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Curious Appearance

mfitch

mfitch

Charter Member 2015
My wife and I are in Juneau for a brief vacation preceding a conference I am attending for work. While walking along the shoreline of Douglas Island we saw a lot of the following and found the appearance curious. Does anyone want to guess what it is? (I only know in the broadest of terms).

View attachment 40451
 
I'm gonna guess.....an up-lifted (it used to be horizontal) chunk of sedimentary rock composed of alternate layers of shale and limestone with an occasional layer of chert/quartz.
I'd need to get a closer look at texture.......
 
That looks like one of the little known Arctic Puffin Public Restrooms. Those of us who are avid bird watchers have known about the APPRs for years, but the general population....who could quite rightly care less about the bowel movements of a fish eating sea bird...knows nothing about them.

Here's how the APPRs work:

The Arctic Puffins fly out to sea and feast on small surface swimming fish, primarily young cod and halibut. Once they have eaten their fill, they return to land. The flight from sea to shore aides their digestion, so by the time they reach terra ferma, they need to GO! So, en masse, the Arctic Puffin colony seeks out a vertical rock cliff, back up to the edge and let it rip.

The white streaks you see running down the rock face is the end result of the Artic Puffin digesting a gut load of fatty cold water fish.

The APPRs were first discovered by the aboriginal people..meaning Inuits or Eskimos as most people refer to them...of Alaska and British Columbia. The Inuit, and other lesser known tribes of the region, used the white, oily Arctic Puffin poo as a water proofing material when constructing their seal skin kayaks and the clothing. The oily poo was applied to tanned leather in a thin layer and allowed to soak in, there by making the leather water proof. Extra Puffin poo was worked into the seams to seal them against rain and wind.

The use of Puffin poo did have one huge draw back....the oily poo has a pungent fishy smell that is quite strong....and that smell would be carried by the strong coastal winds and picked up by Polar Bears, who would follow the sent trail back to the source....which happened to be an Inuit or Chinook tribe member busily working to repair nets or fishing spears or freezing fish, whale or seal meat. Many members of the aboriginal peoples did not fair so well when the scent of their Puffin poo treated clothing attracted hungry Polar Bears to them.

Of course, I could be way wrong about all of this....or simply making it up as I type it. Either way, I would go with luckydog's answer as being far more reliable.

OBIO
 
OBIO said:
That looks like one of the little known Arctic Puffin Public Restrooms. Those of us who are avid bird watchers have known about the APPRs for years, but the general population....who could quite rightly care less about the bowel movements of a fish eating sea bird...knows nothing about them.

Here's how the APPRs work:

The Arctic Puffins fly out to sea and feast on small surface swimming fish, primarily young cod and halibut. Once they have eaten their fill, they return to land. The flight from sea to shore aides their digestion, so by the time they reach terra ferma, they need to GO! So, en masse, the Arctic Puffin colony seeks out a vertical rock cliff, back up to the edge and let it rip.

The white streaks you see running down the rock face is the end result of the Artic Puffin digesting a gut load of fatty cold water fish.

The APPRs were first discovered by the aboriginal people..meaning Inuits or Eskimos as most people refer to them...of Alaska and British Columbia. The Inuit, and other lesser known tribes of the region, used the white, oily Arctic Puffin poo as a water proofing material when constructing their seal skin kayaks and the clothing. The oily poo was applied to tanned leather in a thin layer and allowed to soak in, there by making the leather water proof. Extra Puffin poo was worked into the seams to seal them against rain and wind.

The use of Puffin poo did have one huge draw back....the oily poo has a pungent fishy smell that is quite strong....and that smell would be carried by the strong coastal winds and picked up by Polar Bears, who would follow the sent trail back to the source....which happened to be an Inuit or Chinook tribe member busily working to repair nets or fishing spears or freezing fish, whale or seal meat. Many members of the aboriginal peoples did not fair so well when the scent of their Puffin poo treated clothing attracted hungry Polar Bears to them.

Of course, I could be way wrong about all of this....or simply making it up as I type it. Either way, I would go with luckydog's answer as being far more reliable.

OBIO
Click to expand...

The streak immediately to the right of the tuft of grass could be Puffin Poo, but like I said, I'd need to get closer to check out the texture.......as well as taste and smell.
Puffin Poo also works great as mustache wax and , I believe, was the original component of Brylcreem......

LD
 
OBIO said:
That looks like one of the little known Arctic Puffin Public Restrooms. Those of us who are avid bird watchers have known about the APPRs for years, but the general population....who could quite rightly care less about the bowel movements of a fish eating sea bird...knows nothing about them.

Here's how the APPRs work:

The Arctic Puffins fly out to sea and feast on small surface swimming fish, primarily young cod and halibut. Once they have eaten their fill, they return to land. The flight from sea to shore aides their digestion, so by the time they reach terra ferma, they need to GO! So, en masse, the Arctic Puffin colony seeks out a vertical rock cliff, back up to the edge and let it rip.

The white streaks you see running down the rock face is the end result of the Artic Puffin digesting a gut load of fatty cold water fish.

The APPRs were first discovered by the aboriginal people..meaning Inuits or Eskimos as most people refer to them...of Alaska and British Columbia. The Inuit, and other lesser known tribes of the region, used the white, oily Arctic Puffin poo as a water proofing material when constructing their seal skin kayaks and the clothing. The oily poo was applied to tanned leather in a thin layer and allowed to soak in, there by making the leather water proof. Extra Puffin poo was worked into the seams to seal them against rain and wind.

The use of Puffin poo did have one huge draw back....the oily poo has a pungent fishy smell that is quite strong....and that smell would be carried by the strong coastal winds and picked up by Polar Bears, who would follow the sent trail back to the source....which happened to be an Inuit or Chinook tribe member busily working to repair nets or fishing spears or freezing fish, whale or seal meat. Many members of the aboriginal peoples did not fair so well when the scent of their Puffin poo treated clothing attracted hungry Polar Bears to them.

Of course, I could be way wrong about all of this....or simply making it up as I type it. Either way, I would go with luckydog's answer as being far more reliable.

OBIO
Click to expand...




you sir!! scare me.......but id love to go camping with you and just sit around and bs....bet thats a side splitting expericance
 
mfitch said:
My wife and I are in Juneau for a brief vacation preceding a conference I am attending for work. While walking along the shoreline of Douglas Island we saw a lot of the following and found the appearance curious. Does anyone want to guess what it is? (I only know in the broadest of terms).

View attachment 40451
Click to expand...

has me stumped
 
I'm with Luckydog on this one and I'm going with the sedementary rock theory. Looks like a fine silt or clay sediment metamorphosed into some sort of sandstone or shale. You can see the individual strata clearly, although I think there might be some Puffin poo in there too.

The Pacific coast is always changing due to the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the North America Plate and individual stratum (like the photo) shift as the PP slides under the NA Plate.

Of course a photo is a poor substitute for on site study so take this as a SWAG (scientific wild ass guess).

 
Lived in Juneau for four years and can confirm it's what the pooch with the painted lips said. If you'd examined the quartz more closely you may have even seen minute flecks of gold in it; the local mining extracts gold from richer deposits in quartz veins.

Fantastic place to live.
 
Thank you for the information. I am used to shale, but not this type. Other instances were chipped away looking like the fins of a CPU cooler. The appearance was quite intriguing.

I have not seen as much puffin guano, but the seagulls do paint rock faces rather white. It is no wonder people don't want them hanging around.
 
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