Easter on the Crab Dock

Last night I went to sleep just as we were coming into the bay around 3am. I fell asleep looking forward to checking my mail, (FYI getting mail is now kinda the highlight of my life, I've fallen so far from my roots as Land Ali) and hanging out with people that are not the same three people I see every waking moment of everyday on this boat! After mail I'll fax some data, grab a snack and a cup of coffee with the plant observer before heading off to the stair master for a workout! (Land Ali shakes her head in disappointment and walks out the door to hop on her bike for a solid 50 mile ride.)

So I wake up the next morning, and take the stairs up to the wheelhouse to check the weather. Only I don't see the Akutan dock, there is no containers, no happy little community gym or even any dock workers in sight! We are not at the plant dock, oh no, I realize we have been banished to the far side of the the bay and chained to the crab dock. No way to walk to the office, no stair master, no beloved mail ... all I have is a view across the bay of my intended destination ... so close yet so far.

Yes the crab dock is a definite step down from Akutraz (the island prison as the observers call it), which I didn't know was even possible. Boredom has no limits in commercial fishery observation. I mean, we might as well be anchored in the middle of the sea. There's nothing to do off the boat and theres not even the distraction of data collection or bird watching on the boat - well besides the Dutch Harbor pigeons (aka the ever-present dirty scavenger bald eagles).

But, as I continue to find here in Alaska, with every cloud there is a silver lining! Sometimes when the conditions are right, and by "conditions" I mean we're headed to dutch harbor soon, and by "right" I mean we happen to be carrying a bunch of eggs that are about to go rotten, you can have an Easter Egg hunt on the crab dock!

This idea came up one morning, (morning is a relative term here, I think it was closer to 4-5 in the afternoon) when one of my deckhands walked into the galley and said, "You ever seen the foxes?"

Foxes? ... Like real ones?

Yep! They're the largest indigenous mammal on the island. They're pretty cool little guys, somewhere in size between a medium dog and a coyote. They look exactly as you'd expect, red fur, big bushy tails with a white spot on the end and cunning little furry faces. How they originally got here I have no idea, maybe their ancestors were fantastic swimmers?

Shortly before sunset we climbed off our boat with a couple dozen nearly rotten eggs and wandered through the crab pots. We hid our rotten "Easter Eggs" among the driftwood and along the rocky shore where we could see from the wheelhouse. Some of the Dutch Harbor pigeons took advantage of our hospitality but when night came it was the foxes who were calling the shots. They crept down to the shore and, one by one, found and ate every egg as we watched from our boat. I felt like a national geographic host, camped out at night on a remote post to see a rare species ... Ok so they're not that rare, the foxes are more or less as common as raccoons at home, but I didn't care, I got to see them for the first time!

Happy Easter from Alaska!

Yeah, kinda like this... ok no not really. I wish.