Because little is known of the natural fluctuations that occur from year to year, it is difficult to determine whether changes that follow a pollution incident, for example, result from the pollution or would have taken place anyway. We needed to measure the range of nature's normality as a yardstick for comparison with the effects of other perturbations. Jack decided to monitor the abundance of urchins and Codium every year from now on to see if a severe winter reversed the trend.
I helped out by supervising the Codium census. The assessments were no fun. Before the plants could be weighed they had to be spun in a net above your head twenty times to remove excess water like raindrops from a twirling umbrella, and by the end of the day some students couldn't lift their arm above shoulder height. They got their own back by serving me a Codium and cream pie, which I ate, but never ordered again.
Jack also got his come-uppance at the Sunday sing song:
If you go down to the lough today you're sure of a big surprise.
The purple urchins have gone away and Codium's thick as flies.
And all the students that we can spare,
Are weighing plants and tearing their hair,
The students will wear, but Jack doesn't care . . .
He's having a picnic.
The way we tackled this project was a perfect example of Jack's ingenuity. We needed to estimate the total amount of Codium in the entire southern basin of the lough, a seemingly impossible task. Fortunately, the Codium zone was a narrow ribbon in shallow water, following the contour of the shore. So all that was required was for a boat to be rowed along the length of the zone with an observer hanging over the stern holding a two-metre rule, to the width of the zone at regular intervals and estimate the percentage of the sea floor within the zone that was covered with Codium. Then we weighed all the Codium plants in sample areas with a wide range of Codium cover to convert cover into weight and calculate the total weight of the crop in the south basin.
Nowadays we would employ aerial photography and interpret the pictures with computerised image analysis and spend a fortune in the process. Jack's genius was to do the job just as well using a rowing boat, a long ruler, a net bag and a spring balance. The total cost of all the equipment, including the boat, was less than £50.
To facilitate the logistics of estimating seaweed cover and counting urchins, we needed to divide up the shore into manageable lengths.
"We should re-mark the Renoufian sectors," said Jack.
"Good idea," we all agreed. "What are the Renoufian sectors?"
"Ah!" said Jack. "In the 1920s Professor Louis Renouf [then chair of Biology at University College Cork] surveyed the shores of the lough and described eighty-seven different stretches of shore. He numbered every outcrop, beach and bay. If only they were clearly marked it would facilitate our surveys, don't you think?"
So I set off with Norman, an unsuspecting student, and a tin of yellow paint. I rowed the boat with one oar permanently on the shore - a little used art - and redescribed the sectors:
South 6 - Rock wall to Mermaid rock.
West 18 - Promontory to thin upright rock with "bullet" hole.
West 37 - Tombstone to boot-shaped promontory.
Jack always named the sites where we worked, and over the years almost every inlet and promontory was christened: Eddy Creek, Graveyard, Rookery Nook . . .
At intervals I deposited Norman ashore to paint small crosses on the rock to delimit each sector. Stepping hack to admire West 37, he slid gracefully backwards on the slick seaweed, then flipped over - with pike and half twist - and emptied an entire can of daffodil gloss over his head. He looked just like someone who had met an alien and been turned into a yellow putrescent mass.
Jack's first-aid advice was usually limited to "Pack it with Savlon", but this time he bellowed, "Turps him all over, then hose him down." We did, and his skin came clean, but not his buttercup hair. In an instant the punk movement was born, although it took fifteen years to catch on in London.
We wondered what tourists might make of the rash of small crosses around the lough. Would they assume they marked the spots where a surfeit of saints had flung themselves into the purifying waters in a mass baptismal rite?
Perhaps they did indeed have a magical quality, for thirty years later they would still be clearly visible.
We had other crosses to bear. The students were mostly city folk and, except for the toddler's tepee in the garden, had never lived in the wild. Fortunately, one of the them was a Queen's scout. He knew all about tents and was forever fine-tuning the tension of the canvas by tightening and slackening the guy ropes in response to the weather. But one day he tightened when he should have slackened. At midnight, while he and his three companions slept, the guy ropes shrank and the canvas became as taut as a drum skin. Suddenly it ripped way from the apical collar that held it on the pole, and the heavy tent slumped on to the terrified occupants. It took over ten minutes to free them.
Being properly equipped makes a big difference when camping, and between them Jack and John saw to everything. Jack was very precise about what clothing was required by the happy camper. Students could be relied upon to bring daft hats and high heels or a bathing costume and sun oil, but Jack ensured they were ready for the realities of rural life:
Things needed
1. Warm clothing and still more in case the first lot gets wet.
2. Waterproof hat with brim, e.g. sou'wester, to stop the rain from going down your neck.
3. Waterproof clothing, e.g. oilskin. It should reach to thigh length. A jacket is not enough unless combined with waterproof trousers.
4. Plastic mac - useful for walking, but the buttons rip off in a boat.
5. Rubber boots - needed around camp in wet weather and on the shore.
6. Old gym shoes suitable for paddling as protection from the spines of sea urchins which break off in your foot.
It is difficult to be green when in greenery, but fear not, we had rituals. Fourteen people produce a lot of rubbish and the disposal procedures were laid out along military lines. Coffee grounds and washing-up water were flung into the bushes, along with the inevitable teaspoons. Fortunately, John collected 108 coupons from packets of Erin peas and exchanged them for three dozen new spoons.
We put biodegradable kitchen refuse into brown paper sacks so that it could be dumped at sea. It was strictly forbidden to put wet coffee grounds into the sacks as the caused the bottom to fall out and fill the boat with refuse - but everyone forgot. We might just as well have slung the rubbish directly into the boats and saved on sacks.
Objects that didn't rot had to be returned to Skibbereen. The butt end of a pickaxe handle was used to flatten tins, while simultaneously squashing toes.
In the wild, the convenience may be inconvenient. On the hill above the camp stood the latrine, an open trench over sixty centimetres deep, surrounded by a hessian screen that was held up by onion-topped poles. Near at hand was an old galvanised watering can full of creosote. Although the pit was watered on every visit, nothing ever grew except unease. Fresh from Quatermass and the Pit on television, I suspected that some malevolent "thing" lurked below. It was the look of it, like seething magma craftily quiescent whenever you glanced. But there was always the danger that, while we slept, it might emerge and slither downhill to engulf us.
In the heat, the main danger was from biting insects, attracted when you were at your most vulnerable, hobbled and astride the trench. The Queen's scout had the answer; wildlife flees from fire, so a burning brand of rolled newspaper held above the head should do the trick. It worked and then it worked even better, for he dropped the fading torch into the pit, the creosote ignited and WURRUMPH! Mount Latrine erupted. He screamed and leaped clear as the creosote-soaked hessian screen caught fire and was consumed in seconds. The scorch-blackened poles hesitated for a moment, then one by one fell into the trench. It was a cartoon catastrophe. Our Queen's scout was taken aback, depilated, but undeterred. Next day, bandaged as befits an Egyptian mummy, he was shuffling between the tents tightening and slackening the guy ropes.
Trevor Norton, 2001