This morning we awoke with a bit more of an eye to the weather. During our morning meeting we all brainstormed on how to improve our ability to stay warm and dry during the workday. After girding ourselves in long underwear and Gore-Tex, we set out again for the beaches of Carshan Point. Upon arrival, it was back to the task of searching out and bagging any and all marine debris we could find. We quickly finished up our section and Andy led Justin, Bill, Haley, Ethan, and myself over to the final stretch of beach through a series of old game trails. We ate our lunch quickly, and used the remainder of the lunch hour to bask in the sun that had finally cracked through the clouds. It was turning into a completely different day than what we had initially expected. Needless to say, we were quite happy with the unforeseen change in the weather!
Post lunch we continued to clean the beach, finding most of the debris up at the line where the stone beach ended and the spruce and fir trees began. Justin called me over after about a half hour, and took me on a hike that he, Ethan, and Haley had found a few minutes before. The hike led around and over a series of hills made of exposed granite rock faces, green heather, lichen, and moss. There was plenty of bear sign around in the form of scat, vegetation that had been pushed down or dug up, and game trails that led to several freshwater ponds just up from the beach. Faced with the prospect of running into a Kodiak bear, we trod carefully, listening intently to any sound that was out of the ordinary cacophony of birds and crashing surf. We finally reached the high point we had been hiking for. At the relatively flat promontory on the top, we had a commanding view of the surrounding two bays and the collection of small islands that dotted the waters in front of us. We stood and soaked up this view for a while until we noticed Bill, picking up several sizable pieces of marine debris from the beach below us. We carefully made our way down the rock and heather clad hill, stopping when we came across several piles of marine debris near the bottom. We made a pile of the debris on the beach and then walked back to our lunch spot. Bill led the way and we stopped off at several of the small ponds we had noticed from our lookout spot.
By the time we arrived at our lunch spot, Andy had returned with the skiff. We loaded it up with debris and then convinced Andy to take us to the beach we had just left. He agreed, but unfortunately the beach landing was not as smooth as we though. There were a lot of rocks, and we could not bring the boat all the way in. After grounding out six feet from shore, we dragged the trash over to the boat, loaded it, and attempted to shove off from shore. Between my shoving, Justin’s frantic poling with an oar, and Andy paddling like mad, we finally got turned around enough to safely head out to sea again.
Both groups returned to the ship around 2:30, and after we sorted and stowed the trash Captain Trevor and Andy decided to haul back the anchor and return to Kodiak. The weather report had called for a storm to head into our operating area, so Trevor decided to head back to Kodiak via Shelikof Strait which separates the Kodiak archipelago from the Alaska mainland. It would be a safer run, albeit a bit longer, but it would shelter us from the 30-knot gusts and 10-foot seas that were being called for.
Around 4 p.m. and again at 8 p.m. we had pods of Dahl’s porpoise swim up to us and play in our bow wake for over 10 minutes. Captain Trevor said it was the longest he had ever seen porpoise do that. We figured it was from all of our shouting and laughing at this truly wondrous sight. The arrival of the porpoise heightened our already joyful mood, and folks settled in to a series of informal turns in the wheelhouse trying to get a glimpse of another pod of whales or dolphins before it got too dark to do so any longer.
Jasmine and Ethan get the award for longest turn in the wheelhouse, with Jasmine getting the opportunity to steer for the better part of an hour. She did a great job, and kept us going in a straight line pretty much the whole time.
All in all it was a good day. We gradually drifted off to sleep that night, our heads filled with the majestic views of wild, unspoiled nature, pods of dolphins surfing in our bow wave, and the sheer cliffs of the Kodiak archipelago looming over all.
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