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.