There be (no) monsters here

When I was 13, my folks offered me a choice between a sailboat and a horse. Being young and naive, I opted for the boat.

Boats, I reckoned, don't need to be fed, curried and exercised.

Right.

The practical effect of having a boat at my disposal, though, was that -- suddenly -- the 80+ square miles of Aransas Bay were mine to explore.

Looking back, and as a parent myself now, I can't imagine what the heck my folks were thinking when they dropped me off at sunrise and told me to be back for supper.

Oh, yes ... "Wear your life jacket," and "Don't forget to put on sunscreen!"

PFD buckled tight, my lunch, a gallon milk jug of tap water and a fishing rod stowed below the deck ... I'd take off. Sometimes I'd take a friend; sometimes I'd sail off all by myself.

I have wonderful memories of those days ... racing summer squalls off the Gulf, climbing mid-bay oil and gas production platforms and leaping into the cool, green waters ... hunting for mammoth teeth and fossilized sand dollars on the spoil islands; catching trout near an old, wrecked barge ... pacing curious dolphins who wondered, no doubt, just what kind of creature I was.

My mom worried about me, I know, and in retrospect I think it must have been my father who greenlighted those summer expeditions. As a youngster growing up on the shores of the same bay he was the proud skipper of an old skiff powered by a recalcitrant Montgomery Ward's 7.5hp outboard.

"It would usually get me to where I wanted to go," he's often said, "And then I'd row home."

I hope that, if I still lived in Rockport, I would allow my son to do the same at age 13.

I worry about my boy, though. And in that, I am not much different than most parents in the America of the early 21st Century.

Richard Louv, author of one of my favorite books of all time, Fly-Fishing for Sharks: An Angler's Journey Across America, in 2005 published Last Child in the Woods. It's a wonderful, thought-provoking look at what we are doing to our children by separating our kids from the outdoors.

Thought-provoking because Louv brings together a growing body of evidence that suggests the rise in childhood obesity, attention disorders and depression may be directly linked to what he calls "nature deficit disorder." Wonderful because he suggests ways that parents, educators, city planners, developers and others can begin to bridge the chasm between our children and the natural world.

One of the barriers Louv identifies that is keeping parents from allowing -- insisting on -- unstructured "play" time outdoors for their children is simply fear.

It's fear of strangers and fear of natural phenomena. We're afraid of sexual predators and crazed gunmen ... we're afraid of bears and lions, snakes and sharks. We're afraid of ... we're not even sure. We're just scared.

Fear of the unknown is nothing new; it's a fundamental human condition. In the dim, dark past -- four or five centuries ago, that is -- cartographers labeled the unknown: "There be monsters here."

But are there?

Perception and reality

Much of our fear stems not from our own experiences in the outdoors, but from news media reports that are ever more sensationalized. The 24-hour news cycle has networks, newspapers and local affiliates climbing over each other to grab our attention; it allows sensational stories to be reported again and again, and in greater depth than ever before.

A mountain lion attacks a child near Los Angeles, and within days sheriff's departments across Central Texas are flooded with calls about strange sounds in the night, missing pets, and shadowy glimpses of something large and tawny amongst the cedars.

News is the out-of-the-ordinary. News is tragedy. Disaster. Conflict. We don't watch what doesn't happen on TV. We don't hear about a perfectly enjoyable day in the outdoors for the simple reason that it is not newsworthy.

Supporting the notion that false perceptions sometimes outweigh reality, Louv quotes a Children's Defense Fund report from the mid1990s that claimed: "Every year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled."

The statement was widely reported in the mainstream media, though of course it is demonstrably false.

Prof. Joe Best of the University of Delaware debunks it: Were it true, in 1983, the number of American children gunned down would have been about 8.6 billion that year. In 1987, it would been greater than the estimated total of the world's population since the advent of humanity.

So what are the dangers to our children in the outdoors? Is nature likely to be lethal, or even very harmful?

On Aransas Bay -- and I've written elsewhere that I consider the more than 3,000 miles of Texas tidewater coastline to be a true wilderness, in many respects -- the answer is probably "no" (with a few caveats).

Dangerous people

Let's look at "stranger danger" first. That's the one I worry about most in relation to my own child, a bright, conscientious, level-headed 7-year-old.

The sad truth is, my son is probably at greater risk of falling victim to a predator in a shopping mall, on a neighborhood street or even his elementary school playground than on the waters of a Texas bay.

Predators congregate where the prey is. That's why lions hang out at watering holes on the Serengetti and trout and redfish pile-up at the mouths of sloughs and guts on an outgoing tide.

Since Jean Lafitte sailed away from the Texas coast a century and a half ago, our bays have been mostly free of folks who ply the waterways with the notion of harming others.

Peter Jenkins, the man who walked across the country, piloted a 25-foot Grady White alone from the tip of Florida to the Rio Grande back in the early 1990s.

On his journey around the Gulf of Mexico, he was threatened just once, when a couple of thugs attacked him in an effort to steal his boat as he entered Aransas Bay.

That shameful episode aside, it's almost certain the worst fate a young boater might face on our bays is indifference from a visiting angler unfamiliar with local mores (and international law, come to think of it) that dictate that a seafarer must always render aid to anyone in need on the water.

Drowning

Drowning, of course, is an ever-present danger when on, in or near the water.

In 2004, 270 people in Texas died due to drowning ... they included infants in bathtubs, children in the surf, boating accident victims and families attempting to drive across swollen waterways.

By way of comparison, the flu took 3,170 lives, peptic ulcers claimed 213 and 1,040 Texans died in falls.

Many of the drownings that occurred on public waters were the result of boating accidents. A quick look at the state's statistics show the coast, though, to be relatively safe. Last year, for instance, Lakes Travis and Cedar Creek each recorded three boating accident fatalities ...

Galveston Bay, one of the busiest bodies of water in the nation, had only two. Aransas Bay and the Gulf of Mexico: none.

No doubt this has something to do with who is using the water and how they're using it. On Lake Travis, it's often college-age partiers, and fast boats and alcohol play a role. On Aransas Bay, it's anglers and sailors.

My approach to keeping Patrick safe from drowning is straightforward: I've insisted he learn to swim; he always wears a life preserver when aboard a boat and when around the surf or dangerous currents I keep a close eye on him. It's the best I can do, right now, but enough to make me comfortable that his risk of drowning is very low.

Sharks and other terrors

Remember Jaws? I do ... it kept me out of the water for an entire summer. Sharks, as very efficient and sometimes very large apex predators rightly inspire respect from those who venture into their native habitat.

In locales where people mimic sharks' natural prey -- where a surfer's silhouette looks an awful lot like a seal on the surface, for instance -- there is some slight danger of becoming un snaquillo de tiburon.

In Texas, we have neither seals nor seal-snacking sharks. Not regularly, anyhow. We do, though, have half-ton tiger sharks roaming our beaches and those suckers can wolf-down sea turtles like popcorn.

In the bays and in our nearshore waters, schools of blacktips hunt mullet and other fish, and bull sharks -- some quite large -- nose through the mud after crabs and rays and redfish.

In Texas, there have been 32 recorded shark attacks. Of those, three were fatal, and the last one of those occurred seven years before I was born.

Even factoring in the entire United States, with Florida's and Hawaii's relatively higher numbers of attacks and fatalities, an individual is 10 times more likely to be killed by a dog than a shark.

Setting aside instances of sheer stupidity and poor judgment -- sailing under the bow of a tanker in the ship channel, or launching a boat in a tropical storm -- I've concluded that the greatest danger on the Texas coast arises not from two-legged villians nor from great beasts lurking below the waves, but from a critter so small you'd need a microscope to observe it.

Bad bugs

Okay, it's not even the greatest danger ... it's just my personal boogeybug because the effects are so nasty.

Bacteria from the Vibrio family include V. cholarea, which causes cholera ... it's a real problem in developing countries but not so much here. Cholera's cousin V. vulnificus, though, touches someone I know, or a friend of a friend anyhow, almost every year.

Vibrio can enter the body either through a wound (cut, scrape, blister) or through seafood. It's a common cause of "food poisoning" from eating oysters.

About a third of the three dozen or so reported Vibrio cases in Texas each year are caused by V. vulnificus, and about a quarter of those are fatal. The bug seems to be limited by both salinity (it likes salinities lower than seawater) and temperature (infections peak in warmer months ... of course, that's when most folks are in the water, too).

Meridith Byrd, a TPWD biologist who studies harmfal algal blooms and keeps up on other little critters, like Vibrio, grew up in the Texas Coastal Bend and she says she never worries about Vibrio.

Should I be concerned, I asked her?

"Nah, not unless you’ve got risk factors: liver disorders (hepatitis, cirrhosis), diabetes, immunocompromising conditions (HIV/AIDS, cancer, autoimmune disorder such as lupus), recent gastric surgery or take antacids for an ulcer, hemochromatosis (metabolic iron disorder)," she told me. "Vibrio is not something that routinely causes problems in a normal, healthy person. Ninety-nine percent of the cases that make the news involve a victim with an already-compromised immune system."

Those cases, though, are horrific.

Two buddies go fishing in Matagorda Bay. A couple of days later each experiences swelling, and redness on extremities and suffer fevers and other flu-like symptoms. They go the hospital and one ends up losing a leg below the knee. The other dies.

Or a fishing guide notices a cut on his hand has become infected. It gets worse, and several days later he's in the hospital with the flesh rotting away from his arm (which is now split open from his wrist to his shoulder). For the next six months, he faces a repeated regimen of surgical debridement.

The killing blow, from Vibrio, is septocemia -- a condition that occurs when the bacteria enters the bloostream and causes a systemic infection. About half who enter that stage of the disease don't recover.

Despite my personal horrified fascination with this littlest monster, the good news is, it's still relatively rare to contract Vibrio. Deer kill something like 50 times the number of people who die from Vibrio in Texas each year. Furthermore, treatment in the early stages is a simple round of antibiotics.

Let us be clear: the Texas coast is in some places a remote and very harsh environment. Anyone who ventures into it should be prepared: take plenty of drinking water and wear sunscreen.

Know how to operate your vessel and wear a personal flotation device. File a float plan and, if you can, make sure you have some means of communication (cell phones work some places, but much better is a handheld VHF radio).

As for Patrick, I'll continue to educate him about the dangers above and below the water and how best to avoid them. A lot of it is just common sense.

I'll prepare him as best I can to safely enjoy the wilderness so near us. And then, I sincerely hope, I'll be brave enough to turn him lose to explore it on his own.

We're already talking about his boat ... it looks now like it will be a 10-foot, stitch-and-glue constructed dingy. He says he'll call it "Rascal."

[The first image is a detail from Sunrise with Sea Monsters, by John Mallord William Turner (1775-1851. It hangs in the Tate Gallery, London.]