacific that crossed the threshold into the "strong" category in early July continued to intensify into mid-November. Strong El Niño events release a large amount of heat to the atmosphere, typically boosting global temperatures by at least 0.1°C. This extra bump in temperature, when combined with the long-term warming of the planet due to human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide, makes it virtually certain that 2015 will be Earth's second consecutive warmest year on record. The lingering warmth from El Niño is likely to make 2016 a good bet to exceed even 2015's warmth.
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| This marauding raccoon had figured out how to open these trash bins and was making quite the mess. A week later the National Park Service had replaced the bins with coon-proof receptacles. Poor raccoon. I always feel bad for the native wildlife as their habitat is being squeezed in every direction. |
NOAA's top ten warmest global monthly departures from the 20th Century average:
1) 0.98°C, Oct 2015
2) 0.91°C, Sep 2015
3) 0.89°C, Mar 2015
4) 0.88°C, Feb 2015
4) 0.88°C, Jan 2007
6) 0.87°C, Aug 2015
6) 0.87°C, Jun 2015
8) 0.86°C, Feb 1998
9) 0.85°C, May 2015
10) 0.85°C, Mar 2010
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| Eldora State House as seen from Pumpkin Point |
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| A late afternoon rainbow over Pumpkin Point |
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| Another afternoon, a different sunset entirely. There are often late afternoon clouds blown in by seabreezes over the extremely warm Gulf Stream waters. |
We've Read:
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| Batfish. Photo: @brianskerry |
Text: @natgeo: A Batfish glides through the warm waters off of the Ogasawara Islands, Japan, feeding on plankton in the late day light filtering through the shallow sea. The Ogasawara Islands, 620 miles south of mainland Japan, are often referred to as the “Galápagos of the Orient” for their immense biological diversity.
Maybe there should be a mag-cover for the most vain man alive? It’s an interesting choice all the way out here in 2015, when Beckham’s star has faded considerably from the height of his football-playing years. Beckham is their oldest pick since Johnny Depp took the leather, cigar-smelling crown in 2009, though he’s certainly no worse for the wear. Beckham is, near about objectively, a sexy man! But is he the sexist man alive?
The world is on the cusp of a "post-antibiotic era", scientists have warned after finding bacteria resistant to drugs used when all other treatments have failed. They identified bacteria able to shrug off the drug of last resort - colistin - in patients and livestock in China. They said that resistance would spread around the world and raised the spectre of untreatable infections. It is likely resistance emerged after colistin was overused in farm animals. Bacteria becoming completely resistant to treatment - also known as the antibiotic apocalypse - could plunge medicine back into the dark ages.
(Terrorism: Indictment of Europe Without Borders)
La France ne masque plus son impatience devant la porosité de l'espace Schengen. Bernard Cazeneuve, attendu ce vendredi à Bruxelles, intensifie la pression pour faire adopter des mesures fermes.
(France loses patience with the porosity of the Schengen open borders of Europe. . .Bernard Cazeneuve, French Interior Minister, pressures EU to take firm measures).
In 1980, Swedish fasion and advertising photographer Håkan Ludwigson "escaped" the rat race of his usual work by traveling through Australia. There he came upon a community of "stockmen," cowboys who do grueling work in the Outback. Ludwigson was so fascinated with the culture that he vowed to chronicle it one day. That wish became his book "Balls and Bulldust," released in September 2015.