The morning began with a breakfast visit by Travis, the ranger we had met yesterday. What an interesting guy. He was out here with only a few other interns for company for virtually the entire summer. He had very little contact with the outside world, and was subsequently pretty glad to see us and get some time to hang out and talk.
After breakfast was cleared and Travis had departed, we got underway for the northern tip of Shuyak Island for the final days of beach cleanup.
While steaming north, we were treated to a maritime law lecture from Andy’s dad, Bill Schroeder, who is the founding partner of a maritime law firm in Cincinnati, Ohio. The talk focused on pollution and who is ultimately responsible for it based on the commonly accepted boundaries nations have with the oceans that border them. It sparked a pretty interesting debate, especially with the BP oil spill fresh in everyone’s mind.
After lunch we were in sight of the northern tip of Shuyak, and we dropped anchor in one of the nameless bays that comprise this part of the craggy coastline. We set off in the skiffs in two teams and began to comb the beaches looking for marine debris. The beaches here had much more marine debris than Dead Bird Beach, and we only proceeded through a third of it before it was time to end for the day. We piled our collection of nets, line, fishing gear, and buoys into the bags and sacks, and left the majority of them above the high tide line for pickup later that night.
Dinner was comprised of Jasmine’s specially made sesame noodles and chicken. The students from last year began to regal us with their stories of folks finding Japanese glass balls on the beaches last year in this same spot, and just how difficult that was. Turns out that these balls were handmade on Japanese fishing boats in the 50’s and 60’s for use as floatation for certain types of nets. The glass balls are relatively small; so tiny they can fit quite easily into the palm of your hand. To find one is rare indeed.
As the discussion turned to favorites for the day, we settled in to hearing about the cool things people had seen or done that particular day. This had become a nightly ritual by now, and was something that the students looked forward to as a way to cap off our day.
Eventually, it was Melanie’s turn. She had two favorites, the scenery and…. when she found a glass ball!!!!! We all jumped up and shouted while Melanie did a little victory dance. I swear they must have heard us back in Kodiak we were all so loud.
After dishes were done, we sent out several ninja/wizard crews to go and pick up the debris we had to leave that afternoon. While Ethan, myself, and Justin accompanied Andy on that mission, Jon, Michael, Emily, Mike and Tom went out to kayak and explore the bay we were in. We stormed up on the beach grabbed the bags, transferred them to the skiff and then hoisted them onto the Island C for storage. One of the nastiest items had to be an old refrigerator that someone had tossed overboard years before. It was so rusty that we probably wound up losing half of it into the skiff on the ride back over to the Island C.
Finally, we were done for the evening. Everyone had returned home and we were anchored securely for the night. A very satisfying day, given that we had cleaned up so much trash in such a short time. So long for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment