© Aldric D'Eon
Aldric D’Eon shot this photo of a waterspout about 50 kilometres southwest of Pubnico Point on Oct. 17.
Centuries ago, fishermen would have shot any guns they had aboard into the heart of any twisting maelstrom they saw that connected the ocean to the sky. Waterspouts were feared as omens of bad luck. But on the afternoon of Oct. 17, crewmember Aldric D'eon shot his Nikon D7200, fitted with a 70-300mm lens, at the phenomenon.
Luckily, for those who marvel at his capture, the West Pubnico resident is a camera-toting type of person. "I'm a welder by trade, a fisherman by choice. I do photography as a hobby," he said. D'eon's camera was on the dash of the FV Angelo O during his stint at the wheel. They were about 50 kilometres from homeport (Dennis Point, Yarmouth County), after fishing for haddock on Georges Bank, when he noticed a storm on the radar, west of their portside.
"A lot of times when you see a rainstorm on the radar, it's spread out all over. This one was intense, a solid block that stayed its shape," he said. He estimates the storm was about six miles wide by 15 miles long on the radar. The sky was black near the storm but forward, starboard and aft there were fluffy clouds and a blue sky. Although D'Eon has seen odd formations of clouds at times, this was his first glimpse at a waterspout.
Although the vortex looked huge and ominous, fear wasn't a factor for him. "It was five or six miles from us. I was watching what it was doing on the radar and it was going to the north, northeast, faster than we were. "It was still west of us so I knew it wasn't going to go over top of us. We watched it for half an hour and then the dark cloud started to break up," he said.
Comment: Trees are part of the key to life on this planet. It's rather symbolic that in the U.S. there seems to be an extinction in process of that which gives life.