“Crabbing” about Cal Ag cover

The October-December 2004 issue of California Agriculture is, as usual, very interesting and informative, particularly the Dungeness crab articles.

Your cover picture, however, does not depict Dungeness crab fishing. More likely the photo is of a snow crab boat — in Alaska or maybe even the Bering Sea! Nevertheless, it is a beautiful, dramatic photo. Just looking at it gives me a bit of motion sickness.

The scene is familiar to me. I did my Ph.D. research at the College of Fisheries and the Institute for Food Science at the University of Washington in Seattle. To carry out the study I spent many weeks at sea going from Puget Sound as far as the Gulf of Alaska. Most of my time was spent aboard a small research vessel converted from a trawler. (I almost had my legs cut off by a snapped winch cable that whipped across the deck.)

I have enjoyed reading California Agriculture over the years. The topics covered are broad and the articles are consistently well written and informative. Your publication is particularly important to me since I have retired and have become a fruit grower — still learning, growing great fruits, trying to make a buck or two and having a lot of fun.

John G. Chan

Hilo, Hawaii

Editor's response: Thank you for your interest in California Agriculture — and for your correct observation regarding the October-December 2004 cover.

We located this stock photo after searching for an illustration depicting the dangerous conditions at sea when the race for crab begins. However, the agency providing this photo had not documented the identity of the crab. We established its identity as snow crab and immediately corrected the omission on our Web site.

Donation to Amazon research institute

You will be pleased to learn that a shipment of 50 years of California Agriculture magazines (from 1954 to present) has been received by the Institute Nacional de Pesquisas de Amazonia (INPA) in Manaus, Brazil. Several years ago, I met Dr. Rosalee Coelho Netto at a conference and decided to donate my personal library of phytopathology resources to the institute, which had very little reference literature in its library. I arranged to ship the California Agriculture magazines, as well as several decades of Plant Disease, Phytopathology and a small library of agricultural manuals. The crate arrived in good order at the Manaus port in April, but was held up at the docks by a worker strike until August. Finally, all matters were worked out and the shipment is now in the hands of the receiver library.

In a letter, Dr. Netto of INPA wrote: “The books and journals will be a wonderful and important resource for INPA students and researchers.” The acting director of INPA, Edinaldo Nelson dos Santos Silva, added, “Your act enriched our library and will help to enlarge the knowledge of our students, professors, researchers and scholars of the Amazonia region.”

Franklin Laemmlen

County Director & Farm Advisor Santa Barbara County

Editor's response: We are gratified to learn of your donation, and impressed that your perseverance paid off. Because your collection ended in 2004, California Agriculture has provided a free subscription to the institute's library (international subscribers normally pay $24 annually to defray postage and handling costs).