Dirty Jobs

Steelhead trout live in the Pacific Ocean, but when they spawn they head to freshwater upstream. Unfortunately, man erects unnatural barriers upsetting the balance of nature and preventing the trout from reproducing. Mike is in California's Santa Monica Mountains at the site where a concrete dam was built many years ago to make a swimming hole.

We meet Mark from Heal the Bay, a non-profit organization that is trying to help save the coastal environment of the Santa Monica Bay which once was heavily polluted. They are on Solstice Creek which is one of the pristine streams in the Santa Monica Valley owned by the National Park Service. The steelhead trout are federally listed as an endangered species in southern California and this creek is one of only four streams in the Santa Monica Mountains that have steelhead trout.

Mark gives Mike a gas powered jackhammer to punch holes into the concrete. They will then use "feathers and wedges" with a sledgehammer until the concrete breaks off. First they'll have Mike as the "collar". This is where he has to manually hold the drill bit until it's started a hole at least half an inch deep. Once he feels that they've drilled enough where the jackhammer will stay in the hole, he can let go. They need to drill at least 150 holes into this dam. After being the collar, Mike then gets to drill the holes.

Once they've drilled all the holes vertically into the top of the concrete wall, they then take the jackhammer to the vertical face of the concrete. Two guys hold the drill horizontally while a third person pushes the jackhammer into the concrete, drilling the hole. They have a stand which acts as a fourth man to help hold the weight of the machine. Technically this is not what the jackhammer is supposed to be used for, but it works for their purposes.

Next they're going to use the feathers and wedges which are metal pieces they fit into the holes. They slide the feathers into the wall and will drive the wedge down in between the feathers with the sledgehammer. Ideally this will create a fault that will knock down hunks of the wall. They starts whacking away.

Mark says this is the same technique that was used to cut the rock used to build the pyramids. It seems to work very well, because huge chunks of concrete are falling off the wall. Using a large metal rod they pry the pieces of rock away from the face down onto a tarp. These are then hauled up to the top of a hill to be taken away. Even the concrete pieces that fell into the river need to be hauled out. Mike puts his waders on to go deep into the creek. They think it will take five days to remove the dam and hopefully next winter the steelhead trout will be using the creek to spawn.

Next Mike visits St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, Pennsylvania to see the organ in St. Martin chapel. We hear music playing from Mike, the organist for this church. The organ is dirty, worn out and out of tune. We also meet Colin who is a professional organ builder. He takes dirty organs apart piece by piece, cleans them and puts them back together. The organ in St. Martin will probably take eight years to restore.

Colin gives Mike a tour of the workings of the organ. He shows him the reservoir that supplies air to the pipes overhead. When the organist plays a note, air is pumped into the reservoir from a five horsepower blower. They are standing on the part that is played with the organist's feet. Overhead is the manual part that is played with the organist's hands.

Organs consist of a vast network of tubes, pipes and wires. Most of it is hidden in a special room adjacent to the main sanctuary. This organ was built in the 1930s. The pipes in this organ are made of zinc, spotted metal made of a mixture of lead and tin, or plain lead. Mike thinks that with so many moving parts, potential cracks, humidity and/or dry air (plus other things), that it's amazing the pipes stay in tune. Colin says that actually they last a long time. He once rebuilt an organ originally made in 1762 that still works.

For this job they need to remove the pipes and take them along with them. Since it is an eight year project, they only take a few at a time. At the shop we meet Keith, the assistant, who is also an Irishman from Dublin. At the shop they have seven overall projects going on including the building of three new organs. The pipes all need to be cleaned and straightened out. They mostly get dirty from the dust from heating vents and incense burnt in the church.

First they mop the pipes by running a cloth down the inside with a long dowel. They spin the cloth around, but they need to be careful to not expand the pipe and also to not hit the piece on the end which can bend and change the voice of the pipe. Mike is also shown how to blow the dirt out with his mouth. He needs to blow hard into the pipe to do an adequate job.

Next they show Mike a bent up pipe that needs to be straightened. They slide it over a solid pipe that's been tightened into a vice. Keeping hands flat, Mike is shown to not squeeze, but roll the hollow organ pipe around the solid pipe. That straightens it out from the inside. Mike blows into it when he's finished and the sound is much better than when he started.

Next they show Mike pieces from an organ built in the 1840s. They believe it's been cleaned perhaps only once since then. Mike attempts to blow out dust from over a century ago. The dirt comes back up into his face rather than the end of the pipe. Keith then brings out the air hose to properly blow out the dirt. The three step cleaning process takes a relatively short amount of time, but the number of pipes involved makes it a very time consuming job.

Once they finish restoring this batch of pipes, they go back to the church and carefully reinstall the pipes one by one. Colin believes that an organ like that would cost about a million dollars or more nowadays. Mike the organist tests the tuning one note at a time. Each pipe has a slide that makes the pipe longer or shorter. Longer makes a deeper tone, shorter makes the note sharper. Once the tuning is complete, we get a special treat with Mike singing the Dirty Jobs anthem. We see fun behind the scenes clips of the crew during the filming of various jobs from the past year.

Next Mike takes us to see geoducks (pronounced gooeyducks) which is basically a clam that grows in the sand in the Pacific northwest. He is at the Taylor Shellfish Hatchery in Quilcene, Washington. The geoducks are raised in the tidelands of Puget Sound. We meet Brian who shows Mike the Taylor Shellfish hatchery.

These geoducks are very strange looking things that don't look much like a regular clam. Nobody actually knows why the geoduck's name is spelled "geo" instead of "gooey". They have a shell with a foot at the bottom that is used to dig a hole into the sand. However, they also have a long neck which is a siphon that secretes water. Mike comments that the texture of the geoduck neck is much like the skin of your elbow when your arm is straightened. Brian explains that the geoduck neck can stretch out to ten times the length of its shell - about four feet. There they sit in the sand, grow, and dig deeper as they grow. With their elongated siphon they get their nutrients from above the sand and expel liquid waste while they live several feet below the surface.

Brian is attempting to spawn some geoducks. The only thing needed to stimulate the geoducks is warm water and algae. He can't tell the sex of a geoduck until it generates sperm or eggs. Both come out of the siphon end of the geoduck and can be seen with the naked eye. Mike and Brian line them up in a row in a water filled tank and wait for them to be stimlated. The male can ejaculate for 10-15 minutes. Females will put out ten million eggs in ten minutes. One male can fertilize 5000 females in one session which comes to about 1.5 billion eggs. For the first four weeks after fertilization, the eggs can only be seen under a microscope. Next Brian takes Mike to the grow-out nursery. Geoducks that are ready to be planted in the wild are only about three millimeters long. Mike says they look like little boogers. In one tray they have 18-20,000 babies which will only get them a ten percent return.

They take the babies to the beach of North Bay off the south end of Puget Sound. They are in Allyn, Washington and Mike meets a different Brian who works with the Taylor Shellfish geoduck department tubestomping crew. A barge full of bags containing PVC pipes is brought out into the water. They are standing on a five year old bed of geoducks. Walking over them won't hurt them.

First they set up PVC pipes in rows on the sand. These pipes are wide, but appear to be only a foot long. Once placed, they then stomp on them so they are inserted properly into the sand. This year their goal is to plant 710,000 tubes which comes to about 2.1 million geoducks. They take the seeds from the nursery and plant them one by one into the tubes. The cracked ones won't make it. By the end of the first year they go down to about seven to eight inches under the sand. By the second to third year the geoducks dig down as far as they will ever go. Net canopies are placed over the PVC pipes to protect the babies from predators like starfish, birds and crabs. At some point the PVC is removed and you can see the grown geoduck siphons coming up from under the sand.

Next it's time to harvest the grown geoducks. Mike is given a pressurized water hose. We meet Aaron and Sam who are already deep in a hole in the water harvesting geoducks. Mike is going to take their place. The hose runs all the way from the barge which has a water pump.

First Mike takes the jet of water and aims it at his feet to liquify the sand. Doing this will loosen up the sand and he sinks into the water. He continues to loosen the sand with the pressurized water. He is supposed reach down to feel for the geoduck neck. Then he gradually loosens the sand with the water around the geoduck and can grab the whole thing. There are 109 million geoducks living under the sand. If left alone, they can live to 146 years making them one of the longest living animals in the world. The water is very cold and the air temperature is only forty degrees that day. Mike finds a shoe.

He needs to work around with the wand to the bottom of the geoduck to get a good grip on it without breaking the shell. If one breaks, that's 24 dollars out of Mike's paycheck. These geoducks are worth about ten to twelve dollars a pound. Mike's not making very much money because he keeps breaking shells. Brian gives Mike a hint to look for bubbles on the surface. That's where the siphon is and the geoduck is a few feet directly underneath. Mike gives up and takes some geoducks to be cooked up for his dinner.

Mike visits Xinh's in Shelton, Washington to learn how to cook his dinner. We meet Xinh who is impressed by the size of Mike's geoducks. She will make sashimi out of them. Actually just the top part of the geoduck is used for sashimi. The bottom part is sauteed or breaded and pan fried. The whole geoducks are thrown into hot water for six seconds. They are then taken out, put in a strainer and then Xinh cuts off the shell. She also pulls off the skin from the neck. It is pretty long since the neck can get up to four feet. It looks like a snakeskin.

Honestly these boiled geoducks look like human penises. Mike is apprehensive about cutting them up. He takes apart the guts of one to see the inside of the stomach. The algae they eat can be seen. He mashes it up and puts it in a bowl. Xinh says that part is supposed to be thrown away. The top part of the geoduck is the stuff that is used in sushi bars. Mike slices it thin. Xinh brings Mike some green stuff to dip the sashimi in and he says it tastes wonderful. He also tries eating the geoduck guts. Obviously that part tastes horrble which is why Xinh throws it out. She calls Mike crazy (as so many people do).