osmoregulate
osmoregulation of
osmotic pressure

Osmoregulate.

Osmoregulation.

Osmotic.

Such fabulous words.

Words I have never heard of .

Words I have never heard of but that I see in action almost everyday since moving to the coastal empire of the low country of South Carolina.

I live about as close to the seashore as one can live without being wealthy beyond my dreams.

I live in a coastal enviroment.

I live where where the majority of the birds that I see every day are known as sea birds.

According to wikipedia, There exists no single definition of which groups, families and species are seabirds, and most definitions are in some way arbitrary. Elizabeth Shreiber and Joanna Burger, two seabird scientists, said, “The one common characteristic that all seabirds share is that they feed in saltwater; but, as seems to be true with any statement in biology, some do not.

Seabirds have had to, over time, adapt to living by the sea or living by saltwater.

Again according to Wikipedia, one of the things that set sea birds apart from other birds is that they have salt glands that are used by seabirds to deal with the salt they ingest by drinking and feeding (particularly on crustaceans), and to help them osmoregulate. The excretions from these glands (which are positioned in the head of the birds, emerging from the nasal cavity) are almost pure sodium chloride.

I was looking up sea birds the other day as I had just snapped a picture of a sanderling or a plover to send to my sister.

I was mentioning to my sister how the different sea birds that feed along the wave line have beaks of different lengths so that as good things for sea birds to eat are at different depths in the sand, many different sea birds can feed along the same stretch of beach.

Just one of those cool little factoids of nature to keep in your back pocket when walking along the wave line with friends and you want to show some smart.

While reading about sea birds in Wikipedia, I read that just quoted passage and hit that word, osmoregulate.

I love words like that that I never came across before.

I also love any word that spell check tosses out which tells me the computers haven’t seen the word either.

I had to look it up.

Again according to Wikipedia, “Osmoregulation is the active regulation of the osmotic pressure of an organism’s body fluids, detected by osmoreceptors, to maintain the homeostasis of the organism’s water content; that is, it maintains the fluid balance and the concentration of electrolytes (salts in solution which in this case is represented by body fluid) to keep the body fluids from becoming too diluted or concentrated. Osmotic pressure is a measure of the tendency of water to move into one solution from another by osmosis. The higher the osmotic pressure of a solution, the more water tends to move into it. Pressure must be exerted on the hypertonic side of a selectively permeable membrane to prevent diffusion of water by osmosis from the side containing pure water.”

Osmoregulation is the active regulation of the osmotic pressure of an organism’s body fluids, detected by osmoreceptors, to maintain the homeostasis of the organism’s water content.

Simple enough, right?

I mean it means just what is says.

Osmoregulation is the active regulation of the osmotic pressure of an organism’s body fluids, detected by osmoreceptors, to maintain the homeostasis of the organism’s water content.

It takes the salt out.

Oh.

Simple right?

I enjoy reading books about walking the Appalachian Trail.

I come away with two thoughts.

These people are cool.

These people are also nuts.

But I read the books any way and often look up all the cool equipment they mention.

One of the many pieces of cool equipment mentioned are portable water filters.

It came to me that if one of these filters could filter seawater and remove the salt, they would be perfect for the beach.

I looked up the most recommended filtering product.

It was a series of bottles connected with a hand pump.

Fill up one bottle with water from your local backwoods, high in the Blue Ridge Mountain spring.

Pump the water through the filter to the other bottle and bango-presto all the impurities and chemicals and bugs and amoebas and other nasties that cause all sorts of problems you don’t want to deal with while walking the Appalachian Trail are removed and the water is safe to drink.

I contacted the company to asked if their system could filter saltwater?

Had I known, I would have asked if their system could osmoregulate water.

The company was quick to respond.

They told me their product COULD NOT remove salt from seawater.

They also had to point out that ANYONE who came up with such a filter would be a BILLIONAIRE.

Well, boy howdy but that shut me up.

But now I think, sea birds can do it.

Osmoregulation.

What’s the big deal?

Like those different lengths of beaks, sometimes you just have to take the back seat and the same time, take your hat half to nature.

answers on the beach
to any question and tide brings
new answers twice daily

I really do believe that the answer to every question you might ever have can be found in the sand at the beach.

When you understand that the tide comes in twice each day and wipes out all the old answers and provides a beach full of new answers, the wonderfullness of this arrangement of answer management becomes even more wonderful.

I am happy to take advantage of this phenomena.

I walk the beach when ever I can, looking for answers.

I walk at lunch time at work.

“Going out for answers, anybody need any?”, I yell as I walk out of the room.

They are all there, the answers, just waiting for you.

But there is one caution.

Do you remember the old movie, No Time for Sergeants with Andy Griffith?

That scene when Mr. Griffith makes all the toilets seats stand up and salute?

That scene almost killed my Dad with a heart attack he laughed so hard.

The thing was that my Dad almost had a heart attack EVERY time he watched this scene.

Maybe knowing it was coming made it even funnier?

In the movie, Mr. Griffith and his Sergeant go over ALL THE ANSWERS to the all the tests Mr. Griffith has to take and PASS, to get classified.

When asked how did on the tests, Mr. Griffith replies, “you spent so much time drumming the answers into me …we ought to have spent a little more on the questions they joint up with.“

All the answers are there on the beach.

You have to bring your own questions that those answers joint up with.

cannot tell – world is
grown so bad wrens make prey where
eagles dare not perch

I cannot tell. The world is grown so bad
That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.
Since every Jack became a gentleman,
There’s many a gentle person made a Jack.

Richard III (Act I, Scene 3, Line 71)

I saw this feller today on at Fish Haul Beach on Hilton Head Island.

I kept getting closer and closer with my iPhone out with my finger poised over the VIDEO RECORD button waiting for the bird to fly off.

I got closer and closer.

The eagle kind of stared at me.

Stared at me as if say, What Fresh Hell is This?

I was at the beach.

The eagle was at the beach.

We decided to ignore each other and worry only about the world gone bad.