Hold it now.
SURF:
I can't remember the last time we had a bombing swell but the last few weeks have been entertaining to say the least. Mild weather, fun SW swells, and some NW swells to make peaks up and down the beach. Water is finally manageable too at 65 degrees.
FORECAST:
After a dull weekend of surf, we have a peaking SW swell for Monday with chest high+ waves in north county SD and shoulder high+ waves in the OC. That holds into Tuesday morning. Not much after that from the SW as storms seem to be forming under South America and not really aiming surf towards us.
WEATHER:
The surf and weather this weekend seem to be synced up- pretty boring. The low clouds will stick around the coast all weekend. Look for hazy sunshine inland and temps in the mid 60's at the beaches due to the overcast conditions. Models then show a weak front coming through early next week. No rain it looks like but more cool cloudy weather.
BEST BET:
Looks like Monday with that new fun little SW swell. Hopefully we'll get better surf and better weather 7-10 days out!
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
This is the reason I try to stay away from surfing river mouths- besides the chance of sharks feeding at the entrance- it’s the crap that flows from humans into the wetlands, then into the rivers, and finally into the ocean. Unfortunately the sandbars in front of the river mouths are usually good so it’s tempting to surf, but as the story in the San Diego Union Tribune points out this week, there’s some scary stuff coming out of the Tijuana Rivermouth. I’ve always been spooked to surf Tijuana Sloughs due to it breaking a mile offshore in heavy surf, the chance of sharks feeding on the crap that comes out of the river, and the filthy water flowing out of the river mouth, but this story is ridiculous. Read on…
“It’s the kind of scenario that might evolve in Hollywood: A college professor detects drug-resistance genes collecting in local wetlands, where they survive for weeks and are spread far and wide by seabirds. But the discovery of extra-hardy DNA flourishing on the edge of San Diego isn’t science fiction. It’s the result of research by David Cummings, a microbiologist at Point Loma Nazarene University. In the sewage-laced sediment of the Tijuana River Valley, Cummings and his students have uncovered an array of genes that help their bacteria hosts survive shots of penicillin, quinolones and other fundamental infection-fighting antibiotics. Over time, he fears the DNA could worm its way into bacteria that infect humans and undermine some of the world’s most widely prescribed medicines. Think of the genes akin to living contaminants with an ability to spread and shuttle between bacteria.“Genes that confer antibiotic resistance may in fact pose a more serious long-term public and ecosystem health threat than many pollutants in urban storm water,” Cummings said. “From the perspective of public health, as soon as the coliforms disappear from the water column, everybody is happy. But the reality is there is this longer-term threat that is accumulating in the sediment.” Related issues are starting to get widespread attention, in part because drug resistance is among the greatest challenges in modern health care. Some of Cummings’s findings were published last year in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology and they are more relevant than ever given two sewage spills totaling 4 million gallons into the Tijuana River last month. Those incidents highlighted a problem that dates back decades: Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on wastewater treatment and collection along the San Diego-Tijuana border, the river remains one of the most heavily polluted waterways in the United States. Community activists in the South Bay are pushing for more spending on sewage control, but uncontrolled flows aren’t likely to end in the foreseeable future because many canyon-side homes in Tijuana aren’t connected to wastewater treatment plants. Periodic infrastructure breakdowns exacerbate chronic problems. The most likely explanation for the presence of drug-resistance genes in the Tijuana watershed is that they are riding downstream in feces, then collecting in the muck. Over time, bacteria in the intestinal tracks of people, cows and other mammals that are treated with antibiotics can develop immunity to classes of commonly used drugs and pass through the body intact. Bacteria also have an unusual ability to swap DNA, meaning they are virtually impossible to control outside a laboratory. Cummings’s concern is fueled by the fact that birds, waves and other vectors can pick up the bacteria and spread it to other spots where more people can come into contact with them. There’s no evidence that’s happened with drug-resistance genes locally. However, a 2010 study on gulls in Sweden concluded that bacteria of wild animals — with or without antibiotic-resistance traits — are a potential source of human infection. At the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, a state-federal collaboration in Imperial Beach, research coordinator Jeff Crooks is fascinated by Cummings’s investigation even though it underscores what’s wrong with the river. “(Drug resistance) is definitely moving out of the hospital environment … and into the natural environment,” he said. “If it makes people focus on this place, that is good.” Officials at the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board said Cummings has highlighted an “area of keen interest” but the agency hasn’t conducted its own research on the topic. San Diego State University is launching related work this summer in the Tijuana watershed with a grant from the Keck Foundation. Faculty and undergraduates plan to track how infectious diseases — not drug-resistance traits — move into and out of the wild. “We have in the past couple of decades, seen a lot more emerging infectious diseases. But in a lot of cases we didn’t know where the heck they come from,” said Stanley Maloy, dean of the university’s College of Sciences. “The Tijuana River estuary is a great place to look for the spread of these genes between different organisms in an environment that we can monitor carefully.” In 2008, Cummings took under grads to the Tijuana River in hopes of describing what kind of bacteria lived in the floodplain. Eventually, a student asked whether she could isolate any drug-resistance genes in the mud. They didn’t take long to find. “We said, ‘Wow. There is something going on here that we need to look further into,’” Cummings said. “Nobody was really asking whether or not the bad bacteria are persistent beyond the 72-hour window when the water seems to clear up.” Three days (72 hours) is the standard amount of time that county health officials suggest staying out of urban coastal areas following heavy rainfall, which washes all sorts of pollutants to the ocean. During that period, dilution, salt in the water and sunlight make waterborne bacteria much less of a threat."
For more on the story, check out the full article here.
BEST OF THE BLOG:
PIC OF THE WEEK:
Today's Pic of the Week comes from the Lesser Antilles. You know, that amazing group of islands in the Caribbean that are composed of the Virgin Islands, Barbados, Aruba, etc. But after seeing today's pic, not sure why the place is called 'lesser'. It looks pretty top notch to me. For more great shots of the region, check out Venture There.
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
Top Notch
Professional Unicyclist
Patenting Crocheted Boardshorts
