North Coast Journal October 25, 2007 : IN THE NEWS : SHORT STORIES

October 25, 2007

Tales from the Madaket | It’s the Algae, Dear

Tales from the Madaket

The Motor Vessel Madaket harbors a veritable boatload of stories in its weathered Doug fir planks. From 1910, when she was built, to 1972, when the Samoa Bridge went up, the Madaket (originally named the Nellie C) ferried scores of mill workers and their families and other folks back and forth between Samoa and Eureka and other points along Humboldt Bay.

Relaunching the Madaket, 1989

“We’ve had over 400 millyards on Humboldt Bay since white settlers established here 150 years ago,” said Janet Wood on Monday afternoon, sitting with Dalene Zerlang on the sun-drenched deck of the Madaket, docked at the end of Commercial Street in Eureka. photo of Nellie C The now-community-funded Madaket runs as a harbor cruise boat these days — for birthday parties, class reunions, nature excursions, harbor district meetings, you name it.

The Nellie C with captain, circa 1910

On June 6, 2010, this last of the bay’s ferry boats will be 100 years old. She’s the oldest passenger vessel in continuous service in the United States. And her keepers — her crew, volunteers and the Humboldt Bay Maritime Museum — want to throw the old gal a party. They also want to collect stories and photographs from folks who’ve crowded onto the 12-foot-by-49-foot Nellie C/Madaket over the years. Wood, who crewed this summer on the Madaket as deck hand/bartender and became so addicted to the lifestyle that she’s stayed on as a volunteer, is helping Zerlang of the Humboldt Maritime Museum organize a “Hundred Years of Madaket” bash. She says all Madaket memories are welcome, whether they’re from that drunken get-together a few weeks ago, or from everyday travel in decades past.

“We had an elderly gentleman in his 80s who came on board, and he was telling me he used to ride this boat everyday,” said Wood. “He had his three daughters and his granddaughter with him, and while the captain was up there narrating, he was down here narrating his own stories. He said he’d ridden it when he was a kid — when he was a teenager he lived in Eureka and he was dating a girl over in Samoa. photo of the ferry fleet And he almost started crying when he saw the postcard showing what she used to look like.”

The Madaket’s sister ships, in the teens. Photos courtesy Humboldt Bay Maritime Museum.

“There was a baby born here,” added Zerlang. “He’s still alive; he lives in Ferndale.”

“Some of these guys who come on board, the ones around 50 years old, they say things like, ‘I used to take the Madaket every day to Samoa to ride my bike and play on the beaches,’” said Wood.

Zerlang, who’s been on the phone with her husband while we talk on deck, hangs up and says, “His name’s Tony Leonardo, the guy who was born on the boat.” Apparently, Tony’s pregnant mom was en route from Samoa to Eureka to the hospital but Tony was in a hurry.

Yep, all kinds of stories lurk about this boat. One day, said Zerlang, as she and a crowd of tourists were at dock waiting to depart for a cruise, they watched as a naked woman leaped from the Samoa Bridge. “We untied and took the boat over to pull her out of the water,” said Zerlang. The poor woman, however, swam to shore; the Madaket crew supplied her with a blanket. photo of Madket being rebuilt

Rebuilding the Madaket, 1989

But about that baby, Tony Leonardo — that’s sure something, to be born on such a narrow little boat, probably crowded with dusty millworkers and whatnot. Quite a tale. Tuesday morning, Tony Leonardo wasn’t home to relate the story of his origins, but his wife Gerry was.

“Actually, that’s a tall tale,” she said. “He was born in Samoa in ’33 — at home. His mother worked at the Eureka Inn. And she used to ride the Madaket acrcoss the bay from Samoa.”

Gerry Leonardo said about five years ago, her husband was gabbing with some crab fisherman at the foot of C Street, and he told them the whopper about his being born on the Madaket. The story rapidly became legend and now even the Madaket crew believes it. “It’s not the truth,” said Gerry. “These guys just like to joke.”

Well, tall tales, real tales, whatever — the museum and Madaket folks want to hear them. You can e-mail your memories of traveling on the Madaket to 100yearsmadaket@gmail.com or send them to P.O. Box 282, Samoa, CA 95564. Send photos, too. And, adds Wood, let her know what sort of celebration you’d like to see in 2010.

— Heidi Walters

It’s the Algae, Dear

Oh, drear, more gloom and bad cheer — that’s what you’re thinking if you’re a SAD Brit hunkered down in your centuries-old stone house staring out the fortress slit at yet another gray day. What is this mist before your eyes, tears or rain? So you punch on the computer and randomly search for sunny news. And the ad of your dreams pops up: “Bottled sunshine offsets winter blues.” It’s a promotion for a product called vitalMAX from some outfit in the United Kingdom.

“Shorter days and cold weather make most of us feel more tired and gloomy but the outlook for people prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder is even darker,” reads the ad. It reports that people with SAD undergo a brain transformation in which “their brain’s output of neurotransmitters (that fire off emotions, hormones and thought patterns, among other things) ‘switches off’ as daylight levels fall.”

Sunshine, says the ad, is the answer. A bit further down comes the pitch: “No-one has found a way to bottle sunshine yet, but Klamath blue-green algae comes closest. As the planet’s first photosynthesiser, Klamath’s blue-green algae is well-placed to transfer its stores of ‘condensed sunshine’ to us.”

Well, that’s funny, you think. Because, during your summer vacation to the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., you happened to be paddling around on the Klamath River enjoying some real sunshine when along came an official sort hammering up a notice on a nearby tree that said something pointed like, you remember hazily, “get out of the water now, it’s toxic because of the blue-green algae.” It was scary.

Googling about, you find that there are tons of companies pushing Klamath blue-green algae — a cure for all of life’s cruel blows, it seems. But then you replace the word “tonic” with “toxic,” and up come all the scary news stories about dogs dying of liver failure after swimming in the river, about tribal members unable to perform ceremonies and having to tell their kids to stay out of the water.

So what gives? Is Klamath blue-green algae toxic or tonic? Sad people everywhere want to know.

Susan Corum, water quality coordinator for the Karuk Tribe, says what the blue-green algae pushers are harvesting “is a different species species of blue-green algae” from the one — Microcystis aeruginosa — known to produce the toxin microcystin. And it’s true the companies mention one specific blue-green algae, called Aphanizomenon Flos-Aquae (AFA). “However, what they’re harvesting is out in the natural environment — upper Klamath Lake, and a canal,” says Corum. “And the problem is, harvesting from the wild, you can’t control what kind of species are combined in there.”

The Karuk Tribe regularly monitors water quality in the reservoirs above Iron Gate and Copco dams and in the Klamath River below the dams, where the toxic algae often rises above acceptable health levels. “When we send out samples to the lab, there’s never just one kind of algae species — you get from five to over 20 species,” says Corum.

That said, Corum notes that the blue-green algae harvesters cull their product from upper Klamath Lake, in Oregon. That’s good, for one, because the state of Oregon applies standards to algae harvesting, and, for another, because while the known-to-be-toxic algae M. aeruginosa is found in upper Klamath Lake, it doesn’t occur at the levels found lower in the river system. “But there’s other species that can be toxic, too,” says Corum. “I would be concerned about any supplement where they’re harvesting it from the wild.”

The “bottled sunshine” folks didn’t respond to an e-mail by press time. However, a consultant to Power Organics, one of the three harvesters of the blue-green algae AFA from upper Klamath Lake and an associated canal, said on Tuesday that of course their algae is a tonic, not a toxin. But “the microcystin issue is a serious one,” Gabriel Diamond says. He says the populations of different algae species fluctuate with the seasons, with blooms of the toxic M. aeruginosa typically peaking in the heat of summer and dying back to practically nil by late autumn. “We are not going to harvest until the microcystin species is nonvisible” under microscopes, he says. “We also have a microfiltration system that can separate out the microcystin. We were the company that developed this.”

Now, years ago, there was a serious flap over blue-green algae supplements. Someone died of liver failure, a company (not Diamond’s) got sued, and reports pro and con proliferated. Diamond says he doesn’t believe algae killed the person. But Craig Tucker, spokesman for the Karuk Tribe, says he figures the reports of toxic algae on the lower Klamath must be bad for the algae business, anyhow. “Now and then some snappy dressed person shows up at a water board meeting” to talk about the difference between their algae and the toxic stuff, Tucker says.

Diamond says his company’s used to the bad press by now. “I recommend this stuff to my friends,” he says.

Tucker, on the other hand, doesn’t do any health supplements. “I believe in three square meals a day,” he says.

— Heidi Walters

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