butt

I had some Halibut the other night at the Powerhouse, which is right on the channel between Kodiak and Near Island. I was told that some people call it butt- so, now I do. I had some butt and chips for dinner. There was an eagle out on their deck looking in at us all eating.

Did you know that butts here can weigh up to 700 lbs? That's a big butt! The largest ever caught was something like 450, but I have heard that it's the small ones that are the tastiest.

They are the flat fish that hang out on the ocean floor and have both of their eyes on one side. A weird factoid: Shelly told me that they are born with eyes on both sides of their head, but then one migrates around to the other side-freaky!

Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge

The refuge includes 2 million acres of the Kodiak Archipelago.  You can't actually get to it from town unless you're in a plane or boat.

So, I work for US Fish and Wildlife at the Refuge Visitor Center right in the middle of "downtown" next to one of the harbors.  My job includes running an educational program for local kids 1x week, starting a nature club and hiking 1x week with them, and staffing the center when cruise ships (27 scheduled) come to town and giving interpretive talks.  An extra bonus: I have awesome co-workers :)

Road system map

Close up: This is the only extensive road system on Kodiak, about 7,000 people live here.  My house is near the Buskin River, about 5 miles SW of town.  You can see Narrow Cape at the bottom- that's the best spot to see Gray whales.  Each bay has great birding opportunities, lots of water fowl and shorebirds.    

Where in the world...

So, I thought this could be helpful to see where I actually am.  The Island is circled, and the city of Kodiak is where the black dot is- that's me!

The weather is nothing like how brutal the interior can be- people compare it to Seattle.  Average temps in the summer are 50-60.  We're going to have over 18 hours of daylight by June!

tide pooling, whaling & birding

Yesterday 5 of us went out to one of the ends of the road around here to Narrow Cape (took about an hour). We ate lunch on the cliffs and watched the Gray whales go by, on their way north to their arctic summer feeding grounds. My first whale sightings! I saw some flukes and got some through a scope, which was cool. We also took a look down on Fossil Beach for some treasures. I had fun breaking open concretions to see what was inside. On our way back, we had to stop for Bison to cross the road. There is a guy out there that farms with Bison because they stand up to the bears more than cattle do. I also had some Buffalo jerky, not as good as moose but it was alright.

We saw lots of birds- Emperor Geese, Black Brants, some Oystercatchers are fairly normal and easy to see around here, but there are only 15,000 in the world and they have really cool red beaks and circles around their eyes. We stopped many times along the road to check the slopes for mountain goats and bears, and found 3 goats in a ravine and one on top of a ridge. Didn't see any bears, but found bear tracks down a mountain leading to a deer carcass, or I should say where a deer carcass used to be because only fur was left.

I went down to Abercrombie Park to find some tide pools this morning. Lowest tide of the month- we saw some sweet sea stars, sunflower stars, anemones, sea cucumbers, sea urchins and varied shelled critters. It was neat to turn rocks over and see a little community of these guys.

work work work

So, yesterday for work we had a 2 hour boat tour of the water just outside of Kodiak which turned into a 6 hour cruise around Spruce Island and all the way to Whale Pass and Afognak Island.  We didn't see any whales, but lots of sea otters showed up!  They would be on their backs floating along, maybe kicking a bit, being all cute and eating on their bellies and rolling over to wash the crumbs away, then back to eating.  We were also lucky the sun was out AND I didn't puke :)

first week highlights

I got here a week ago Saturday and what a week it has been!  After flying all day, we were approaching Kodiak and things got interesting because the runway starts in water and ends at the bottom of Barometer Mountain- I'm told that often a couple tries are needed to get just the right approach, luckily we landed on the first try.  My boss, Tina, was there to meet me and explained how the airport is more like a bus stop because everyone knows each other.  It seemed like everyone on the plane was a fisherman.  People say that everyone fishes here, whether they are out in a boat or in town, everyone's work is connected to fish- mostly because they are so abundant.

So, on Sunday I met Tina who got me my car (I get my own car AND they pay for gas) and oriented me to the road system.  It's funny that they call it the road system, but I think they do that just to distinguish it from the rest of the island which doesn't have any roads.  On our way into town, I noticed eagles perching in the trees.  I guess Bald Eagles hang out in town until the snow clears- they are everywhere!  All over the harbor on boats, trees, buildings, it's cool to see these guys flying all over town.

It was lonely here the first night and day, but then I got some roommates on Sunday- Chad and James and got to work on Monday and felt more at home.  My coworkers are great and everyone I have met thus far has been super friendly and welcoming :)

this week's adventures:

• Hike along Monashka Bay- saw a river otter, seal, black-tailed deer, sea otters and lots of birds- cormorants, harlequin ducks, pine grosbeak, grebes and a couple from home- mallards and chickadees!  The deer are coming to the beaches (black sand) to eat kelp that has washed ashore because there is still a good amount of snow on the ground.
  
• Moose steak and homefries for dinner!  One of my roommates brought moose from SE Alaska that his boss had killed- it was tasty!  He was working as a dog handler for a big-time musher who has won the Yukon Quest a couple times, which is a race just like the Iditarod.
  
• Went for a walk in one of the harbors downtown to check out the sea lions that hang out there- they were all taking naps, except for one who was stretching his flippers.  I met a retired fisherman who had fished the Bering Sea for 22 years!  
  
• I had a Sarah Pale beer from the local Brewery, ha! and cod & chips at Henry's (a restaurant downtown).
• WWII remnants in Fort Abercrombie State Park and moss like I have never seen on the trees- apparently you can find a layer of ash from the 1912 eruption of Novarupta under the moss.  
• Met Larry Van Daele- a wildlife biologist for the warm and fuzzy critters on Kodiak, he told us about the bears in particular.  When they stand on their back legs, they can put their heads through a basketball hoop and the males can weigh up to 1500lbs.  There is one bear per square mile of the island.  The males are just starting to wake up from hibernation, there was one sighted not far from the bunkhouse near one of the popular salmon runs around here.
• It is Whale Fest here this week, so there are lots of activities centered around whales and celebrating the migration of the Gray Whale past the island.  I went to a talk about how the Native people of the island, the Alutiiqs, used to hunt whales 2,000 years ago.  The hunters were shaman-type members of the village and would dig up bodies of people that used to be important in the village and use the rendered fat from them on their spears...ewww

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