Bering Sea Healy Cruise. April 2-May 10, 2009

This spring I flew to Dutch Harbor to board the US Coast Guard Icebreaker Healy for a 5 week cruise in the Being Sea. This cruise followed the same transects as the cruise I took last spring. Here are a few photos of this cruise.

Mt. Redoubt erupted 4 or 5 days before I left for Dutch Harbor. The ash clouds from the first eruption and subsequent ones delayed and canceled many flights in and out of Anchorage. Luckily, the day I flew the volcano was not erupting in such a manner as to cancel flights. But as you can see there was ash and steam coming out as we flew past.

For the life of me I can't find the name of this volcano. Pretty neat one. It is along the south side of the Alaska Peninsula.

Some interesting shapes made of sea-ice around Bristol Bay.

Pogromni Volcano on Umnak Island at the end of the Alaska Peninsula.

Just outside the hotel I was at there are some open areas where the local fishermen spread out their nets and ropes to fix them and roll them up. The local bald eagles take advantage and pick scraps of meat out of the nets. Found out something recently that explained why juvenile bald eagles look so much bigger than the adults. Their feathers are larger.

There are hundreds of these birds in Dutch Harbor.

Just hanging out. I am taking this shot from near a dumpster used by the hotel. There is almost always a few eagles perched along the side of it or in it. But not today.

We had very nice weather the day after I arrived. This the view from the front of the hotel.

View out of my hotel window the nite I arrived. This direction is opposite from the one above.

Pyramid Mtn with snow on it. I climbed it in Sept. 2007 when it was covered in grass and blueberries.

This guy/gal stood still for us for a few minutes to get some good shots.

Leaving on another nice day in Dutch. I've been very lucky to have good weather at least one day when I've been coming or going out of here.

Early on in the cruise we came upon about 700 walrus over a several mile stretch. It was very foggy, thus difficult to get a good shot.

Some ice and sun shots.

We got off the mother ship again this year to sample the sea-ice.

Healy in the ice.

At the end of one transect we were out in open water, off the Bering Sea Continental Shelf, and over very deep water (about 8000 feet). We sent down the CTD to collect water samples. Tied to the CTD was a mesh bag with a bunch of styrofoam cups. Here are the ones I sent down.

We also had some rough weather out in the open water. Here are some shots from up in the crow's nest, 100 feet above the water.

On one of our passes by St. Matthew Is. we had a stow away. This McKay's Bunting spent a few days hitching a ride on the helo deck at the back of the shipl. He/she would hop around looking for bits of food and fly off the ship at time and then come back.
For birders this is one of the rarest song birds in N. America. It only nests on 3 or 4 islands in the Bering Sea, including St. Matthew. It spends the winter in SW Alaska, around the Yukon River delta. It is not endangered but there are less than 6,000 around.

Going thru some very thick and snow laden ice.

Coming into Dutch Harbor this old airplane was taking off. This plane and another like it are still being used out here to service remote villages that do not have runways.

A tugboat helping the Healy put into port.

A close-up of the front of the tug. Just a bunch of cut up and folded tires. Pretty neat.

A beautiful morning in Dutch Harbor, taken from the ship.

Here are just a few of the boats in the vast fleet that go out of Dutch to the Bering Sea.



These next photos are not mine. We had a multi-core on this cruise again. It is sent over the stern and down to the bottom of the ocean to sample mud. When the legs touch down, the weights above push those tubes into the mud as the cable goes slack. As the rig is lifted out of the mud, arms with round disks on the end spring down to keep the mud from coming out of the tubes on the long trip back to the surface. On deep casts this procedure can take several hours.

One of the casts brought up this bi-valve. It fit perfectly in the plastic tube. A fraction of an inch in any direction and the clam would have never gone into the tube. Pretty cool.


A better shot of the walrus we passed by. There were a number of other sightings besides the day of 700. Taken by Liz Labunski.

A Ribbon Seal taken by Liz Labunski.



A typical scene during our ice station days. Here I am helping Jessica Cross bag up some ice cores. Taken by Ned Cokelet.

Here I am taking water samples, one of hundreds I helped take from the CTD which went into the water about 240 times over about 33 days. Taken by Brandi.

On our way south, near the end of the trip we had some very calm days. The water was like glass. This surface bouy is on a mooring that my boss and I have instruments on. On this cruise we were passing by it and were asked to go have a look at it because the real time communications with it were not working. I did not get into the small boat to go have a look. Nothing could be seen that was wrong with the bouy. Photo by Chris Linder. If you would like to see other photos taken by Chris Linder of this cruise, go here: http://polardiscovery.whoi.edu/expedition5/journal.html

World Ice Art Championships March 2009

While my Mom was up here for a visit this March we went to the World Ice Art Championships. It was a frigid nite with the temps dropping fast to below zero. My camera bit the dust a few days before so Mom took all of these photos. Thanks Mom! It was another year of amazing sculptures. But some of them did not photograph as nicely as they could have because the officials had not blown the snow off the single block entries. Here is the website for the event: http://www.icealaska.com/
There are alot of photos here but there were so many great entries and some need more than one photo! Enjoy!

Mexico January 21-February 11

Finished Floors and Shelves

The day after x-mas I hit the downstairs floor, installing solid bamboo T&G in most of the space and vinyl around the entry-way door. Took 2 days for the bamboo, nailing it down. It really changed the feel of the place. Much more like a finished home now.

This is what the floor looked like before, painted OSB. The black is felt paper to prevent squeaking floors.

Looking SW from the kitchen. Old rocker is from my Great Great Grandparents. I brought it up on my drive from Minnesota in November.

Looking south from the Kitchen.

Looking West from the kitchen table.

Looking West from kitchen at the entry-way door.
The next project is to put the stone around the wood stove and to put in a shower in the corner you see here where the coats are. It will be a real shower stall, a small one, but no running water besides a hoisted 5-gallon bucket with warm water in it (heated over the wood stove or kitchen stove) and a nozzle on the bottom or side to let the water out. The shower will drain thru the floor into a bucket outside.
For now I take showers at work. In the summers i collect rain water off my roof and take bucket showers outside.

The kitchen with the finished shelves.
I don't have running water but I do have gravity fed water. Upstairs there is a 55-gallon drum sitting on its side. I have copper pipe running from it to the sink and into a regular faucet. There is a small RV pump under the sink that I use to pump water up that same copper pipe out of 5-gallon jugs that I fill either at the Univ. or at a natural spring 5 miles from my house. I use about 5-gallons of water a week for drinking and cooking. Another 3-5 gallons a week for dishes. The sink drains into a 5-gallon bucket under the sink. I may plumb the drain to run outside in the summer (it'll freeze in the winter). It works great. When I leave for extended periods (more than a week) of time I just drain the line and let my place freeze, not having to burn any fuel oil while I am gone. It just takes a day or so to warm the place up again when I get back.
Yes, I have an outhouse. But I learned the trick of using a pee bottle inside for those late nite wake-up calls while in Antarctica. My first summer at South Pole Station I was staying in the Quonset hut camp where there was a central bathroom area which meant you had to walk outside to reach it. The walk was not bad, it was the blinding sun(the sun never sets at 90 south/north for 6 months) and hit of cold air that sucked, coming out of your little cave of a room (they were about 8'x10') in the middle of the "nite". I did that drill only once before getting a plastic pee bottle. The air has less than 10% humidity down there and you are at about 9,300 feet in elevation so you have to down alot of water to stay hydrated.

Before the holidays I finally put up my kitchen shelves. They are made out of rough cut lumber I made from logs left over from the building of the house. My brother has a band-saw saw-mill and I used it to make these one inch boards. The house logs still have the round on one side so the boards have this round on one side too. It makes for a nice effect.
I had to sand the wood so I'd have smooth surfaces. The supports are made from little spruce trees from around my place.

Driving: Minnesota to Fairbanks, November 2008

I flew back to Minnesota in early November and spent 18 days there visiting family and friends. My brother, his wife and their new baby, Lucas came down for a week and we traveled around together visiting family. They flew back to Alaska but not before buying a mini-van for their growing family; 4 kids now. I agreed to drive the car back to Fairbanks. I left Nov. 25th and arrived in Fairbanks 6 days later. It was my first time driving up in the winter. The roads were excellent and the weather mild, in the 30s during the day. The only bad weather was from the boarder to Delta Junction with blowing snow.
With it being winter and the car full of old furniture from my Mom, I had to find a cheap way to spend my nites. I signed up onto the website: www.couchsurfing.com. It is a free service where you search for people's places to stay, in cities around the world. I found a place to stay 3 out of my 5 nites. It was a great experience and way to meet locals/new people. My couch/spare bed is listed on the website now. So come surf my couch!!

The beautiful Mississippi River Valley just above the little town of Alma, Wisconsin and the Alma locks/dam. This was not part of my driving trip back to AK but on one of the trips to visit family while in Minnesota/Wisconsin.

Flat, flat, flat North Dakota and a wind power farm near Langdon. There had to be over 50. Pretty cool.

A turtle made of wheel rims. In Dunseith, North Dakota, just south of the border with Canada. Nearby is Turtle Mountain which I imagine was the inspiration for this piece of art.


I had no idea this park existed and came upon it totally by chance. I chose this route thru North Dakota just to by-pass the busier boarder crossing south of Winnipeg.
Pretty neat park. Check it out: http://www.peacegarden.com/
And here is a link to the history of the park: http://www.peacegarden.com/allpdf/Peace%20Garden%20History-%20Web%5B1%5D.pdf

In the park, looking along the boarder.

In the park.

My first nite was in Brandon, Manitoba. I surfed on a mattress of a nice college student there. Jessica, her sister and friends were hashing out ideas for their new 'zine.
That nite, while driving to find the place, I heard on the radio that the International Space Station was about to travel overhead, looking like a moving satellite but much brighter. I pulled over and looked up. Sure enough, there it was. Really cool to think that that moving thing in the sky had 10 people in it.
The next morning was cold and foggy making for a beautiful drive. The ground/trees were covered in frost.
I was in the land of wheat and giant grain silos!

The North Saskatchewan River valley.

Driving across Saskatchewan was so beautiful. Wide open space.

I love these old graineries.

Nearing the end of my second day. I spent the nite in Lyodminister, a city that stratles the border of Saskatchewan and Alberta, just east of Edmonton. I spent the nite with a young fellow that works as an environmental technician for Husky Oil.

The scenary between Edmonton and Fort Saint John, my third day, is not very pretty. Just rolling hills of forested land. Lots of oil and gas developement going on. The highway was chocked full of trucks servicing the oil and gas fields. The air around Edmonton was very polluted and the roads were crazy busy. Alberta is booming with all the oil/gas money.
North of Fort Saint John you begin going thru the mountains. Here I began to see alot of wildlife, like these Caribou. Elk, Bison and a Lynx too.

Entering Stone Mountain Provincial Park, British Columbia.

Bison along the road just north of Liard Hot Springs. There were about 60 spread over 3 groups. Very cool. The ditches alongside the road here are very wide. Grass grows there and it makes for good grazing for the Bison.
I spent the nite at a lodge, after my fourth day, across the road from the Hot Springs. On that fourth day I became very sick with the flu. I slept 16 hours that nite. My fifth day was not fun. I was still very sick. I spent my 5th nite in Whitehorse with an old college-mate, Forest and his wife Georgianna and their son Finn.

The mountains around Kluane Lake. And that is it. An exhausting trip but glad to have experienced the Alaska Highway in the winter.

Bering Strait 2008

In October, 2008 I flew to Nome, Alaska to board a Russian research vessel. We sailed north to the Bering Strait and spent 11 days in Russian and American waters. We sailed towards Russia first and came upon rough waters. So we hid in a small bay on the Russian side.
It was a fun trip. Stepping on the ship was like stepping into Russia. Very few people on the ship spoke English.

We had some free time before sailing so I tagged along with some other scientists and drove about 30 miles on the road to Teller which is about 80 miles north of Nome.

The Bering Sea and looking at Sledge Island.

The mountains around Nome are really pretty.

Looking down on Nome.

Anvil Mountain, a few miles from Nome.
"Two of the four gigantic Alaska Communications Systems microwave antennas atop Anvil Mountain, built in 1957 as part of a long daisy-chain to link the Tin City military radar site with the outside world. The system was decommissioned in 1974, but the dishes remain as landmarks. "
From Tom Busch

There are some crazy looking machines, right out of the Mad Max movies, here. They are used to ply the beaches/shallow waters around Nome, sucking up the sand looking for gold. The beaches of Nome have been mined for gold for many years.

Our ship. The Lavrentyev. A 240 foot research vessel from Vladivostok.
There were about 10 US scientists on board and a half dozen Russian scientists then probably 40 crew.

The room I shared with a fellow technician from Seward, Dave Leech.

My lab space.

The dinning hall. Very nice and really homey. Plants in the windows.

The setting for lunch and dinner. Those meals always stared with a yummy soup, a potato/onion base with other things added, usually something from the previous day's meal.
There was no chow line. The food was all brought out to us.

The bridge.

Leaving Nome on a beautiful morning.

Nome.

Looking at the eastern most part of Eurasia. We hid from the storm just off the picture to the left.

Bringing in the moorings. We seemed to always have a snow squall for those recoveries! We recovered 8 moorings and deployed them again.

Cleaning off the barnacles!

Me and the Boss. It was fun to finally sail with my supervisor, Dr. Terry Whitledge. We are coming up on a mooring that will be "popped", meaning released from the anchor, and then we look for the floats and go get it.

Deploying the moorings.

Ready to trip the release and have the anchor sink to the bottom.

Lots of whale sightings. Mostly Bowhead whales and a few Killer Whales.

Snow squalls. Not my photo.

Big Diomede Island.

Big Diomede and Little Diomede on the left.

Our last day out in the Bering Strait. A storm was about to brew up so we high-tailed it back to Nome, cutting off our trip by a few days. I'll be back in the autumn of 2009.

Some of the crew.

Got Fish?

After a fun weekend at Quartz Lake with Lee, Darcie (visiting from Anchorage), Suzanna, Jen Wenrick and her daughter, Lee and I left for Chitina to dipnet on the Copper River at 4 pm on Monday, July 21.

It was my first time to Chitina for dipnetting. I'd been to that part of the state several times before but to visit McCarthy/Kennicott.

Thousands of people flock to the banks of the Copper River from June thru September to net Reds (Sockeye), Kings(Chinook) and Silvers(Coho). To fish, all you need is a sports fishing license for $25, a free permit for the dipnetting and a big net. You are allowed 15 fish per person for the season, but in times of abundant runs, a supplemental limit is allowed, 10 extra fish per person.

To better your odds it is helpful to monitor several websites. There is a fish counter/sonar about 70 miles downstream that can tell you if a large number of fish are on their way up the river. It takes about 2 weeks for those fish to reach the fishing area but that depends on the water level of the river. The Copper River is glacially fed so on hot sunny days the river runs high and lower on cloudy days. High water levels mean the fish take more time to come up the river. Low levels mean the fish might by-pass some of the eddies and stay in the main channel more of the time. So it can be a crap shoot but I think your odds are improved by monitoring the conditions.
The spot you pick to fish can also make a big difference. When we were there many people caught very few fish whereas we nearly limited out altho it did take us 15 hours. Last year Lee and 3 others caught 115 fish in about 5 hours. With 3 nets in the water there was rarely one without a fish in it. Talk about a run of fish!!

A quick stop in Delta for some deep fried Halibut burgers had us witnessing a torrential downpour that lasted a good 15 minutes. 5 miles out of town the road was dry. Talk about localized.
We got into Chitina, 310 miles away, around 10 pm. Lee and I proceeded to unpack the car and load up her garden cart with 3 huge coolers, my backpack and two big fish nets. Lee got to haul her backpack in while I pulled the cart. She would help push the cart up the hills and act as a break with me down the hills.

At around midnite we were ready to walk along the old railroad bed to the fishing holes. The railway was the supply route in and out of the rich copper deposits at Kennicott. The rails and ties have been removed. Some bridge tressels still remain but are not usable except on some parts of the road to McCarthy.

A few years ago you could still drive along the railroad bed with your car but the last few years heavy rains have washed out a bridge at O'Brian Creek and created some mud/rock slides that have made the "road" into an ATV(4-wheeler)/walking trail only.

We walked in about 3 miles to a place on the river that Lee had fished once before and thought might prove to be a good spot again. In the past she had fished a few miles further along but with the late hour and the prospects of walking out with full coolers of fish we decided to stop at the nearest spot.

The tent was set up along the trail by about 3:30 am and we got about an hour of sleep before we had to get up and get down to the river by 5 am in order to secure our spot. Lee had done some scouting when we got there a few hours before and saw some people sleeping at the spot we wanted to fish. Because there was no 4-wheeler or other mode of transportation up along the trail we figured these people had been dropped off by one of several charter outfits that drop people off at the good fishing holes along the river and then pick them up when they get their limit of fish. Some folks fish thru the nite and get picked up the next day. The fishing charters start delivering/picking people up at 5 am, so that is why we wanted to be down at the river so that we could secure that fishing spot before someone else was dropped off.
By 6 am we were fishing. The method is pretty simple. You take a very large fishing net, one that measures several feet across, and place it in an eddie where the current is not as strong and fish hang out/rest a bit before swimming into the main channel on there way up the river. In some eddies you can allow the river current to hold your net in place but in other places it is easiest to tie the net to some rock/tree to hold the net. But you still need your hand on the pole to feel when the fish gets into net because if you do not twist the net and pull it in quickly the fish can turn around in the net and be gone.

After about 6 hours we had about 12 fish, not exactly hot fishing but better than nothing. The was a small eddie that the folks before us had had good luck in but it was when the water was higher and the eddie more defined. After Lee went up to sleep for a few hours I decided to try the little eddie because I was falling asleep while sitting and tending the tied off net and not catching anything.
Within 5 minutes I had a fish and after an hour I had 6. I "ran"/climbed up to the tent to let Lee know that the fishing was picking up.

From the videos you can see that the river is running pretty strong so tying yourself off to a tree/rock is definitely the safe thing to do, as well as wearing a life jacket. The water temp. is not much warmer than freezing.

Like I said you can feel the fish bump the net when they pass by it or when they are in it. We would pull the net up and bonk the fish on the head with a piece of wood before taking it out of the net. Then the fish were taken over to where we had a rope stringer in the water where we cut the gills before putting the fish on the stringer.

Here is an 18 pound King Salmon, my second of the day. The first one got away. I had it up on the rocks, the same place Lee posed with her Red Salmon. It was a monster, around 50 lbs. A log, I tell you! The net I was using was not deep enough to hold it. I was so excited about having landed it that I was not really sure what to do. My mind was also racing as to how I was going to subdue this behemoth. The little log that we had been knocking off the 4 to 10 pound Reds with, did not seem adequate enough for this one. Needless to say, I set the net ring down and the fish did a few flops and was out of the net. I pounced on it, banging my knees on the rock, but it was too slippery and slid down the rock into the river. I was pretty upset, having lost a huge King on the Gulkana River after an hour fighting it back in the summer of 1990 when my family was up here on vacation. My comment to Lee, "I'm not meant to get a King!"
In the end I think it was a good thing we didn't have a 50 lb king along with 49 Reds. It would have made our load out much too heavy. And I don't particularily like the taste of King. I much prefer Red. The 18 pounder was plenty of King meat.

Here is about 25 of the 49 fish. We had been fishing where you can see the folks in the background. They had been fishing where I am standing and getting only a few. So when we had our 49 fish plus the king we decided to hang it up and relenquish our spot to those folks. Because the trail back up to the tent was easier from this spot, we lined the fish over and left them in the water overnite while we got some badly needed sleep.

The killer teeth of the King!

The next day we hauled the fish up the trail from the river to the railroad bed and our coolers. The trail was about 50 -60 yards and very steep/wet. We lined our backpacks with two trash bags. These fish are incredibly slimy. 6 to 10 fish was a good load.

Here we are nearly at the end of the trail. This is the configuration we had for a good part of the haul out, except for when we had steep down/up hills and the 4 landslides to navigate. At those times we would walk our backpacks, drop them, come back and unload the cart so that only one cooler was in it, walk/push it over the goat trail, drop it, and come back for the next load, which would be the other full cooler and the 2nd cooler that was very light with some gear and food. It took us 8 hours to walk out on the trail that had taken us 3 hours to walk in.

Cutting boards for the cleaning of the fish.

The butcher shop. Lee was house-sitting for some friends that have running water so this is where we processed our fish for 3 days.

Lee with a fine fish and her fillet method.

Nice Job!

some beautiful red fillets

I cut up 5 fish to smoke and can, Lee did 9. The fish is first cut to lengths to fit into the jars and then soaked in a brine of water,salt and brown sugar for about an hour. Then the fish is put on racks and into the smoker that has a heating element on the bottom and a pan that sits on it full of wood chips. We used Alder chips. The fish was smoked for 30 to 60 minutes depending on its thickness.

Here is the fish in the jars before putting the lids on and into the pressure cooker. The fish is cooked for nearly 2 hours. Yummy goodness!!

Cutting up the King.

Nice fillet. About 5 pounds.

Both Lee and I are looking forward to a year of eating lots of salmon and sharing it with friends and family. We are grateful to live in such a beautiful place where bountiful, natural harvests like this one are still possible. Thanks so much Lee for a wonderful trip and showing me the ropes of dip netting at Chitina!!