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!