This small boat is no cruise ship, there is no insulation from the world we travel. We shop for supplies in the same stores as local folks, use the same harbors, tie up for the night next to the working boats. We are provided a view into a different world and the lives of people who live there.
Fishing boats on the wharf at Tenakee HarborMy father worked the salmon boats when he was a teenager, then left to find a another path. I may have had some odd jobs in my teen years, but never anything quite like that. I wonder what it is really like to live there, in a world that is more than a few steps removed from our tamed and civilized towns and cities found in most of the country. A place where most folks still wrest a living from what the natural world provides. A place where the vagaries of nature have such an immediate impact on everyday life.
I chat with a lady working on a gill net strung along the dock, performing the age old fisherman’s ritual of mending the net and lines. I see another life, of fish and water, where regulations and luck determine the results of the fishing season, whether the bills get paid and if the boat gets fixed.
I meet folks who have lived in remote communities much of their lives, places where they would like to spend the remainder of their days if economics and luck permits. A struggle made more precarious when a cannery closes, or a soft economy allows fewer sportsman to come fish local waters and spend money earned in the cities far to the south.
I see a fishing community remaking itself to provide a place interesting enough that the cruise ships will stop for a day. Floating cities with thousands of people and thousands of wallets full of dollars that can provide a better life for local residents. That money could create a future here for children that may not have to leave and seek a living elsewhere. There is a once closed cannery complex remodeled into a large visitor center, dozens of boats in the harbor for charter fisherman, whale watching excursions and eco-tours.
I spend a moment talking with a young woman, who has bet on the local economy and started a small cafe. Behind me are tables full of cruise ship passengers, watching eagles and ravens squabble overhead as they munch on salmon tacos. The character of the town has changed, will continue to change. I see that there will be both good and unfortunate aspects of what is happening. I wonder what I will find when or if I visit again in a few years.
Traveling the world with open eyes gives one a perspective into other lives. So often when I meet someone who displays intolerance or even bigotry towards other nationalities, I find they have never traveled or seen much of the world. Experiencing the world is an important part of any life. To travel, to see, to consider what it means to live somewhere else.
Any sort of water activities, fishing or scuba diving, off the Kohala coast in winter involves a chance of seeing a whale. Indeed, Kohala is not just the part of the island we call home, it is the Hawaiian word for whale. In winter the whales are here in large numbers… Boat or drive north of Kawaihae and the odds approach certainty that you will see not just a few, but a lot of Humpback Whales as they cruise the waters along this sheltered coastline. Rental cars are parked along the coastal highway wherever a pod can be seen. Just getting to a dive site can involve navigating around a pod or two as blows and fins are seen in all directions. Dive beneath the water and you can listen to the songs of the whales echoing eerily through the blue.
A trio of Humpback Whales pass by off of point Adolphus, Alaska, 30 June 2004During the winter these whales can be found around all of the Hawaiian Islands. They come here to mate and give birth in the warm tropical waters. The most sheltered areas in the lee of the large islands have the greatest concentrations, this includes the Kona and Kohala coast of the Big Island. Through January, February and March the whales can be seen all along the coast. Much of these waters have been designated the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary to protect these unique animals during their winter stay.
Humpback Whales closing the bubble net at the entrance of Peril Straight, Alaska, 25 July 2006Come spring the Hawaiian population of whales head north, to the food rich waters of Alaska. It is an interesting experience, in addition to regularly seeing these whales off the Kohala Coast, I regularly see them on the other end of the migration while boating in Alaska. The activity of the whales is different at either end of the journey, in Hawai’i they pretty much just hang out and sing, slowly cruising the coast or just hovering below the surface for many hours. In Alaska it is all about eating, here you watch whales circling through food rich areas over and over. Sometimes the whales cooperate to create bubble nets, encircling shoals of krill or herring.
In past journeys to Alaska I have had many opportunities to watch these majestic animals. We regularly stop and watch when we get the chance, drifting while whales feed around us. Hopefully this results in good photos to enjoy and post on the blog. At the end of the trip I fly back to Hawai’i to resume my usual life. But when winter comes the Humpbacks will follow, returning to the warm tropical waters around the islands to mate and give birth to the next generation. I look forward to seeing them off the Kohala Coast and listening to their songs while diving in those warm waters.
What are the odds of encountering the same whale at both ends of this journey? I wonder.
The ship's electronic chart after trolling the Shark Hole in Salisbury Sound for salmon all morningI like fishing… In moderation.
Sometimes the order of the day is fishing, fishing and more fishing. No problem, Deb loves fishing! Go have fun dear, enjoy some more fishing. I’ll just sit up here and drive.
Drive back and forth across the same spot over and over again, as slow as the boat will go. So slow the vessel barely answers the helm, taking her own sweet time to turn. It is a peaceful job of driving, as long as the little charter boats stay out of my way. I am driving a boat five times their size that just keeps moving with minimal regard to whatever I do to the wheel.
I just sit back watch the bald eagles, a humpback whale threading through the swarm of charter boats, and watch the log on the GPS display slowly fill in with the record of repeated passes…
The pole twitches, then jumps… Fish On! This was the first time this season we had rigged for salmon and dropped the outriggers and lines, setup for trolling along the south coast of Admiralty Island. We did not have to wait long for results.
It was clear this was a large fish, the pull on the line was substantial. Deb strained with the reel, cranking it as hard as she dared. But unlike the usual coho salmon it did not fight and jump. We were worried it was a pink salmon, not as desirable a catch, these fish usually come in docilely to be netted. The far more desirable silver or coho salmon rarely give up without a fight and require real work to reel in. But when we got the first clear look at the fish it was indeed a silver.
Deb happy to display her catch, first of our season, a very nice fish indeedWhen we pulled the salmon from the net the reason odd behavior became clear… The hook was in the tail.
Somehow Deb had snagged the fish just a few inches from the base of the tail. There is a reason for this, Coho salmon often hit their prey to stun it before turning to consume it. This tactic works well for herring, not so well for a double hooked leader.
This salmon was the first we have caught this season, another fact that made my wife a very happy fisherwoman. I am afraid she had become infected with that dread disease, an addiction to lures and poles and the thrill of catching those wily fish. Not that I can complain too much about the results. However the fish was caught, this was a very nice salmon, making an excellent dinner that evening.
The jokes began almost instantly, comments about her unusual techniques to catch a fish. All in good sport, the pursuit is full of fish tales and jokes. Deb caught more than a few beautiful coho over the next few days, but we have not let her forget the Tailhook Incident.
We expected to find the bears at the back of the bay, where the stream and the salmon would be.
The mission of the morning was to see bears. So we cast off lines at Tenakee and headed up Tenakee Inlet. There are several side bays along this large inlet, each with streams that attract the bears. The salmon had not quite started to move into the streams, a bit early in the season yet, but they were around. We hoped the bears would be around as well, congregating at the streams in anticipation of their yearly feast.
It was a surprise when my dad spotted this bear, we were just starting into the bay and still a mile from where we expected to find bears. As everyone grabbed binoculars we steered towards shore to get a better look.
So often the bears will run for the woods when a large white object appears. This bear just kept eating grass. A further surprise… Just as we got closer a small bear cub appeared at mother’s side. Deep water just off the rocky shore allowed us to get the boat in quite close. On occasion the mother would look up at us as we drifted in for a closer look. The array of pointing humans, binoculars and cameras were dismissed as unimportant as she continued to graze along the shore.
The cub was a handsome fellow, dark, with a collar of golden fur. He stayed close to mother, but seemed curious. We may have been the first humans he had ever seen. He watched us intently from the safety of mother’s side.
There were several bears at the stream and the grassy flats at the top end of the bay. But the shallow water would keep us from getting anywhere near with the boat. The total was nine bears that morning, including four cubs, three with the same mother. With the morning’s plan a success, we headed back to Tenakee to collect our crab traps.
A mother Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) and cub on the shore in Long Bay, Tenakee Inlet, AK
I will be spending the next several weeks aboard the Nordic Quest. We are bringing the boat down from Juneau to Anacortes for the winter. During this time I will be out of contact with the world. No internet! Or, at best, sporadic contact.
I am taking the opportunity to re-post all of my old Alaskan travel posts to the new blogging platform, the better ones anyway. Something to keep my readers occupied while I am off voyaging the inside passage.
The Nordic Star anchored in Ford’s TerrorTime to cut the connection, for the next few weeks there will be little oportunity to slake my digital thirst. Marine radio offers little bandwidth, limited to simple audio and the daily marine weather forecasts.
For the next three weeks we will be cruising from Juneau to Anacortes. Three weeks of fishing, sightseeing, whale watching and photography. It should be a good trip, time spent with my father, an uncle and good friends.
There will be the occasional opportunity for contact, brief stops along the way to get fuel and supplies, places that may also offer a 3G signal. Those moments will be brief, just a chance for updates and perhaps a phone call to my wife to let her know I still exist. I can only consider the mountain of messages that will await my return to the digital world.
Looking down the aisles of a Fred Meyer grocery sectionThree weeks of food for half a dozen people reduced to a spreadsheet printout. As usual, I draw the shopping detail, a few hours in the Juneau branches of Costco and Fred Meyer. The result will be a vehicle filled with food.
After it is all purchased there will be the chore of carrying it all down the dock and stowing it away into the many cupboards and freezers aboard the boat. Invariably this will occur at low tide when the ramp to the dock is steepest.
5dz eggs
3 bags frozen potatoes o’brien
5lbs sugar
1 box tea, assorted
…this list goes on…
The procedure is fairly well practiced at this point, this is not the first time we have done this. I know where to find everything, in a supermarket I visit about once a year. The list is refined each year, it has a history now, the failures removed and perhaps a couple new menu ideas included.
We will rely on catching a few fish along the way. If the lines come up empty the menu may get a bit monotonous. But this is Alaska, we will catch something.
Two years since I last left this rock, time for a vacation! We were off island for over three weeks, visiting family in Oregon, a little shopping for things we can not shop for on-island, and some time experiencing the mainland in general. Then it was off to Alaska for a couple weeks of fishing with family and friends.
As usual we were using one of the boats from the Nordic Tugs Charters of Juneau fleet, but new this year was that the boat in question is my father’s, an all new 42′ Nordic Tug named the Nordic Quest. A very comfortable boat, we were hardly roughing it while we explored the waters around Juneau and Icy Strait.
The Nordic Quest underway near Tenakee, AKMuch of the trip was spent fishing. Two weeks of trolling for salmon or dropping lines to the bottom for halibut. We caught more than a few, filling freezers with fish, and collecting a few fish stories. As usual Deb loved the fishing and was often found on the back deck with a pole. She caught some great fish including her first King Salmon. We did quite well catching salmon, not so well on halibut. I did have one big halibut on the line, briefly, until it broke a heavy steel leader!
One successful fishing story was going for crab. I dropped pots several times, and was rewarded with a rich haul of Dungeness Crab. We ate well! In my experience, Dungies are the best eating crab in the world! After many years of exploring the area we have learned a few good spots to drop the pots. There was one particularly memorable warm and sunny afternoon cooking crab on the back deck. We clustered at the back rail, cracking shell and savoring the succulent meat, laughing and throwing the shells overboard. We didn’t eat it all, extra crab was cracked for a dinner of crab cakes and crab salad. Not a bad day.
There was also a gorgeous day spent fishing on the open Pacific at the mouth of Cross Sound. A place where the sea can so easily provide miserable conditions was instead nearly flat, with hardly a cloud in the sky. We trolled for salmon around Yakobi Rock, landing silvers as fast as we could put the lines in the water.
We visited several places I had never been… The fishing settlement of Pelican is an interesting place. Built around a fish packing plant in the 1940’s the town features a long boardwalk along which the town is built. A cute cafe operates at the center of town along with a post office and city hall. The town is struggling after the closing of the fish packing plant, but folks were optimistic that the town will survive.
Steller sea lions Eumetopias jubatus fishing off of Point Adolphus, Icy Strait, AKHoonah is an Tlingit Indian settlement on Icy Strait. Here is a bit of real Alaska, a fishing town, off the beaten track, making a living from timber and salmon. This is changing even here as the town has recently become a stop for one of the cruise lines.
Near Hoonah is Point Adolphus, at this headland the bounty of the sea is concentrated. Abundant herring can be found here, so thick we can see the clouds of fish in the sonar. Salmon feed here before turning inland towards the streams and rivers to spawn. Sharing this rich habitat can be found dozens of Humpback Whales, Sea Lions, Eagles and more. The result is simply spectacular. Each time past the point we stop and drift for a while as whales move past and sea lions fish for salmon all around us. Four times we passed the point over the two weeks, resulting in hundreds of photos, and a view of nature usually associated with BBC documentaries.
Another stop was one of our favorites… Tenakee, a small village of a few dozen homes along the shore and a general store. We stop here for the hot springs, water coming right out of the rock at just the right temperature for a soak. A trail leads from town through the forest to a small river. A wonderful walk that allows exploration of the landscape underneath the carpet of trees seen from out on the water. A trail walked with some care, there are grizzlies here! This is the place I came face to face with a very big bear once upon a time.
Andrew Cooper fishing for Salmon in Icy Strait, photo by Deborah CooperWe spent a morning cruising up Tenakee inlet on a mission to find and watch bears. A very successful mission, we saw nine grizzlies in a couple bays. The bears are gathering near the stream in anticipation of the salmon’s arrival at the spawning ground. The fish are an essential part of the bear’s diet, the annual runs providing the food and fat that will see the bears through a long winter. Most of the bears we saw distantly, but one mother and cub allowed us to get quite close. She was eating grass just above a rocky shoreline, with deep water permitting us to bring the boat in very close to shore. We idled just a few yards away as she ate grass and occasionally looked up at the bank of cameras aimed at her and her cub.
A nice trip, measured in new memories, over two thousand photographs, and a cooler filled with fourty pounds of frozen salmon, halibut and crab. Yes, a direct flight from Juneau, via Seattle and into Kona allowed us to bring a full cooler back with everything inside still well frozen. As for the photographs? I will not bore my audience will too many, just a few selected frames to liven up the pages here on Darker View.
The day ends late during an Alaskan summer, there are only a few hours of darkness each night. Sunset and sunrise last a long time, hours of low light in which the world becomes rich with color. Keep a camera handy at all times, you never know what you will see, what spectacular vista will greet the eye, or when an opportunity for a photo will present. Sun setting over Saginaw Channel, near Juneau, Alaska
