An Alaskan Wildlife Weekend

Friday

I am standing on the back of a boat in the rain, poised with a boat hook, as John maneuvers us up to a small orange buoy. Our crab pots have been marinating for 6 hours, and we are hoping for some dinner.

As I am hauling in the 200 feet of line, concentrating on my rhythm- hand over hand, heave- John spots an Eagle flying low, his (I do not know if these animals were male or female, I chose to use male pronouns for simplicity's sake)  skillful gaze focused on the water. In a blink he dives and expertly sinks his talons into an unlucky victim. Proudly grasping his catch, he tries to take off again, but this time his eyes were bigger than his stomach. He struggles a few feet up the shore, dragging a flailing fish,  and pauses to catch his breath.

With the crab pots re-baited and reset, we edge over, curious to know what fish could so challenge an eagle. Knowing he smells of fresh kill, the eagle is understandably skittish and our smallest noise drives him away.

With the eagle watching intently from a nearby tree, we nose up to the shore to take a closer look. The 3-foot long, 15 pound carcass certainly has more heft than an eagle- probably 15 pounds himself - could carry through the air.

This eagle had not caught himself any ordinary fishy treat. There was no mistaking it- the jaw, the teeth, the fins- he had dug his talons into a shark! I had never heard of an eagle killing and eating a shark, and even as a first hand witness I had a hard time believing it. But soon we had further proof- the shark was pregnant and her young, intuiting trouble with mama and preserving a strong desire to live, made their way into this new and frightening world, still burdened by their embryonic sacs.

We learned later the eagle had picked up a Spiny Dogfish, a deceiving name because it is definitely a shark. It’s also called a spurdog, mud shark, or piked dogfish. These sharks can live 100 years, and females don’t reach sexual maturity until they are 36, which means this eagle’s feast was at least a decade older than I am.

We retreat, not wanting to impose on the Eagle’s dinner – he obviously uncovered a delicacy – and we were hungry for our own. In addition to providing a glimpse of this food chain anomaly, our excursion brought us home with 3 sizable male Dungeness crabs. That night we feasted, gracious to the sea for providing such delicious nourishment and in awe of the creatures around us.

Saturday

I am cramped in the vee berth, my left foot asleep, splicing 300’ of rode onto our anchor chain when John calls from the cockpit, “whales!” I consciously place the splice so I can remember where I left off, untangle my legs, crawl out of the vee, and grab the camera. As I emerge into the rain, a humpback surfaces at the mouth of the cove and breaths- letting off an impressive tower of moisture and a gasp that echos around the bay. A second one surfaces and shows off his remarkable tail flukes before diving deep.

There is an added aspect of mystery when observing sea life, because without an oxygen tank and (up here) wetsuit, we only get to see the smallest fraction of their behavior. Humpbacks can hold their breath for up to 30 minutes, and regularly stay down for 3-5 minutes at a time. That’s a long time to train your camera on dark water, with no concept where the whale might surface again.

As we survey the general area where we suspect the whales will arise, we see distinct bubbles bursting to the surface in a perfect spiral just 20 feet from the stern of our boat. These humpbacks have cruised into this cove to feed, and are using a most efficient tool—bubble net feeding. One or several whales start in deep water, blowing bubbles—just like you did (still do?) with your straw and cup of milk—in an upward spiral, trapping small fish and plankton inside this bubble “net”. Then, in a choreographed show of splendor, the participating whales launch themselves through the middle of the net, mouths agape, swallowing a whole meal in one grand gulp.

You can see in the video that after their satisfying mouthful, they surface once more and then swim directly under our keel. A few minutes later we can see them further down the bay, proficiently gulping down their second course.

*please don’t mind the shaky camera work, the generator running 

in the background, or any potential exclaimatories uttered in sheer amazement…

It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see this feeding performance- we have witnessed it twice in one week, this time just 20 feet from our home.

Sunday

“I’m just so tired of crab, can’t we eat something else for dinner tonight” I recognize the satire in my tongue-in-cheek comment to John, but we had eaten crab for the last four meals. Friday night we steamed them right out of the trap, Saturday lunch we had the leftovers in quesadillas. Saturday night we pulled in 3 more, and Sunday morning John made a crab quiche.

And so I hop in the dinghy and motor over to check our prawn traps. We’ve owned a prawn trap for 7 months now, but it had yet to pull in more than a sea star. It had not proven it’s worth, and we were starting to notice the valuable space it occupied on the deck.

Hand over hand, heave. A curious seal paddles closer to scout what I’m doing as I haul in the trap, but ducks under when Chaco asks to play. 250’ of line later, I haul up a trap crawling with prawns- 42 of them! There are two different varieties of prawn in Alaska, coon stripes and spot prawn (top and bottom, respectively), we caught some of both. And the trap confidently claims its deck space, it earned it's keep today.

dipped in coconut butter and flash fried, ready to be gobbled

Low Tide/ High Tide

Want to play the low tide/ high tide game? It’s easy—simply look at the photos below, and guess which one is high tide and which one is low tide.

This is our view from Halcyon, looking back towards Mike’s cabin. The amount of water that moves in and out – twice a day, every day, always – regularly captivates me. Here, we regularly have 15-18 foot tides. This means that in about 6 hours, 15-18 vertical feet of water floods in from the ocean and slams into every bay, inlet, stream, and harbour in the area, just in time to, over the next 6 hours, get dragged right back out. In many areas on the coast of the Pacific Northwest, the tide tries to force too much water through too small a passage. The current in these passages can run 15 or 20 mph, which can create fierce rapids and whirlpools, a dangerous situation for a big heavy sailboat clicking along at 7 mph. It is crucial to hit these passages at ‘slack’ tide, when the water has reached either high or low tide and is preparing to turn around.

I realize that for most people, the tide has no bearing on their every day life. In fact, tides probably don’t cross the minds of most people in the course of the day.

That is not the case for us.

Tides affect us every day, in almost everything we do. For example,

We park our dinghy on the beach for a picnic, or to collect firewood, or to look for clams. If the tide is ebbing (dropping), our dinghy will get beached and we will have to drag and lug and tug it back into the water.

If the tide is flooding (rising), we may quickly run out of beach!

We go for a sail on Halcyon.

If the tide is against us, we will go slower, and try to blame all the barnacles on the rudder

If the tide is with us, we will go faster, and chalk it up to being such great sailors

We go to town in the motorboat.

If the tide is going the opposite way as the wind, the water will be very choppy, making the ride much less comfortable

If the tide is going the same way as the wind, the waves will be smaller, and we probably won’t even make note of the windspeed

We travel to Mike’s cabin off the Unuk river

If the tide is high, we can go

If the tide is low (or really, anything but high), we can’t go, because the river, without a high tide pushing the water back, is too shallow to negotiate in a boat)

We reference tide charts like others reference a watch, 

and we always know if it is coming or going.

Office View

Here was my view at work yesterday:

That’s the back of Mike Fay, who is sitting in the pilot’s seat of his new seaplane. I am sitting in the only other seat in the plane with butterflies in my stomach, about to take off on my first sea plane flight.

Flying in a sea plane is really cool. What is even cooler is flying in a sea plane in one of the most textured, untouched, rugged, beautiful terrains out there.

the view from the cabin

It may seem obvious, but I’ll mention it anyway: Seaplanes land on water. When you’re sitting in a sea plane for the first time, this is a bit counter intuitive. Mike, though, is an excellent pilot. Our landing was so smooth I literally did not realize when we had hit the water.

This is to be the first of many flights I take with Mike in his sea plane. By the end of the summer, we will be transiting across Canada, hopping from lake to stream, documenting the incredible natural world, and the impact humans have had on this space.

Intrigued? Me too.