Post by Larry

I’ve posted about Jeff Marder before…I shared some of his rad pictures and video from San Clemente Pier and talked about how much he rips. See HERE

Now he is getting coverage from the OC Register for being such a stand-up guy, and not just on his board…

“Marder surfs the pier almost daily and occasionally has rescued injured pigeons he found in the water that were at risk of drowning or being pecked to death by gulls. Thursday’s rescue was more complicated.

Marder said the hooked heron appeared to be too high to reach, so he paddled in, walked out onto the pier and asked a lifeguard for permission to climb over the side and down 10 to 15 feet onto a beam to try to unhook the bird.

“They said, ‘No, we can’t have you doing that,’” Marder said.

Advised to wait until another lifeguard could arrive to assess the situation, Marder felt a sense of urgency, so he paddled back out on his surfboard and tried to climb a barnacle-encrusted piling. He couldn’t quite reach the bird.

“I could only get to his lower wing, and I didn’t want to pull on him and injure him any further,” Marder said. “Then I tried standing on my board while holding onto the piling and, once again, no success. My last option was to use my board.”

Marder raised his 6-foot-long surfboard as high as he could to poke at the line. It didn’t break the line, he said, but eventually he worked the heron’s wing free of the line’s fishing hook and the bird fell into the water.

The heron was injured, unable to fly and having trouble staying above water.

“I was checking him to see if there was any fishing line still attached to him, and he snapped at me a couple of times,” Marder said. “That’s when I decided to submerge my board under him and gave him a solid place to stand and then proceeded to paddle him to shore.

“We got hit by a couple of waves on the way in, had a couple of wipeouts, but once he came up to the surface, as soon as I put the board back out for him to get on, he just welcomed it, as if he knew I was trying to help him, and he no longer resisted.”

On shore, people gathered and several people with cell phones and a lifeguard called the Coastal Animal Services Authority. A lifeguard arrived with a carrier cage.

“I took the box and eased him into it,” Marder said. “The bird kind of trusted me. It was a very unique bird.”

Friday, Pacific Wildlife released the heron at Doheny State Beach near a breeding tree. “He was very happy to go,” McLeod said. “He took off right into the tree.”

Nice work Jeff!!

See article in its entirety HERE