Species of Interest in Alaska

Since being back in the lower 48 I've realized one of the most amazing things about my trip to Alaska was the interesting, unique, and even adorable animals I learned and encountered out there. I decided a while ago to share a few favorite species on the blog and I've been collecting amusing stories and facts since then. It's been a fun little project that culminated in a several hour search for the cutest sea otter photo the internet has to offer!

I did get to see these animals in person, but I'm not a national geographic photographer, so I decided to just borrow some photos in an attempt to share with you what things actually look like.

Enjoy!

Yep, pretty much the cutest thing in Alaska.

Sea Otters: One of the coolest things about staring out the windows in Alaska is that eventually a sea otter will swim past you! As one of the first protected animals on the endangered species act, sea otters aren’t too common in most areas, and currently listed as threatened because of population declines on the Aleutians. They’re fairly large (average 5ft long! Thats as tall as me!) , agile and amusing individuals who can commonly be found fighting off seagulls for their lunch, swimming lazily through the bay, and even napping in the kelp! Sea otters can eat just about any sea creature they find but each otter usually has a favorite food, and refuses to eat pretty much anything else. They look just as adorable as you’d expect.

Dawwww, so cute. Not entirely sure its a SEA otter, this guy may be a river otter, but no one cares at this point.



Baby steller sea lions aren't too scary.

Steller Sea Lions: These are no ordinary California sea lions; steller sea lions are HUGE (up to 2,500lbs and over  10ft, as opposed to CA sea lions at a max 1,000lbs) and FEARLESS! Also, they’re always hungry. Sometimes people attempt to feed them by dangling fish over the side of the boat, which is pretty stupid in my opinion, let alone illegal. That sea lion would just as soon take your arm off along with the fish if it gave him a free meal. I’ve heard stories of sea lions jumping out of the water, landing in the trawl alley of a boat, among the deck hands, and ambling its way towards its fish of choice. You might think, “Oh, no worries! He’s going to be slow on deck, you know, not having legs to walk with and all!” WRONG, if you see one on the deck, that’s your queue to get off of the deck.   

Adult steller sea lions, a lot more terrifying.





Not actually a rockfish, still hilarious.

Rockfish: Maybe it’s just because I’m a marine biologist but I think rockfish are pretty cool. There’s probably over a hundred different species found all over the world, and they all go great in fish tacos! Usually in the grocery store they go by the term “snapper” or sometimes “grouper”. Fun fact: Some species of rockfish, like yelloweye, can live for over 130 years! (And it can take over 25 years for them to reach maturity)



Quilback Rockfish, this is what actual rockfish look like.

Sea Stars: Boats sometimes catch invertebrates in their trawls, and I think my favorite one of the bunch is the Basket Sea Star. This guy is related to your classic orange sea star found in tidepools and aquariums alike, but instead of having five set arms, this species 5 main arms branch into a web of tentacles, giving off a pretty alien appearance. Only recently discovered, not much is known about its habits, life cycle or population …  But the basket sea star is cool looking.



Favorite non-edible invertebrate, basket sea star!



Wolf Eel: One of the most terrifying fish that can come up in a trawl in the Aleutian Islands is a wolf eel. They can be eight feet long, have large sharp front teeth and most the time samplers see them they’re still very much alive! Apparently wolf eels are generally friendly to divers; so somewhere between trapping them in a fishing net, and torturing them on deck, they get pissy.

Yeah, wolf eels look majestic here, wait until they're trying to bite your fingers off while you're sampling. 





 

Orcas at dawn, doesn't get more cliche than this.

Orcas : If there’s anything more frightening than facing off with a wolf eel, its definitely facing off with an orca in the water beside you. Orcas are known to follow fishing boats, stealing fish from long lines, peering out of curiosity into the trawl alley and generally playing around, intimidating people, sea lions and fish alike. Don’t get me wrong, I love orcas, it’s the highlight of my day when we see them in the bay. They’re beautiful, photogenic and probably smarter than a good portion of humans. All I’m saying is, I think I’d pick swimming in shark infested waters before I dove into the water with an orca.





Every time I see orcas in Alaska, its obvious by the tall black dorsal fins, they couldn't be any other animal!



But damn are they photogenic!







Information from the book ‘Marine Mammals of Alaska’ by Kate Wynne and ‘Certainly More Than You Want to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast’ by Milton Love



Note: None of these photos are mine, but its what the animals actually look like, my camera just isn't up to par. 









Alaskan Rush Hour

There is only one highway in Alaska and I’ve heard its one of the most dangerous roads in America. I wouldn’t actually know because I have never driven on it. This post is not about freeways, packed subways or any of those other typical commuting systems, this post is about how most people in Alaska commute to work. Before you ask, no, its not by sled-dog team, orca or polar bear ride … its by air.

Not my photo, but this is what flying over Alaska really looks like. 

Rush hour in Alaska, like most other places, is a predictable enough event, although instead of happening everyday at 7am and 5pm it happens each year at the beginning and end of fishing season.  There are essentially 5-6 “airports” (I use the term loosely for a reason, but we’ll get to that soon enough.) from which every person in the fishing industry attempts to fly into.  I’m talking everyone, fishermen, plant workers, contractors and, of course, observers. That’s almost two thousand people attempting to get through one little bottleneck of a transportation system, in a very small window of time, amidst Alaska’s  somewhat-less-than hospitable weather conditions.

We pick up my story just after Pollock processing in Akutan (which will hereby be referred to as Akutraz) finished for this season. My partner Mark and I were finished with our work at the plant sometime around Easter. All to excited to start our island hopping journey back to Seattle, we cleaned up our acts, packed all our gear  and prepared to leave immediately, but the plant had other plans for us. 

Upon asking, we were never really given exact details of when or how we might be leaving the plant. “Maybe tomorrow” was a central theme in my life for the next few days. Luckily the weather was beautiful for flying, unfortunately the only airline that flies to Akutraz had technical difficulties with ALL of their airplanes. So we waited. Each day we sat at breakfast/dinner (His breakfast but my night-shift dinner.) saying that we couldn’t possibly be stuck at the plant for too many more days, our hope and faith in the discussion waning as each day passed.  After we had our dinner/breakfast pow-wow Mark would head off to go wait for travel calls saying he’d wake me up if we got the call, I would go to sleep thinking this is my last sleep in Akutraz!

After a week of this game, we sat at our usual breakfast/dinner pow-wow, silently staring at our food. Neither of us wanted to play out the usual, “maybe tomorrow” conversation. We were out of hope, and done with this rock of an island. We needed to return to our cell phones, sushi and margaritas, in short, to civilization. After that dismal breakfast I was again sleeping in my room when I heard Mark through my door, “Ali, wake up, we’re on the helicopter at 10 today.”

“What? REALLY?!?! Ten? AM? … What time is it now?”

“Yes really. Get your shit packed. It’s 9am.”

We excitedly packed our bags and turned in our linens and keys! At 9:45 am the travel coordinator for the plant came into our office, “Lists have changed, which means you’ve been canceled.” 

What? How? H-h-h-how can they just do that? Just like that? No helicopter, no sushi, no cell phones? Defeated, I sulked back to my now empty room, to go sleep on a now bare mattress and wait for another day.  I had slipped into a black, exhausted sleep when I heard Mark yet again on the other side of my door, “Just kidding, we’re really flying this time. Get up. The van should take us to our flight in five minuets.”

This is how excited I was to be leaving. Always reminds me of that quote from Finding Nemo "The sun is shining, the tank is clean, and we are getting out of HERE!" 

Well this time he was right! It was an exciting ride. The wind was blowing; a weather front was headed in. As we lifted off the ground the helicopter immediately swayed in the wind. Each gust blew us one way or another, in this little bubble of flying metal and gasoline. Each time we tipped in the wind I got an all too broad view of the angry ocean below. The helicopter pilot was determined to fly all seventy people from Akutan to Akun so we could all make our flights from Akun to Dutch today! A little shaken up, but also excited we landed in Akun’s tiny, double-wide storage container trailer of an airport.   

We felt quite accomplished to be out of Akutraz, until we realized the airport’s only storage container trailer was so full of people you physically couldn’t fit another person inside. Not that there’s much in the trailer, its a heated room with a few folding chairs. No worries, it was in the high thirties and only slightly snow/raining, we could wait out or flight huddling on the leeward side of the “airport” trailer. 45 minuets of freezing our butts off later, an airport crewmember informed us that all 70 of the people waiting in the trailer we expected to make it out of Akun today … If the weather holds. Luckily the plane holds 9 people and there was only abouy 70 waiting to fly. Yay? We succumbed to the cold after a few hours, joined the least fun game of sardines ever, and set about thinking over “Why, oh why didn’t we think to grab lunch at the cafeteria before leaving Akutraz?”

As our turn to fly approached, the rate of time passing seemed to decrease in an almost asymptotic curve. I assumed when our plane eventually arrived, time would stop completely and we’d end up being stuck forever in this dingy, overcrowded trailer. The weather did nothing for our nerves. It got progressively worse until visibility was a fraction of what it was that morning and the wind was blowing so hard you could hear it screaming over the roof of our pitiful shelter.  

Finally we were the last 9 people left, and we heard the props of our plane as it touched down the runway! We jumped for joy, physically. It was surprisingly beautiful flight. The fog and weather came in patches over our 50 mile ride. At times we were flying in grey soup, but at other times we would edge out into a clear patch, and I realized we we’re flying over a sunbathed sea as the clouds swirled over the island mountain tops! It was beautiful. And then we saw Dutch Harbor. Our approach was much less violent that my experience flying in February. Again we flew through a valley so low you could see cliffs on both sides of the plane. Before I knew it we were hovering over the runway and smoothly touching down at the closest thing to civilization I’ve been to in the past three months! We had cell reception at last! We hopped in a cab to leave our bags at the bunkhouse and then headed off for a sushi dinner! (Which was amazing, but if anyone is qualified to judge raw fish quality I guess it’d be the people on the Aleutian Islands.) 

Hopefully we can fly back to the lower 48 tomorrow morning. But for that night I was contented with sushi, a drink, and a working cell phone.   Commuting in Alaska, like everything else, is extreme. So far my commute had taken over 5 days, and I had really only traveled 50 miles … in the opposite direction of home! (Yep, Dutch Hrabor is 50 miles WEST of Akutan.)

Over the next 3 days we played the “wait at the airport on standby for 9 hours everyday” game hoping to catch a flight to Anchorage. Finally we were able to talk our way onto a private charter plane headed to Anchorage that had a few extra seats. Our travel manager pulled some magic out of her hat, got us on the plane and we were home free! Well at least Seattle bound for once.

Sunset over Anchorage from the air. 

So the next time you're sitting in traffic, thinking this is taking forever and that you’ll never get home, remember that if you were working in Alaska it could take you three plane rides, a helicopter, 4 stop-overs and EIGHT DAYS just to get back to civilization! And that’s how Alaska does rush hour.

 

Hiking in Dutch Harbor while we were stranded. 

Blogging Off-road

Hello from Dutch Harbor,
 I have not forgotten you or this blog! Unfortunately I have learned that when you travel to crazy places like the Bering Sea internet is NOT a given, and I have not been able to post on the blog because of this small hang up. I only have internet on a shared computer in the plant office, so I can't sit there hogging the computer writing on the blog. I have continued to write posts on my own computer, and will put them up as soon as I have sufficient opportunity & internet speed. On the plus side, I'll be able to post appropriate photos along with the post at the same time! So this story will continue, you'll just have to experience it a few months behind me. From now I guess you could say I'm taking a step off the virtual beaten path and blogging off-road!
 Since my recent annexation to intnet-less BFE, I've been keeping a list of things about boat life that should probably bother me, but don't. I figure it's a good way to portray everyday life while remembering to appreciate how not completely horrible boat-life is all the time! It certainly has its ups (watching orcas from the office window!) and downs (having the fish freeze solid to the deck while I'm trying to sample aka work).

Without further adeau:
Things that should probably bother me about living on the Bering Sea, but really don't:

• The cold (surprisingly)
•  Constant motion (think about showering in a tiny little bathroom on 10ft seas, and I STILL haven't been seasick!)
•  Never knowing where I'm going to be in 10 or 15 hours, let alone tomorrow or next weekend 
• Odd-ball hours (Yesterday I waited for my offload all night, ate "breakfast" at 4:30 am, and then went back to my boat to sleep from 5-9 am and woke up to eat "lunch" and edit some data) 
• There are no windows in the "house" part of the boat
•  When its dark, its PITCH BLACK DARKNESS on the boat, in "town" and on the water 
• Its light until 10pm but dawn isn't till 9am My "room" is a tiny bunk in a stateroom 
• I share with the rest of the crew. (I mean tiny, I cant even stretch out my arms above my head while laying down, and I'm Short! ... But I can sit up so that's a plus)
•  Food at the seafood plant is tasteless, at least its a change-up from greasy boat food, sometimes they even serve "tacos"
•  I'm pretty sure everything smells like fish .. but i can't really tell, cause everything smells like fish 

Small things that actually drive me crazy in boat life:

• There is NO crunchy peanut butter 
• All the good seed/wheat/healthy bread is always gone 
• I've been listening to the same 400 songs on my ipod since February
•  I have yet to see whales from my boat/on the sea (but I did see a laysan albatross one day!) 

The only things I really miss are:

•  Riding my bike Solid mexican food - Margaritas and Street tacos are all I want in life 
• A nice glass of CA red wine 
• Waking up to sunshine through the window And of course all my friends in CA :)

So yeah that's a little update, I've just been sampling, working and hanging out on my boat. We're on land about 40% of the time and out to sea the rest. Its not that bad, I read probably two books a week. Let me know if you have any book suggestions! I'll post again when I can, but I'll continue writing while I'm out here so you get the full story eventually!

This is what Dutch Harbor right now: (Not my photo, couldn't load my photos at this time, they'll be up as soon as I can manage it)

Open Water





Location: Bering Sea

Temp: Cold

Swell: Enough to make it difficult to walk in a straight line. 10-ish feet?



Firstly, these are a few shots from dawn on 02/19/14



Good morning from the Bering Sea! And good news, I now know how to do my job- sorta!  I had forgotten how much I like doing science, its fun.

A few things to note about life at sea:



I could be 400 miles away from shore, I could be half a mile from shore, I could be traveling east, west, north or south … Everything looks the same if you can’t see land. Monster waves, white caps that highlight the turquoise blue water, occasionally spray over the bow, mostly dark grey water meets light grey or black sky. The only thing that changes is light to dark. But that gets confusing, not only because dawn is around 10 am, but also because my bunk is so dark. I continuously wake up thinking it’s the middle of the night, and usually it’ll be 10 in the morning. Everyone on the crew must think I’m so lazy!

I know you all are probably wondering this, no, I’m not seasick, and I haven’t puked yet! The first day I didn’t feel awesome and it was getting late so I took one Dramamine and passed out! That’s right, I spent my birthday passed out in my bunk, even skipping dinner. But I made up for it and had a celebratory drumstick last night after finishing my first two samples! The rocking of the ship mostly just makes me really sleepy, which, I’m sure, adds to the “the observer is super lazy” factor.

On land I’m a side sleeper. On a boat you have two options, stomach or back. If you attempt to lay on your side, firstly you get a great ab workout, but more importantly you strain your neck, back and legs so much to keep yourself in the position that its no longer comfortable. Just as you're about to fall asleep the boat pushes you onto your back or stomach and wakes you up. So instead, I’ve decided to take up sleeping on my back with both arms out perpendicular to my legs and bracing myself against the side of my bunk. I still slide around a bit, but its good enough to keep me asleep till “morning” … whatever THAT means anymore.

Regardless of where we are, I’m amazed that there’s BIRDS! They’re everywhere, in the middle of the ocean! And they fly so close to the boat. Mostly western gulls and northern fulmars (Fun Fact: Western fulmars have a giant tube on their beak instead of nostrils, it looks hilarious, & makes me feel like they’d make a honk noise for a call.) but I’ll keep a lookout for an endangered short tailed albatross!

Not much else to tell for now. Have a nice day shoreside!

This is the view headed in to Akutan today! (02/21/14)

Bering Sea Birthday

Location: Bering Sea

Temp: 29F

Swell: 1 ft

Yesterday was my first full day on my assigned vessel … and also my birthday. Yay?

There are good and bad points of spending my birthday here, but I figure this is an experience worth the sacrifices (And this is a happy post, so I don’t want to linger on the sacrifices I’ve made.). I can, and fully plan on celebrating with family and friends when I get home in the spring. As if we need any excuse to make a round of margaritas or crack open a nice bottle of wine! The moral of the story is: no regrets on the Bering Sea Birthday!  

 Anyways, here I am on my boat (yes in the middle of the Bering Sea)! It’s a small boat with far fewer than 10 crewmembers. I think it works for the boat, they seem to function well together and generally like each other. It makes the whole boat seem more like a team than a WORK STATION. They are all from the same town, and they keep all the clocks on the boat turned to their home time, which I think its great, although at times, confusing.  It’s funny, every night when a few of the guys turn in they always say “Thanks for comin’ to work.” … as if going into our little cubby-hole bunks bears any resemblance to going home.

Speaking of home, the boat, my home away from home for the next however many days, is really amiable! No one on the crew smokes, (I think a few are trying to quit. Good for them!), the house is kept very clean, and they make pretty good food! We had pizza subs for lunch yesterday. It must have been the first time I’d had them since probably 6^th grade, and now I’m wondering why I deserted them for so long? Plus, I lucked out in the fact that I have internet, so I can continue to post to the blog even while out on the water! (No photos unless I’m on land, but that’s ok, cause I’m not allowed to take photos of catch etc anyways.) Overall I think this is an awesome assignment, and I’m very happy to be with a crew of good people.

We’re running out to the fishing grounds now. Should take a while, so I have time to write! I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the sight of the Aleutian Islands. As we left Akutan we passed through a channel bordered on both sides by steep cliffs. Snow covers all of the islands except where these steep cliffs meet the water; there, with binoculars, you can see massive icicles dripping down the cliff like frozen blue waterfalls. It really is stunning. 

One of my favorite pastimes as of lately is staring out the window. This morning I stared at dawn … at 9:30am. The islands turned pink as the sun came up over the other side of the bay. The water was like glass – and then I realized it was because there was a thin sheet of ice along the surface … it might as well have BEEN glass. One of my favorite sights is watching the sea otters tease bald eagles with their snacks of snow crab. Yeah, you read that correctly, the otters eat snow crab and try to keep it from the bald eagles like we keep our french fries from the seagulls at home. Though if the gulls from SoCal made it up here I think they’d die of a heart attack from the cold shock (French fries may have been a contributing factor.)… or starvation, cause god knows they’ve lost all natural hunting instincts. They call the bald eagles here ‘Dutch Harbor Pigeons’, and they’re everywhere!

So to sum up my day I leave you with this Haiku:

Ice, otters, eagles

Pink dawn on snowy mountain

Bering Sea Birthday    

Luck Favors The Prepared

Disclaimer: More and better photos to accompany this post are on their way- but I didn't want to wait to post it any longer. So, without further adieu, I give you (drumroll please) SAFETY DAY!

Location: Seattle, WA
Temp: 42 F

When I was 11 years old my family moved from the Inland Empire to Huntington Beach, California. Now that we lived so close to the beach, my siblings and I became obsessed with the ocean. Everyday we begged to go to the beach. The very next summer, my mother, who was a little uneasy about all of her babies being "swept into the sea", made us a deal: If you want to surf, you all have to do at least one summer of Jr. Lifeguards.

Shan, Greg and I, the first year all three of us could do Jr. Guards together! 

I'm not sure wether this was initially a plan to scare the ocean out of us or if she just thought we'd get tired of the enormous physical strain included in the jr. lifeguard program; either way you look at it, the plan to keep us out of the water clearly failed. My brother is currently an open water lifeguard, my sister loves to sail, and I am going to work on the Bering Sea, voluntarily. One thing she did accomplish with the jr. guard mandate was a solid foundation in marine safety, emergency preparedness, and situational awareness.

There was a time on boats that it was considered bad luck to discuss safety drills and emergency preparedness, fortunately times have certainly changed. Just as its unheard of for the public to go without a seatbelt, or eat raw eggs, the fishing industry has changed to make its everyday actions safer as well. And believe me, they've made some really amazing developments. GPS and satellite locating systems automatically deploy for the boat as soon as they drop underwater. Making distress signals to rescue crews possible, even if no one on the boat has time to make a single mayday call. All items are designed for optimal use at sea. Life boats include freshwater collectors on the canopies, automatic strobe lights and handheld flares that can go a thousand feet into the air, in the rain. Even the life rafts automatically deploy if the crew doesn't have time to do so, and they have 100% deployment rate in the instance of sinking vessels.

Yesterday was safety day at NOAA Observer Training, and they take no shortcuts during this section of the class. We have access to the best trainers, first hand accounts, and newest technology available. We started out hopping into our immersion suits, which to the unaccustomed eye, look like giant lobster costumes. They are actually specially designed neoprene drysuits designed to keep you afloat, warm, dry and visible while cast adrift at sea (they even have inflatable pillows, reflector strips and their own strobe lights. Survival of an abandon ship event is 7 times more likely if wearing an immersion suit. So we practiced putting them on, a lot, and then we practiced while being timed, and then we practiced at random intervals, some even in complete darkness. It got to the point that our instructor would twitch and we'd jump out of seats ready to abandon ship at the drop of a hat.

I'm the lobster on the left.

After we had mastered our lobster suits the class took a short field trip out to the lake. There we did our in-water exercises. Getting into the water in an immersion suit was pretty trippy. The suit was in-fact dry, but the pressure of the water squeezes all the air out of the suit. It leaves you feeling like you're stuck in vacuum-sealed, insulated bag. The water was in the mid forties but I wasn't even cold! Its much more comfortable than entering the water in a traditional wetsuit, but also less movable. You are not able to swim in an immersion suit, they are designed for you to float in them. Jumping off the high dock, (approx. 7ft haha) we had to take special precautions when jumping to allow for the air to exit the suit while keeping all of the watertight seals intact.

There's a team of us getting into the water, practicing formations, and squeezing into our life raft

We then had to practice a few water formations. Picture a bunch of lobster-suits floundering around in the water trying to do impromptu synchronized swimming, except communication is greatly inhibited by the watertight neoprene covering our mouths and ears. We did a team-swim, where everyone makes a horizontal line, linking arms to the next persons legs to make one long backstroking creature. After the team swim we got into the starburst formation, everyone links arms in a circle laying on the surface leaving their feet free to kick up water, in hopes of attracting the eyes of the rescue helicopter. Lastly we laid cris-crossed in a line, like sardines in a can, creating a human raft for an "injured" teammate to climb on top out of the water. We even practiced man overboard drills. Turns out if you fall overboard and I'm the only one to throw the life buoy, you're probably better off trying to swim back to the boat. I couldn't get it anywhere close to our "man overboard" smiley buoy. Aside from my apparent failure of upper-body strength and aim, the rest of the in-water tests went pretty well.

The Anchorage Alaska coast guard division has a saying, "Luck favors the prepared." I learned from a young age to train for emergency situations, ask safety questions, and make sure of my own situation before ever leaving the shore; the ocean is not a joke. The observer program consistently produces professional scientists, who are as well prepared for any safety situation as the captain and officers of the boats we sample on. Going to the Bering Sea may have it's risks, but that is exactly why these trainings, technologies, and efforts exist. They work, make a difference, and save lives.

Playing around in a 10 man life raft!

Here's some more Immersion Suit Fun that a friend of mine shared with me upon reading my post. No I'm not in this video, but I'm totally going to try to get my boat to do this after one of our safety drills!!

Eat, Sleep and Dream Fisheries

Location: Seattle, WA

Temp: 48F

Commercial fishery observers can be out at sea for a maximum of 90 days, it's in our contract. What they don't tell you is that 90 days of isolation is the point at which all previous studies pretty much agree that you will go crazy; really, actually, clinically insane. So naturally they structure the training course to simulate that. It must be working too, for the past few days I have had some over the top bat-crap-crazy dreams. Compounded by the fact that I hardly ever dream at all, I have been thinking twice about what I eat or read before going to bed. 

The first few dreams were your average-grade odd-balls, like talking to fish, wandering on the beach with nowhere to go, or ending up in the "I'm on a boat" SNL music video. But last night's dream takes the crazy-cake. It started off in Long Beach Harbor with my day camp, (fun fact: I used to direct a day camp!) on the harbor cruise tour boat. It was an enjoyable field trip, until I spotted a very large orca (killer whale) charging right at us. The whale was pissed and coming for us. Obviously everyone looks at me, the marine biologist, to do something ... so I do the first thing that comes to mind,  I jump in the water. Oh yeah, my subconscious is a bad-ass apparently. I swim towards the shore to distract the whale, while hopefully getting help, because dreams contain no logic and no cell phones. I looked back and all the sudden the tour boat is now a sinking school bus! So I sprint back to them. (I wish I could swim in real-life like I swam last night.) I dove down to save the kids from the sinking bus, in the middle of the harbor. The orca, obsessed with the bus, dove down to spoon with it as it sank to the bottom of the harbor, which apparently was several fathoms deep (60-70ft). When I arrived on shore all the kids broke out their lunch pales for snack time. Problem solved. No biggie. And the best part was that I didn't really see anything out of the ordinary until I woke up thinking "Why was there an orca in Long Beach Harbor?" 

When my alarm went off this morning, I leaned over the mattress to turn it off and found my marine mammal interaction reports laying on the floor. I had fallen asleep right after finishing them. I figure at least I'm sleeping well enough to dream, and getting in some good marine mammal identification practice. It's official, I now eat, sleep, and dream fisheries management. 

Getting My Affairs in Order

Location: Seal Beach, CA
Outside Temp: 60 F

Wind: 5 mph

Swell: 1 ft

About a week ago I accepted a position with the Alaskan Pacific Groundfish Observation Program. I will leave my sunny California lifestyle of playing at the beach, and racing triathlons (Yep, I said triathlons, are you impressed yet?) for 3 weeks of training in Seattle on Christmas Day. After that they’re shipping me off to Alaska for 90 days on a boat in the Bering Sea in the dead of winter, much to the alarm of my decidedly more sane family members.

 This program is generally considered one of the most successful scientific fishery management programs throughout the world. It looks over some of the most common seafood industries, keeps thousands of people employed and most importantly keeps imitation crabmeat on your dinner plate. Heaven forbid we forsake the imitation crabmeat. This experience is the post-college-resume equivalent of those sticky gold stars you lived for in elementary school.   

Side note: Before you ask, yes, this program also works on the boats of the TV show Deadliest Catch. But they make all the observers sign a non-disclosure agreement, and no, there won’t be any spoilers for next season in this blog. 

In a nutshell, I’m the wallflower of fishing. I record what I see, note regulation infractions, and identify bycatch. That’s it ... I think. 

As of now I know nothing about Alaska, other than that it's cold and windy and usually dark in the winter. And apparently you can see Russia from your house if you happen to live there. Did I mention it’s cold?

Sounds like a lovely holiday spot.

I don’t even own a decent pair of waterproof boots to wear for my three weeks of training in Seattle, let alone gear to survive the Bering Sea and the veritable armory of scientific crap I'll be forced to carry (think scales, species keys, textbooks, and lots of waterproof paper). My laundry-list of things to do before I go continues to grow almost as quickly as my list of questions about the trip. Examples: Can I bring a hair dryer? How does mail work on boats? Is there a gym? Or a treadmill at least? I intend on doing some serious research over the next few weeks, but for now all I can do is try to take care of my affairs on land, (It's not like I'm dying, "I need to get my affairs in order before I leave this place." *feigns faint*) before I head off into the wild unknown.

So I made a plan to get to Christmas safe and sane:

1. Don’t Panic (And bring a towel.)

2. Figure out what to do with my apartment, car, and stuff

3. Buy some real weather gear

4. Try to keep my mother from panicking

Because the holidays aren’t stressful enough, here’s to 36 days left of California sunshine.