Coast Guard station to add 'Pea' to pod

The cutter Pea Island is the first Coast Guard vessel in its class with a mixed-gender crew.

By JON WILSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 13, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Make way for Pea Island.

The cutter, whose name represents U.S. Coast Guard history, is scheduled to arrive at its new St. Petersburg home about 10 a.m. Monday.

It is the third 110-foot cutter to be based at the St. Petersburg station on Eighth Avenue SE in recent weeks, following the Knight Island and Kodiak Island.

Commissioned in 1992 at Norfolk, Va., the ship's name honors the famed Pea Island lifesaving station on North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Pea Island was the first Coast Guard installation with an all-African American crew, which developed a reputation for daredevil rescue missions dating to 1880. The station operated until 1947.

The Pea Island also is the first Coast Guard vessel in its class to sail with a mixed-gender crew. Two officers and 15 enlisted crew members are aboard.

The 110-footers are expected to stay busy. Their agenda includes law enforcement, search and rescue, fisheries and migrant interdiction, marine environmental response and recreational boating safety.

It's census time for scallops, too, at least in Tampa Bay's mollusk provinces.

So grab a snorkel and launch a boat to help.

Volunteers are needed to count the tangy bivalves during Saturday's 2000 Great Bay Scallop Search. But you need to sign up: Call Tampa BayWatch at 896-5320.

Starting at 9 a.m. from the Fort De Soto boat ramp, about 50 boats and 200 participants will comb seagrass meadows and other likely sites in lower Tampa Bay and Boca Ciega Bay.

Scallops once were so thick you could harvest a quick lunch in waters around south Pinellas. That held true into the 1950s, when pollution crushed the fishery.

Clean-water legislation dating to 1970 has helped renew bay health, and scallops are thought to be making an inch-by-inch rally.

The yearly scallop search is a popular event, which is why reservations are required.

Someone left a message for "the inkfish" last week, apparently a reference to your waterfront scribe.

I like it. Think I once snagged an inkfish with my Ugly Stik, and it may have been among the most unprepossessing squirts I've ever spied. (And no, don't say I've been beaten with my own Ugly Stik -- it's these derned newspaper mug shots, that's all.)

But the buzz, folks, the buzz: Weedon Island Preserve might extend its embrace to include state-owned -- but county-managed -- property in the Gateway area. It would include the bayous and coves and mangrove jungles around I-275 and its feeders in far north St. Petersburg.

Might even be a canoe trail up on Fourth Street N just before it bleeds into the interstate.

It's no done deal. But Craig Huegel, the county's nature preserve overseer, said this about the Gateway land:

"It would make more sense to roll it into the Weedon preserve."

Sounds like one of those stay-tuned situations.

Joan McGowan is the Port of St. Petersburg's new marketing assistant. Her first day was July 31 and she spent most of last week helping show a contingent from Vera Cruz, Mexico, around Tampa Bay's trio of ports.

McGowan, 36, has nearly a decade's maritime background in such areas as cargo shipping, cruises and stevedore companies.

The Mexican group included the director of marketing and trade development at the Port of Vera Cruz, the state of Vera Cruz's economic development director and two Vera Cruz port tenants.

They were impressed with St. Petersburg, calling it a "clean and green" city, said port director Michael Perez.

St. Petersburg and Vera Cruz could one day work out reciprocal ports-of-call arrangements for any cruise ships based in the two cities.

Another one of those sudden afternoon blows swooped across Tampa Bay from the east last Sunday, sending cruise boats and other private craft scuttling for quick cover.

There was plenty of high winds and rough water reported -- including an unofficial 50-knot blast at one point -- but not much rain. A U.S. Weather Service official said the blow was probably a thunderstorm byproduct.

The Caribbean Queen and the Royal Conquest, both based at The Pier, cut their cruises short and sought shelter inside the city marina's breakwater.

"Everything turned out okay. We just got a heck of a rattle," said Dean Iverson. Iverson and wife Olga operate the pirate-themed Royal Conquest.

An occasional article about activity on south Pinellas County's Tampa Bay waterfront.

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