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Pics Galore

The best aspect of this "Alaskan experience" is not the wildlife, not the sunsets, not the fishing, nor the money, or even the mountains. By far, the most cherished part of my two months fishing in Juneau will be my time spent with my wonderful cousins. They have been so generous; opening their home and their lives to me, and I will look back on this time with a fondness of meaningful interaction with people I love.

The ENTIRE Box family rallied for last week's all-night off-load. Even the kids stayed up until 4:00 AM packing our crab into insulated totes to be shipped to Portland. Molly was our camera woman, and I would say she captured the events damn well.

The other pictures are of today's perfect trip in the skiff. Usually, the last thing Steve and I want to do on our day off is head back out onto the water, but with a rare break in the clouds and the sun shining overhead, Molly insisted that we take the skiff out, try to catch a Halibut, and check out some remote beaches. It was SO much fun to experience the water in a new light...leisure, instead of work. We set anchor, and Corey hooked into a HUGE fish. He fought it hard for about an hour, and Molly (as you can see) was ready with the harpoon. It turned out to weigh 150 pounds!!!!! Corey only weighs 100 pounds, so he really worked hard to pull this fish up from a depth of 150 feet.

Might have to do a few posts to get them all on here. We leave tomorrow for our last week of gill-netting, then the last week of crab pots before we have to get all the gear back out of the water and on land. Hard to believe I only have 3 weeks of fishing left.

Pics

More picture of the bubble feeding humpbacks. It was an amazing experience to be so close to this incredible symphony of movement. The whales circle around a bait ball of herring and release bubbles that rise in a cylinder to confine the fish in a cage of bubbles. Then other whales rise up through the center of the column with mouths agape to scoop up as many fish as possible. All the whales surface at the same time, and if you look closely, you can make out the inner baleen of their mouths. SO cool.

The other pics are of me making bait out of cut salmon (pretty slimy/gooey on a hot sunny day) and posing next to a nice pot of 23 keeper dungees. Our record pot for the season is 29.

Bubble Feeding

3-4 foot seas

Picking fish

Holy Whale!!!

Hard to believe Steve took this picture three days ago, but we got quite a show from the boat. A pod of about 8 humpback whales cruised by the boat, and I guess they were in a playful mood because we saw about 15-20 breaches in a 30 minute window. They are SOOOO huge...it looks like slow-motion when they shoot out of the water. Maybe Steve should have a career change to wildlife photographer?

This week was a week of records for the fishing vessel Worthy (that's our boat). We started the gill net opening with the three largest consecutive hauls Steve has ever seen. Each one had 550 fish in the net and took about 2 hours to pick each one. (we had to pick the fish out quickly because the net can start to sink under all the weight.) We threw the net out, waited just 30 minutes, picked the fish, threw the net back out, got unloaded (each haul was about 4,000 pounds), picked the second haul, threw the net back out a third time, got unloaded a second time, and then picked the net for the last time. It was a non-stop finger work out, and when we got done Steve asked me how long I thought that took. I guessed maybe 3-4 hours. We were moving the entire time, and those three sets took almost 10 hours and totaled 12,000 pounds!!!! Of course the action slowed for the next two days, but we ended up with 23,000 pounds of salmon this week. Crazy crazy.

Just a few words about the fish we are catching: 99 % are "enhanced" chum salmon. This means that two hatcheries in the Juneau area release millions of fry into holding pins in two locations. The fry are fed for about two months and then released to complete their 3-5 year life cycle in the ocean. When they come back, they return to their original feeding spots and not to a river mouth. Although the fish live for 5 years in their natural environment, eating their natural diet, the touch of human hands is not far away. If we did not catch them, millions of fish would return to the hatcheries and try to spawn in salt water (which doesn't work), and the beaches around Juneau would become bald eagle hang outs and smelly, carcass-filled places. Definitely a crazy thing to be a part of. I cannot think of any other food source (besides maybe mushrooms) where humans release organisms into the wild for later, large-scale harvesting. I could see this happening with insects, as more research is being done into the nutritional value of arthropods (not kidding check this: www.ted.com/talks/marcel_dicke_why_not_eat_insects). Anyway, slightly off topic. So we are in effect, doing a good thing for these fish who would not be able to reproduce anyway. We are giving their lives purpose, so to speak...Haha.

The week ended with a record haul in the crab pots too. One bay with 12 pots averaged 16 keeper crabs per pot (that's the highest average Steve has ever seen in one area)! It brought our total average up to 5.2 for all of our gear, and Steve thinks this week is definitey our peak week for the season. Going back out again on Sunday, so I will update with more totals!