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!