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finger, but all of them have told their secrets to my gas chromatograph. And often it’s the littlest pipes that cause the most damage. When I see a big huge pipe coming right out of a factory, I’m betting that the pumpers have at least read the EPA regs. But when I find a tiny one, hidden below the waterline, sprouting from a mile-wide industrial carnival, I put on gloves before taking my sample. And sometimes the gloves melt.
    In a waterproof chest I keep a number of big yellow stickers: N OTICE . T HIS OUTFALL IS BEING MONITORED ON A REGULAR BASIS BY GEE I NTERNATIONAL. IF IN VIOLATION OF EPA REGULATIONS, IT MAY BE PLUGGED AT ANY TIME . F OR INFORMATION CALL: (then, scribbled into a blank space, and always the same), S ANGAMON T AYLOR (and our phone number).
    Even I can’t believe how many violators I catch with these stickers. Whenever I find a pipe that’s deliberately unmarked, whose owners don’t want to be found, I slap one of these stickers up nearby. Within two weeks the phone rings.
    â€œGEE,” I say.
    â€œSangamon Taylor there?”
    â€œHe’s in the john right now, can I have him call you back?”
    â€œUh, okay, yeah, I guess so.”
    â€œWhat did you want to talk to him about?”
    â€œI’m calling about your sticker.”
    â€œWhich one?”
    â€œThe one on the Island End River, about halfway up?”
    â€œOkay.” And I dutifully take their number, hang up, and dial right back.
    Ring. Ring. Click. “Hello, Chelsea Electroplating, may I help your
    Case closed.
    A few years of that and I owned this Harbor. The EPA and the DEQE called me irresponsible on odd-numbered days and phonedme for vital information on even-numbered ones. Every once in a while some agency or politician would announce a million-dollar study to track down all the crap going into the Harbor and I’d mail in a copy of my report. Every year
The Weekly
published my list of the ten worst polluters:
    (1) Bostonians (feces)
    (2–3) Basco and Fotex, always fighting it out for number two, (you name it)
    (4–7) Whopping defense contractors (various solvents)
    (8–10) Small but nasty heavy-metal dumpers like Derinsov Tanning and various electroplaters.
    The Boston sewage treatment system is pure Dark Ages. Most of the items flushed down metropolitan toilets are quickly shot into the Harbor, dead raw. If you go for a jog on Wollaston Beach, south of town, when the currents are flavorful, you will find it glistening with human turds. But usually they sink to the bottom and merge.
    Today I was out on the Zodiac for two reasons. One: to get away from the city and my job, just to sit out on the water. Two: Project Lobster. Number one doesn’t have to be explained to anyone. Number two has been my work for the last six months or so.
    Usually I do my sampling straight out of pipes. But no one’s ever satisfied. I tell them what’s going in and they say, okay, where does it end up? Because currents and tides can scatter it, while living things can concentrate it.
    Ideally I’d like to take a chart of the Harbor and draw a grid over it, with points spaced about a hundred yards apart, then get a sample of what’s on the sea floor at each one of those points. Analysis of each sample would show how much bad shit there was, then I’d know how things were distributed.
    In practice I can’t do that. We just don’t have the resources to get sampling equipment down to the floor of the Harbor and back up again, over and over.
    But there’s a way around any problem. Lobstermen work the Harbor. Their whole business is putting sampling devices—lobster traps—on the floor of the sea and then hauling them back up again carrying samples—lobsters. I’ve got a deal with a few different boats. They give me the least desirable parts of their catch, and I record where they came from. Lobsters are somewhat mobile, more so than oysters but less