Originally Posted By StillThePassHolder For those of you who don't know, and likely there's more than a few, Corky Carroll is a surfing legend extraordinaire here in Southern California. He's managed to parlay his surfing expertise into a lifelong vocation. Among other things, years ago he was featured in the old Miller Lite Tastes Great/Less Filling commercials. He co-owns a very nice restaurant at the Huntington Beach pier called Duke's, and has this column in the Orange County Register, where the following came from. Dudes, if nothing else, this is entertaining. ***************************** Be on the lookout for gender-bending fish CORKY CARROLL Register columnist SURF'S UP corkysurf@aol.com ______________________________________ Ah man, if it's not somethin', it's somethin' else. One day we have smelly red tide and monster jellyfish and the next it's used hypodermic needles washing up on the beach and giant squid crawling out of the surf and yankin' down piers. Can't we ever have a little bit of mercy down here in our local waters? Sharks and barracudas are bad enough. But the latest little tidbit of news concerning "she-male" fish and the safety of surfing, or swimming, or merely basking merrily in the Orange County ocean has me more than a tad concerned. Holy Mer-Mackarel, it has me downright mortified. We have all heard the stories about biohazards and water pollution over the past couple of decades. This is nothing new. Outfalls and downfalls and over the falls and seepages and treatments and treatment for the treatments, etc., etc. We have all heard about the water being cleaner than it has been and them "doing all that they can do" to ensure us a cleaner and safer ocean after we have pretty much mucked it up really badly by dumping dumpsters of poopoo and Pampers and everything else in it for years and years. And I have been buying it. The water does seem cleaner. But then I came across this new report presented at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry meeting in Baltimore. It seems that scientists have found sexually altered fish off of our coastline. Male fish with female organs. Dude fish that produce eggs. Geez, what is this watery world coming to? Transvestite trout? Is nothing sacred anymore? They are calling them "intersex animals" and say it isn't really anything new. But previously they had only found these bi-bass in fresh water. Not here in our local surf. They are concerned that this is being caused by treated sewage that is being dumped into the ocean that contains chemicals that can affect an animal's reproductive system. In a study they examined 82 male English sole and hornyhead turbot caught off the O.C. and Los Angeles coast and found that 11 of them had ovary tissue in their testes. And they have no idea of how this is affecting the overall fish population. And if they don't know that, I am sure that they know even less how it is affecting you and me and the rest of us that surf or swim or merely bask merrily in our local ocean. And what in the heck is a hornyhead turbot anyway? I remember a dude we used to call Hornyhead Talbert. But he wasn't sexually confused like these fish. He just had really bad hair and no dates. This is an entirely different matter. Could us surf dudes be getting pregnant from getting held down too long and being chemically altered? In other studies it has been confirmed that two-thirds of fish found near the Orange County outfall are egg-producing and in a laboratory experiment fish exposed to sediment collected near the outfall also developed egg-producing traits. Folks, we are not talking about huevos rancheros here. What's next? Dolphins with breasts? The surf bumps I have on my ribcage are bad enough. All I need now are some eggs to go with them. I am gettin' really worried about this stuff. On top of that I saw a school of angelfish swimmin' by this morning and ya know what? Some of them were lookin' really cute. What does this all mean? As would be expected, more studies are planned. They are talkin' about collecting a bunch of flatfish and checkin' them out. This seems like a bad choice if ya ask me, which nobody has, by the way. I'm tellin' ya dudes, we live in crazy times. If ya start getting a compulsion to paint your toenails so they look cool when hanging 10, you might wanna go get checked out. And what's the test for this anyway? A blue cross and you're cool but a pink one and you're a mama? Don't be pallin' up to no pufferfish either. Kinda makes ya wanna take up bowling and go back to burgers, don't it? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Got a question about surfing? Check out Corky's "Ask the Expert" feature at www.ocregister. com/sports/surfing/. The three-time international and five-time U.S. surfing champion also writes a column in Thursday's Huntington Beach Wave. E-mail him at corkysurf@aol.com
Originally Posted By Big Thunder LOL my freind likes Corky, he lives to get off work from his graveyard shift, then drive down to OC beaches for a morning ride on his surf board, I'm gunna enjoy sharing this article with him <<""On top of that I saw a school of angelfish swimmin' by this morning and ya know what? Some of them were lookin' really cute. What does this all mean?">> <<"I'm tellin' ya dudes, we live in crazy times. If ya start getting a compulsion to paint your toenails so they look cool when hanging 10, you might wanna go get checked out.">>
Originally Posted By itsme Cork's cool. There was an article in my local paper last week about a deer hunter who got his white tail " 8 point buck" only to find out that when he went to feild dress it, it had no jewels shall we say. He contacted game officials who said that they are starting see some female deer with a short burst of high amounts of testostrone grow antlers that fall of shorlty after. The females antlers never make it long enough for the the deer to remove the velvet. The deer in question had rubbed off the velvet which they said makes it confusing just what the story is, so they are looking into further, early thoughts and looks are that this deer has both. They are looking into just
