Sunset

After a very busy weekend, it was nice to take Seca for a leisurely walk at the marina just before sunset.  It turned into a gorgeous day after a rainy morning.  The ripples in the water in the lower right of the picture are from a harbor seal bobbing in the water just about the boat ramp.  He took off when he saw us.

The grand re-opening at Steve's job went very well on Saturday.  I went in to say hi and see the new store at about 10:15 am - just a few minutes after they opened - and it was crazy busy already.  Steve said that was the case all day long, so the opening was a huge success!  The new store looks really nice, it's got a lot more space and I think it's a more logical layout compared to the old place and since it's less crowded it's easier to see the clothes and displays.

Snow close

It's fall!  That means snow is coming soon, at least around here.  I took this picture on the way back from dropping Steve off at work today.  We're getting regular snow in the 'sixes and sevens' - the peaks that are in the 6000-7000 foot range, which are all inland from here, in the ice field. 

We had our first frost a couple nights ago too.  That was a bit of an unpleasant surprise in the morning since I still need to dig out the ice scraper.  We need to spend a weekend winterizing soon.  We'll put the carpet padding back in (it helps insulate the floor) and need to get some new carpet for the top.  I also need to put plastic window sealant back up on the windows and roof vents.  That made a huge difference last winter, and helped keep condensation to a minimum.  But we just haven't had time!  Steve's new job is going great, but they've spent the past week moving to a new location so he's been working looong days.  They have their grand re-opening today! 

Happy fall everyone!

Rainy Sitka

This was when I could still feel my fingers!

It's not all sunshine and rainbows in the field.  Monday and Tuesday were mostly cold and rainy, with occasional bouts of no rain.  We actually had our best fishing those days, in terms of the sheer number of sablefish we caught.  At one point we were catching 1 or 2 at a time, on every drop of the lines!

Anne, with a double!  Two sablefish at one time.

We fish with 3-4 baited hooks on a line, using squid as bait.  By the end of a couple of days fishing, the squid is getting pretty rank, and the smell never leaves your fingers. That makes snacking and eating your sandwich at lunch pretty gross. 

Natura, cutting some squid for bait.

One of the biggest downsides to fishing in the rain all day...wrinkly fingers that seem like they'll never be dry and normal again.

But, it sure is beautiful outside with the clouds and hills and occasional mirror-like calm water!

Sunny Sitka

Anne and Karson, showing their excitement about sablefish stomach contents - salmon eggs!

Now that I've been back from Sitka a few days and have had a chance to catch up on the most immediate things (like the assignments I missed and a crap ton of emails...) here's some more pictures from our field sampling in Sitka.

Karson on the boat deck at sunrise, just before we headed into Peril Strait.

Saturday and Sunday, the first two of four days of fishing, were straight up fabulous.  It was sunny after the fog burned off in the morning, then flat calm until the afternoon winds picked up.  Oddly enough, the fog was only present once we headed into Peril Strait, and there was no fog at all in Sikta Sound where we were staying at night (as evidenced by the picture above of a gorgeous sunrise in Sitka Sound).

Very foggy in Peril Strait.  Glad it was early and we didn't meet any other boats!

Early morning self portrait.  And proof that I was there. :)

As I said in my last post, the fishing was so much better this trip than in May.  I think we caught 117 sablefish total, and several were already tagged, indicating they had been caught before in either May or July.  That was neat to see, and Karson will be able to calculate how much they've grown over the summer.  Each sablefish we caught was tagged (only if it didn't already have a tag from a previous trip) and it's stomach was pumped so Karson can take the contents back to the lab and see what they've been eating.

Anne thought I was only taking a picture of the fish!  Nope, sorry Anne!

A lot of the sablefish had been eating salmon...dead, rotting carcases from pink salmon that had either spawned and died and were washed back into the bay, or never made it to spawn.  In any case, the smell from the stomach contents was HORRIBLE. 

Trying not to gag at the smell.

 On Sunday the water was so calm that when we moved to a new site, I was able to catch this cool reflection of the surrounding trees and hills in the boat wake.

 These warm (warm for Alaska in September), sunny days are what makes field work fun!

Sitka field work

I'm in Sitka with three others, fishing for sablefish again.  Unlike last May when we were here, the weather so far has been fantastic.  And so has the fishing!  We've seen sea otters, sea lions, and seals out in the bay while we're sampling.  We're here fishing for two more days, then take the ferry home on Wednesday.

Bears

One night while Beth was here and wanting to head to the bath house for a shower before bed, we reassured her "Oh no, we never see bears in the RV park.  You're totally safe walking to the showers in the dark without a flashlight."  Less than two hours later, she was awakened by strange lights at the neighbors - who were outside picking up the trash that had just been strewn about by a mom and her three cubs.  Later we heard more details; the bears had shook one neighbor's trailer so hard it woke him up.  Another person found bite marks in the corner of their RV.  We looked and found claw marks (probably from the cubs) in our insulation skirting the RV.  Whoops.  I guess we do get bears in the RV park! 

They've been back since then a couple of times.  One morning we let Seca out and she went nuts sniffing all over the porch and the yard.  Bears had tipped over the pots on our porch, tipped over the recycling bin (but didn't get into it), and as we turned around to go back inside...left paw prints on our door and nose prints on our windows!  Seca is apparently not a good guard dog.

Sometime last night a bear broke into the back of the truck.  I had (stupidly) forgotten that I left a garbage bag back there when the cans were too full to put it in the community garbage cans (which are secured).  We have two handles on the back of the truck topper - left and right - and they weren't locked. They managed to turn the left one and tear off the right, then got the flip-up gate open and absconded with the whole garbage bag.  I don't know where they went to rip into it, because there wasn't garbage anywhere to be seen.  Grrr...I guess we learned the hard way to be extra vigilant!

Back to school (again)

This week marks the start of classes again.  Hopefully this will be my last semester where I need to take anything.  I have one 'official' class - Modern Applied Statistics for Fisheries.  It should be really useful and the professor is very good.  I'm sitting in on a class called Sampling Theory, and will be doing the homeworks/labs but am not taking it for credit.  It should also be a good, useful class.  I'm also starting to make some good progress on my own research, which is a relief.  This summer flew past so quickly, and I'm not as far along as I had hoped...but that's life.

Next week Friday I head back to Sitka for another week of hook and line fishing for juvenile sablefish, just like we did last May.  It will be tougher this time around because we're all in classes now, so we're taking the ferry over all day Friday, will fish Saturday-Tuesday, then ferry home on Wednesday.  I only miss four classes total.  Not ideal, but not awful.  The exciting this about this upcoming trip - I just ordered a new zoom lens for my camera and it should arrive before we leave!  I'm hoping with all the salmon in the streams that we'll see some brown bears and I can get some good pictures of them. 

And finally, now that classes are back in session, summer is officially over.  The weather has made a bit of a turn into more typical fall weather - cold, rainy, and blustery.  We're going to have to pull in the awning on Irv soon; yesterday it was rattling around in the wind quite a bit.  I've had to sleep with earplugs in the past couple of nights because it's been raining pretty hard and it gets so loud in the RV.  Happy fall everyone!