Eruption!

The convenient (but monotonous) thing about longliners is that once you have worked on one, generally, you have worked on them all. The only variable is where you collect your fish from, and how many segments of gear will the boat set in one string. My confidence level was quite high upon embarking this new vessel. This changed as soon as we left the dock, which is when I realized I had left my fish identification guides on my last boat. The guides are a critical component in doing my job correctly, especially when there are many fish that I have not seen before. I was taken back to my childhood and once again felt like that forgetful kid who had been dropped off at school, went to class, and realized that he had left his backpack containing the entirely of his homework, classwork, paper, and writing utensils at home. It is a floundering feeling that I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Luck was on my side this trip, as there were only a few fish that I had not seen before and was unable to identify to the species level.

Castle Rock in the Aleutians

As is the case with most, this trip was not without remarkable occurrences. The weather was better for the most part, as we were fishing solely in the Gulf of AK which resides in a lower latitude than the Bering does. This boat was quite a bit different from what I was used to. They would set significantly more gear in the water, and would bring it back aboard very quickly making my job much faster paced.

Mount Shishaldin - highest peak (volcano) in the Aleutians

There was much to see, while steaming through the Gulf. In the Bering, there is nothing but ocean as far as the eye can see. But in the Gulf, we passed through many different straights and by many islands, many of which were volcanic and active. One evening when I was working, I heard the captain tell the deckhands and I over the hailer mic to take a look to 1 o'clock. Rising above the clouds off in the distance was the pinnacle of a volcano (I later learned was Pavlof Volcano). However, rising above that, much more visibly, was a huge plume of ash and smoke, like I had never seen in real life- only on television. The volcano was erupting before our very eyes! I wished I had my camera, but I could not stop working, and by the time I was finished processing my sample, it was too dark to see anything, and the cloud had dissipated significantly by the next day. That is definitely a memory I will take with me for a long time. I did however, get some photographs of them after the eruption.

After this trip, as always, I was anxious to get off the boat and get my legs moving and jumped off the boat as soon as we landed to do some more local exploration. I walked up the coastline up Captain's Bay as far as I could until I reached the mouth of a river that I could not pass. As I could not venture any further up the bay, I veered inland and followed the river as far as I could. There was no trail to follow. I stumbled across a little cemetery with just a few headstones. They were Russian Orthodox Crosses, which is a prevalent religious denomination in Alaska, but especially in Kodiak and Dutch Harbor. It was an eerie sight.

I had planned to make it back to the boat for lunch but still had quite a bit of time to kill, so I reconnected with road further inland and meandered my way back to where the pots are stacked against the side of the hill. I could see a small glacier-like structure and a hint of a waterfall way up a ravine. Being me, I had to find it. So I hiked up to the hill, through a sort of small mining setup until I reached the ravine, which had a small creek running through it. I made my way up it until I passed by the melting icy structure that I had spotted from down below, then another length that took me to the waterfall. I spent at least a half an hour relaxing at the base of it- it was supremely serene and I could be alone with my thoughts and the sound of the water crashing against the rock ahead of me and the trickling of the brook beside me. There's nothing quite like it.