Before disembarkation, the cruise ship guide tells everyone to not miss
the boat and warns that awol passengers will have to pay for their own hotel
room overnight and pay for a ticket to the next destination to meet the boat
the next day. The reality is that there are small boats at the dock
waiting for passengers who miss the cruise ship, because passengers can pay
them to race out to the cruise ship while it is underway and leaving. The
small boat matches the speed of the cruise ship and passengers are able to
jump onto the cruise ship. It sounds like so much fun that I will deliberately
miss the cruise ship on my next trip.
We visited Stingray City, a sandbar where stingrays have been fed so often
that they congregate and approach tourists who can touch, hold and feed
them. The guides provide squid to attract the stingrays. Stingrays
don't have teeth, just hard gums. I put a piece of squid down my swim
trunks.
These kite-shaped fish are related to sharks and stingrays, and like all
members of the group do not have hard bones. Skinned ‘wings’ are very moist,
delicate, white flesh suitable for grilling, frying and baking. Some people
don’t like the flavour, but others rate it very highly, and it is usually
quite cheap. Worth trying. There is a network of cartilaginous strands in
the middle of each portion but these are not a hassle to deal with. There
are two types, rough and smooth skate. Historically, this species has not
been commercially important. However, there has been some marketing of skate
meat as scallops using round cuts from the skate wings.
On the bus trip back from Stingray City, a college kid asked for five
volunteers to fill out a written survey about the sea creatures. I
immediately volunteered as I always do. The survey was the usual "Man
bad, Stingray good" propaganda. I commenced to mark all of the "wrong"
answers, all having to do with "saving" the stingrays from humans. Comments
were invited at the end, where I listed my webpage about farming sea turtles
http://rexcurry.net/ecoturtles.html
and explained that there should be private property rights in the sandbars
and in the water and in Stingray City, and that farming of stingrays should
be explored in the same manner as sea turtle farming. They should also
cultivate some of the enormous 200+ pound sea turtles from the turtle farm
to expand the wildlife at Stingray City so that people can cavort with them
also. The sea turtles are so large and powerful that people could hitch
a ride in the water. Riding stingrays isn't done, probably because a stingray's
tail would be in a very sensitive spot on a human rider.
When the tour bus returned to the dock another college kid met the bus
to pick up the completed surveys. I was in a hurry as I handed her
the survey and hollered "I'm rushing to grab a sea turtle burger for lunch
before my ship leaves!"
Later, for dinner on the ship, I tried to turn escargot into an endangered
species.
******************************
This anarchaeology information is from the anarchaeological studies of
the Society of Anarchaeologists and borrowed from the work of the world-famous
Anarchaeologist Dr. Rex Curry.
