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.