The Egg Wars and the Farallon Islands
The Kitchen Sisters Present
The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2022
⏱️ 20 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
The Egg Wars—a hidden Gold Rush kitchen—when food was scarce and men died for eggs.
We travel out to the forbidding Farallon Islands, 27 miles outside San Francisco’s Golden Gate, home to the largest seabird colony in the United States. Over 250,000 birds on 14 acres.
But it wasn’t always so. One hundred seventy years ago it was the site of the “Egg Wars.” During the 1850s, egg hunters gathered over 3 million eggs, violently competing with each other, and nearly stripping the island bare.
In 1969 the Point Reyes Bird observatory began working to protect the Farallones. The islands had been through a lot. The devastating fur trade of the 1800s. The Egg Wars. During WWII the Islands were used as a secret navy installation with over 70 people living on the island. From 1946-1970 nearly 50,000 drums of radioactive waste were dumped in the Farallon waters. Fisherman often shot high powered rifles at sea lions and helicopters were causing whales and other animals to panic.
Today the Farallones are off limits to all but researchers, some who live out on the desolate island for months in the old lighthouse there. Surrounded by thousands of birds, they wear hard hats to keep the gulls from dive bombing their heads.
The Islands are a sanctuary—The Farallon National Wildlife Refuge, managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The Kitchen Sisters were given permission to travel out to the islands on one of the supply runs that goes out to the islands 2 times a month.
The Farrallon National Wildlife Refuge is managed by US Fish and Wildlife Service
Our story features: Gary Kamiya, journalist and author; Mary Jane Schram, Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary; Peter Pyle, Farallon Biologist; Ava Crosante, Illustrator; Peter White, Author of Farallon Islands—Sentinels of the Golden Gate; Skipper Roger Cunningham; Pete Warzybok, Scientist Farallon Islands; Russ Bradly, Farallon Program Leader for Point Blue Conservation Science.
Special thanks to: Melissa Pitkin, Point Blue Conservation; Doug Cordell and the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex; Edward Jenkins; Julia Gulka; Sean Gee; Keith Hansen, Eve Williams, Gerry McChesnwey; and the Farallon Marine Sanctuary.
The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. We are part of PRX’s Radiotopia Network.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Radio Topia. Welcome to the Kitchen Sisters presents PRX. We are the Kitchen Sisters, |
| 0:07.1 | Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva. The people who make our fellow radio topia show |
| 0:12.2 | everything is alive, the interview show in which all the subjects are inanimate objects |
| 0:17.1 | are bringing you something different this year. Right now in the everything is alive feed, |
| 0:22.0 | you'll find a brand new special series called The Animals, an interview show in which all the |
| 0:26.8 | subjects are animals. You'll get to know a beaver, a jellyfish, a flamingo, and more, |
| 0:32.9 | all sharing the trials and tribulations of what it's like to live elsewhere in the food chain. |
| 0:37.9 | Like everything is alive, it's funny, informative, and poignant. Here's a sample. |
| 0:43.1 | My name is Jerija, and you can see me okay? Okay, good. I'm a jellyfish, so that's why I always |
| 0:50.9 | check with people. We're celebrities in the natural world. You know, that's the thing about being |
| 0:55.0 | a butterfly that I don't think people understand is the pressure. This is my son Joseph, and we are |
| 1:00.4 | kangaroos. Joseph, we should say you are currently still in the pouch. Yeah, I live in the pouch still. |
| 1:07.7 | Okay, it's awesome. It's like nature's pocket. Humans have a phrase, eager beaver. |
| 1:13.3 | Uh-huh. Are you not a slur? I never know if that's a slur. When I look at a peacock, I don't see |
| 1:18.0 | the king of birds. I see a woefully inconvenient animal. Imagine you snuggled up in a blanket |
| 1:24.9 | but that blanket was your mother, and it was just love. |
| 1:38.4 | Find the animals and the everything is alive, podcast feed now. |
| 1:46.6 | When the egg pickers went in for the first time, they would smash every egg that way they |
| 1:52.3 | could be assured that the next day when they return, every egg gather would be fresh. |
| 1:58.4 | The kitchens is just present, the egg wars. |
| 2:04.4 | The Farrellon Islands are probably the most forbidding piece of real estate to be found within |
| 2:11.5 | the city limits of any city in the world. My name is Gary Kamea, journalist and author. |
... |
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