Summer Wrap up! (Part 2)

It was a beautiful August morning when we arrived in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor.

Penny and I had a full day in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor. For those of you who don't know, Dutch Harbor is the international port in Alaska's 11th largest city called Unalaska, population 4,000. The military presence during the second World War left a lot of evidence behind--as soon as we pulled in to port we could see bunkers all over the hills behind the Harbor. We had a great day visiting the Aleut museum, meeting a lot of new people, hitching rides as we walked through town, and did a lot of sightseeing. It seemed to me to be a place of great cultural diversity: Aleut, Russian, Filipino and the fleet of often shady-characters. It also seemed to be a very rich community, with fancy city services like a recreation center with a beautiful swimming pool and the best baseball diamond I've seen in the state!


I snapped this picture right as we pulled out of Dutch Harbor. Small boats are rare in the Aleutians, especially sail boats!

Here we are in Cold Bay on our way back up the Peninsula to Homer. The water is so shallow here that the pier had to be built far enough out for the ferry to dock.

It was so wonderful having Penny along to help me say goodbye to the Aleutians, the Alaska Peninsula, and gentle summer weather. I can easily say that this summer--more than any other--I have realized how important it is to me to live a life alongside Alaska's coastline and its fisheries. I'm plugging away at my studies in Natural Resource Management and Fisheries and UAF, and hope to graduate and be out of the frozen North and back on the water for good in 3 more semesters. But between now and then, I look forward to next summer in Southwestern Alaska while I study my socks off and stay snug inside when it's 60 below. Yay! So much to look forward to!

Thanks for reading!

Okay! Summer wrap up! (Part 1)

One last swim before leaving town. I was sad to leave Sand Point for many reasons, but especially because the water had finally warmed up to a really nice temperature!

This is sooooo late! But I really wanted to do it no matter that there's snow outside my Fairbanks campus apartment and it's 27 degrees and quickly dropping. What it all comes down to is just sharing some beautiful pictures. My friend and mentor Penny Pedersen managed to leave her husband and 3 boys in Ketchikan for a week and travel with me from Sand Point to Dutch Harbor, and then all the way up to Homer via Alaska State Ferry the end of August after the salmon season was over. The seiners and gill netters were putting their nets in the box, and the school year was quickly approaching. I wanted to tour the SW as far as the ferry would take me as a sort of final hurrah before heading to the frozen, lonely interior for the next 9 months.

This is Roundtop Mountain. It's right behind the community of False Pass, AK, on Unimak Island--the first in the Aleutian Chain. False Pass has a population of 64 people, and is established in the tight narrows between Unimak Island and the end of the Alaska Peninsula. It is a place of powerful connection between the Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean. A place I'm told is always windy and swept with churning tidal currents. I sure experienced both at extreme degrees. The name "False Pass" comes from the fact that only small boats can get through the small gap between island and mainland--small boats like 58ft seiners. The 296ft Tustemina was too big, so after servicing the village we had turn around and continue southwest until we could pass over to the Bering side near Akutan Island.



And here I am with the kite's final avian endeavor. The wind was so strong it broke the string as soon as I had it in the air. It was gone before the Tustemina crew could reprimand me for flying it in the first place. Seeing it swirl in the churn of the propeller wash behind the boat, I felt bad for adding to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch I wrote about earlier this summer. At the same time, I have to confess the romantic side of me thought drowning in the Bering Sea was the only way for such a fantastic kite to end its flying days.

More later!

Salmon Identification

Sockeye salmon are the most prized in the fishing industry for their firm, bright red meat. One of the most common questions I get on the dock from cannery workers themselves is how to tell a male from a female. I always point to their heads--males are easy to tell by their long noses.



There are five species of Pacific salmon. The two I sample are sockeye and chum, but there are also coho, pink, and king salmon. Here I've snapped a photo of a chum and coho. The bottom fish is a coho. If you look closely, you'll notice that the coho has much more silver on it's tail than the chum.
 
Another easy way to check to see what you have on the end of your line is by taking a look at the eye and the gum color:

Above is a chum salmon: Huge pupil (they always look a bit dumb), and white gums.

And here's a coho: Small eye and pupil, and black gums.

So this just touches the surface. I could probably blog the rest of my life about salmon, but I'll leave pink and king a mystery (really I just don't have photos) and move on. . .

Checking in. . .

Just a quick note to everyone saying the site has been down, and though I have a ton to blog about, I still can't upload any photos. With that said, once I hit the Mainland this next week be looking for a lot of blogging all at once, as I will do my best to get everyone caught up with what's been going on the last few weeks.

Until then, I'm watching a sparkling Gulf of Alaska glisten off the starboard side of the Tustumina (the state ferry), and the northern end of the Alaska Peninsula fade in the distance off the port side. It's amazing you can get internet from a satellite out in the middle of nowhere for only $12 a day. The world continues to shrink at an alarming rate--even way out here.

Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the last bit of August!

Bri

whaling

You have to have a permit to get this close!

My boss Mark's wife Bree Witteveen (wow! someone who shares my name!) is a whale biologist out of Kodiak. She and Mark flew out here to do a bit of whaling (photo cataloging, biopsies with a dart gun) and let people ride along.

It's pretty crazy watching Bree at work. For one thing, sighting a humpback whale and then hitting the throttle straight for it seems pretty counter intuitive. To top that off, pulling out a firearm once you've reached within 10 feet of it is really exciting. The dart Bree shoots bounces off the whale, taking with it a tiny core of skin and blubber that will later be looked at in the lab.

Check out the tracks on the GPS! We hit an area off of Nagai that had over 20 whales! We must have gone in circles for hours trying to get good pictures of all their flukes (tails) so they could be identified. I'm not exactly sure how long it was because I took a nap. . .

The only reason why I would ever confess to such a thing is because I know Mark will be reading this.

He's the one who took the picture.

Most of these whales spend their winters in Hawaii, and some off the coast of Baja, Mexico.
They are some of the most mysterious animals with the worst smelling breath I have ever experienced in my short lifetime. I feel pretty blessed to have seen so many of them so close!

Summer

The sun is out and I'm melting!!!!
That brown dot in front of the boats is a sea lion enjoying his lunch.

So far, all but 3 days of August have been hot, dusty and sunny. It is without a doubt summer now, and just in time, as the salmon season will start to die down in the next 2 weeks. The pinks have shown up with Area M fishermen catching over 700,000 pounds in a single day. Pink salmon is least desirable for anything but canning, and will be shipped out of town to be processed elsewhere. The Chignik plant canned pinks, but since it burned down there will be no canning on the Peninsula. I'll be putting up pictures of different salmon species for a little fyi blog later.

Lisa and I installed a marine radio in our apartment before she left for Kodiak. I'll miss her, but won't be lonely with all the chatter coming out of the speakers. Thanks Dad for the help over the phone! Thought I'd put up a picture so you could feel like you were kind of there. :)

And finally, my beer is done and delicious! Thanks to James for all the help.

For you, Britta

Hanging out on bouy #5.
Climbing on the bouys isn't really allowed, but I got away with it this time.

My childhood friend Britta Christensen is an avid ocean swimmer. We attended school in Fairbanks together last winter, and as two land-locked Southeast girls, we spent a lot of time talking about the water and missing home. I became convinced that ocean swimming was something I wanted to do as well, and she helped me pick out a wetsuit. That said, I've had it all summer and finally used it! Lisa patiently paddled alongside me in her kayak and I swam a 1/2 mile out to bouy 5 in front of town one evening after work. It was incredible. I'm hooked.

The Dock

Any fish other than salmon fascinates us because we usually have no idea what it is. Here's Lisa with a mystery fish we pulled out of the bycatch tote. I should go look it up in the 10lb fish encyclopedia at the office. . .

I realize most people still have no idea what I do besides play, play, play. I do work!!! But it doesn't mean that I don't have fun doing it. Here's a picture of Lisa and I sampling sockeye. I also know that my boss, Mark, drops by my blog every now and then, and I want to make sure he knows I'm earning my money!


Not only that, but so is Lisa. . . thanks to a forklift lesson from Richard:

Camping!

I'd just like to point out the fact that Red Cove is red.

I'm not a geologist, but Red Cove makes me want to be one. So many amazing rocks, and I have no idea what they are. It was really tempting to bring a bunch home from my camping trip with Lisa, but bouys are much lighter, and the beach combing was great. There is more than one way to get to Red Cove. Lisa and I went via Red Cove Lake, which is at sea level and separated from the ocean by a gorgeous beach. It's a really neat little piece of geography. To get there, we hiked a buffalo trail down from the road and canoed across the lake to the ocean side.

 

There is so much driftwood in Red Cove, and it's neat to find huge spruce and cedar logs down there. The closest trees are spruce on the north end of Kodiak. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of that driftwood is from Southeast.

Lisa made a kick-ass chair so we could relax by the fire, and we cooked up some delicious apricot-lentil soup for dinner. Summer just isn't summer without a camping trip! Glad we could squeeze it in between all the fishing.

Chignik Fire

Yesterday Lisa and I were sampling fish on the dock when a sleazy guy stopped to watch. This happens often, because there's not a whole lot of girls out here. Usually we ignore them and keep working, and they wander off. But when this guy started to talk about a fire at the Chignik cannery, we warmed up to him really quick and started drilling him with questions.

Check out the Anchorage Daily News article on the Chignik fire. Thankfully no one was seriously hurt, but it's a devastating thing to happen--especially during fishing season. A processing plant is the heart that pumps life through a fishing community's veins, not to mention the seafood industry itself. Laura Ganis, who has been sampling there all summer, said people just stood and cried while it caved under flames that reached 100ft. She doesn't know if her samples, which were stored in a building next door to the fire, survived or not. We'll know in a couple of days when things are safe for her to check out. More importantly, hundreds of lives have been affected; the fleet will still be able to fish--their catch will be disbursed between here and Kodiak--but hundreds of people's livelihood is dependent on the processing, and there is nothing for them now except to be sent home on chartered flights out of Chignik. So sad.

Such a sad mess.

Packed up and heading back into town. High Island in the background is an awesome spot to see more than a dozen whales at a time--no kidding!

It was another great day on the water. Started out really foggy, but it eventually burned off and the sun came out for 10 whole minutes! That was enough for me to be satisfied.

The test fishery took 2 extra days before we saw the number of immatures drop off. Now the seine fleet is out fishing for 24 hours. It's blowing southeast 30 today--imagine that. Glad it wasn't when I was out there! Well, I don't know, it might be kind of fun. . .probably not.



When we pulled in a set at Middle Set there were a couple skates. What neat animals! That's James posing with one before he threw it back in the water.







And then of course I had to do my annual cheesy-pose-with-fish picture. :)

Seining

Drying salmon on the back of the wheelhouse of the Lady Joanne

I hope everyone had a fun and safe 4th of July. This town partied like a rock star, but I went to bed early since I was getting up before dawn to go out on the test fish with the assistant area biologist, James, the next day.
The seine fishery is on a scheduled closing over the week of the 4th, and before Fish and Game opens the fishery back up we have to check for immature salmon. A seine net has small enough webbing it will catch just about anything, where a gill net has big enough mesh that the little guys can swim right though. Catching immature salmon is understandably not good for the stock, and they get caught by their gills in the seine net making for really slow fishing, since they all have to be picked out. Because of this, they are called "gillers." I had the privilege of tagging along with James and the great crew on the Lady Joanne, as long as I promised to help pick out all the gillers. I have such boat lust that I confess I'll do just about anything to be on one. The day ended with more immatures than we wanted, so the fishery is still closed. We'll go back out tomorrow for another test fish and see how it looks. Which means I get to go back out on the boat. Yay!

rain, fishing grounds, and plastic

Last night I dreamed there was snow all the way down to the water line. . .no, it does not feel like summer here. It is foggy and comfortably cool, and the fish really like it. That's a good thing for the fishery, and good for myself who about died in the dryness of the Fairbanks subarctic desert. Still, one sunny day wouldn't bother me too much.
As a result, my spare time away from the dock has been busy baking bread, brewing beer, swimming lap after lap in the local swimming pool, riding my bike in the rain and canning salmon. If anyone would like me to can for them, send me a check for jars and shipping and I'll gladly do the work. I've already canned all I need for myself, but still have the itch to butcher salmon and fill jars. . .must be the winter squirrel in me. I don't know.
I've been reading about the Eastern Garbage Patch that floats in the center of the Pacific currents. I'm horrified to learn floating plastics cover an area about 1 1/2 times the size of the U.S. and over 100 ft deep. The plastics are absorbing poisons like PCBs and DDT, and affecting marine life, including the seafood we eat. All this, and we've only really been using plastics for the last 60 years! Plastics are such a convenient poison. . .they take the shape of everything from medical stents, Lisa's beautiful Necky kayak, and the letter keys on my laptop. Now I hear my Nalgene is a stealthy plastic monster out to infect me with a million tumors, and messing up my estrogen. I can start wrapping my sandwich in waxed paper and drink out of a stainless bottle, but what about the plastic soup in the middle of the Pacific that is so big nothing can be done about it? And how much poisoning of our planet can we really do before we past the point of ignorance being any kind of excuse? I don't know, maybe we already have.
Like a large chunk of my childhood, I'm living in a place where we deal with our own trash. We sort the burnables from the non-burnables and watch the column of black smoke come out of the incinerator on the hill every Tuesday. I'm surprised and a little ashamed to admit that it's a challenge for me to keep it down to one 13 gallon trash bag a week. It makes me a little sick inside. In the wonderful Buddhist and Christian practice of mindfulness, I am trying to become more aware of not just what I throw away, but also the things I choose to own. I think we've lost sight of this, and a lot of suffering is coming from it. All I can do is start with myself, so wish me luck!

last weekend

Landon and Tara Roberts! It was such a privilege to stand along side them on their wedding day. It was a special day for all of us.

Traveling from Sand Point to Ketchikan takes two days. I overnighted in Anchorage on my way there and Juneau on the return leg. In both places I stayed with special people I feel lucky to call friends! To Penny and her dad Steve, Dylan and Abby Burt, Shannon, Trevor, John and Tabitha Gentry and John and Keely Bannister/Moon, it was so great to spend time with you, though I have to say it was waaaaaaay too short.

And Cori surprised me by flying from Portland!!!
It was such a fun, emotion-filled, whirlwind
weekend, the pictures are necessary proof to myself that I was there. I didn't realize how homesick I am for Southeast until I was there among all those trees and mist! There is just no place on earth closer to my heart. It's even better when I'm sharing it with my sister.

here fishy

Sand Point, AK. Population 950.

While I was in Ketchikan to be a bride's maid in my friend Tara's wedding (pictures of that will come later), the fleet settled on 70 cents a pound for reds, 18 cents for chum, and started fishing on the 14th. Lately it's been chilly and wet, but not enough to notice among all the fish slime and forklifts on the dock.

Over the last couple of days I've snagged enough jack kings (juveniles under 7lbs) from the bycatch tote to can a batch of salmon. I'll be canning all summer in preparation for winter. There are few things I like better meal-wise than sitting on the kitchen counter with a fork and a jar of salmon I canned myself. Delicious!!!

hanging tight

Area M (Sand Point) fleet, staying in port and fighting for change.

So, I should have waited to post my last blog before leaving the house... turns out that with the fuel price jumping up 65 cents the day of the opening (the fuel barge got in the day before), and sockeye only rising a few cents a pound out here in Sand Point, the fleet stayed in and called for a meeting to negotiate prices.
From what I've learned by eavesdropping around town, diesel, at $4.85 a gallon today, is over double what it was last year. The price for reds (sockeye) has barely moved in the last several. What's even more interesting is that the same processing plants in Kodiak (Trident, Peter Pan) are paying roughly $1.30 a pound for reds, which is nearly double what the fleet gets here, at the recently raised price of $0.70. I have heard that this is justified by volume--the number of reds coming in from the south Peninsula fisheries is huge compared to Kodiak, which has a higher percentage of pink harvest. Still, I think people are looking for $1 a pound before they go out.
Trident and the fleet are at a standoff, with all the cannery workers standing around waiting for fish, people that still have to be fed and housed by a plant that's not making any money right now. The fleet is in the harbor during the first opening, letting hundreds of thousands of $$ swim by. I can't even attempt to touch on the politics of it all--there's no way I think my mind could get a good handle on it without being a part of it for a long time. In the meantime, with no fish to sample, I'm hanging out waiting and watching.
With imaginary beer in hand (preferably not a $5 can of Bud Light), I'd like to make a toast to the Sand Point fleet and all involved. Everyone needs to work, everyone needs a paycheck, no matter who you are.

the last of the pre-season lull

A nice view of Mt. Pavlov. Wouldn't know it from all the snow, but I saw this volcano erupt with a huge river of lava last August from where I was standing on the docks.

On the 4th, the weather was still pretty nice, but definitely cooling down. Lisa took her shiny new Necky kayak on it's maiden voyage before she left it for safe keeping with me (ha!) until the middle of the month. I christened it with a cracked egg and a sprinkle of Dasani since a bottle of champagne is equal to a down payment on a house around here.

It snowed June 5th. Back to being house-bound with all planes grounded, Lisa and crew were delayed for King Cove. Lisa spent the time waiting for the weather to improve by ripping up my kitchen right before ditching town. I could pretend to be mad, but really it lets a lot more light in through the porthole that is my kitchen window. I swear the bunkhouse feels more like a boat than an apartment. We all had sea legs for the next 4 days after our 30hr ferry ride. My theory for sea legs lasting longer than the actual boat ride is based on the maritime feng shui of the place. I guess it's fitting.

The wonderful Fish & Game pilots Steve Hakala and Paul Horn made it in on the sixth, and flew everyone out of town to their perspective field stations. The photo of all us WASSIP girls with the state rig cracks me up. According to our boss Mark, none of the guys that applied qualified. I got to ride along to King Cove with Steve, who's been flying this area for at least 40 years. It was so nice to be back in a deHavilland Beaver. I know they're slow, but they're beautiful! Though I have to say it sure is alarming to see one without floats. The bird's eye view of the Shumagin Islands and south Peninsula is always an awesome sight. It's really crazing to see how volcanic the local geography is when you're flying over it all.

Today, I'm planning on going on a hike before my first night of sampling. The fleet got their nets wet at 6am this morning, and are fishing on a windy but sunny day. I'm curious to see how they do tonight, and am SO EXCITED to get my hands on some silver-backed salmon. They're so pretty this time of year.