lost in transition?

I finally made it to Seattle. I knew all along that sometime during this year I would be able to visit this city and, most importantly, to finally see Jules. This is a good time to be here too. I am in transition from a month of traveling to Alaska and British Columbia and also a few life changes. This month has seemed particularly long and I'm afraid I'm not all too sad to see it go away.

I actually haven't been all that busy, which is why the month may have seemed longer. This summer was all about training and rushing around from Egypt, the UK, to California, all along going back and forth from home. It was nuts. This last month or so has been much slower which is good and bad. Good because I had a chance to relax. Bad, because I now had no excuse to get my life back into order and get on with some important things (cough cough, grad school applications, anyone?). I am officially halfway done with the scholarship. I am already feeling the wear and tear of travel but also the pang inside telling me how can it be halfway done already?! So many things to do, places to go, dives to dive, fish to see, people to meet, everything. But I am happy with how this last 6 months have gone and have certainly learned a ton.

I will soon be back on the east coast, in my car, driving down to sunny Key Largo - I think some good, warm water diving will be great. Until then, I will be in Seattle for a few days enjoying some rest, relaxation, and Julia time.

Today I took myself around the city and found myself at Pike's Market place where I made my lunch up of the many delicious samples of food and jams!

On to October

Hideaway

I spent four nights in Browning Pass at the famous (and infamous!) Hideaway run by John deBoek, a longtime sponsor or the scholarship. Nestled in a protected cove, the Hideaway is in a perfect position for access to world famous dive sites. The hideaway is a rustic, floating (also not connected at all to land) "resort" that John made from old logger's floating homes.

The Hideaway

Each day we woke up and immediately put on our thermal under suits to get ready for the first dive. I spent time between dives reading, napping, and enjoying the sunshine. Without internet access or cell phone reception I was left to sort out my thoughts.

John and I

But back to diving:
I was glad to have my fourth element underwear under my DUI dry suit (the so sexy red and black trilam suit pictured above!) but I still got chilly under the water. But boy was it worth it! These sites are some of the prettiest dives I have ever done. The invertebrates are huge and there area walls completely covered by white metridium anemones. Amongst these are beautifully colored invertebrates from organge peel nudibranchs, sea stars the size of a small round table, puget sound king crabs the size of a cat and purple sea urchins everywhere. There are of course tons of vertebrates including more rockfish and greenlings that I have ever seen in one place. I also got visited by a huge bull sea lion (he refused a picture) at about 30 feet near the end of a dive.

Let's see what was under the water:

Orange peel nudibranch (size of a deck of cards)

Beautiful anemones

Basket star

The reef

Cookie sea stars, I believe

Copper rockfish

Red irish lord

Victoria Tale

I spent a few days staying in Victoria, Vancouver Island, BC with former scholar Adam Ravetch, his wife Sarah Robertson, and their children.

I am still nursing a slight sunburn on my face but it is well worth enduring as we spent a few hours out on the water near San Juan Island watching orcas. There were too many orcas to count and we were delighted by orcas breaching, tail slapping, and spy-hopping. Two orcas came particularly close to our zodiac giving me plenty to great action to film.

This was a particularly great time to visit with the Ravetch and Robertson family as Adam and Sarah are the proud directors of their first feature film, Artic Tale (out in theaters!). Adam took me to the local cinema to see the film and I now recommend everyone to go see it! If you liked March of the Penguins you will certainly enjoy this one. Based on the lives of a young polar bear and young walrus, Adam and Sara's beautiful and captivating shots are turned into a terrific story of Arctic biology, ecology, and animal survival in this changing world. Over coffee Adam and I talked about how we can use film to portray stories of animals and pass on conservation messages. I look forward to seeing more of their work in the future.

Adam and I after the film

I also had a great time talking with Adam about his scholarship experience. When he was a scholar (yes, Adam, that was a long time ago) there was only one person chosen (there were associate scholars too) and he spent his year primarily in the states driving around to different experiences. Much has changes as I now have two "classmates" and am encouraged to explore outside this country. Some things haven't changed and we enjoyed sharing stories of the people that make this scholarship so interesting (and bizarre...).

Checking out a beautiful forest

Feeding harbor seals with Rosie and Jessie

Tomorrow morning I head north to Port Hardy to meet up with John deBoek and finally get back in the water!

Going north!

Gustavus, Alaska

a shout out...

...the pirate jokes went too far on that day. yar.
(a shout out to Dan! Hope you made it to Seattle okay)

it's late

I made it to Seattle - it's almost 1:30am. I flew from Juneau to here but the flight was delayed, over booked, and they had "weight-balancing" issues. I blame the latter on the number of coolers that held hundreds of pounds of frozen salmon below all coming from fishermen who were up in Juneau for the week.

Me. Tired.

Okay, off to bed in my over-priced hotel room. Time for a few hours of sleep and then off on a bus to take me to the Anacortes ferries and on to Vancouver Island!

wildlife!

Iceberg, right ahead!

I got to play tourist for a day and visit the Tracy Arm Fjord and the Sawyer glaciers. Although it was cold and raining and cold that day I boarded the boat prepared to hopefully not reenact 'Titanic.'

It was a long day but well worth it as we boated three hours south from Juneau into the fjord to get near the glaciers. We knew we were getting close as we started seeing real icebergs! Luckily these weren't the size that probably caused Titanic's demise but we certainly avoided hitting them.

Ice, of course, floats in water, but about 90% of the ice mass is actually below the surface of the water. Seeing as we were only looking at the visible 10% of the ice it made me wonder how much ice was really below us and how close we really wanted to get. These bergs have been broken off from the nearby glaciers and float away as they start to melt. Glacial ice is quite unique as it holds very little air bubbles (due to so much compression). Light therefore goes through the ice differently and the resulting effect is the beautiful blue color.

Iceberg, right ahead!

As we entered into the narrow passages of the fjord we started seeing more pieces of ice as well as direct evidence that the glacier had once been where we now boated. Much of the sidewalls of the rock still showed direct scouring and forests were only now starting to form.

A rounded, glacial valley where a glacier once sat

And then we finally came to the Sawyer glacier. Due to the amount of ice in the water we couldn't get too close but we were offered a truly wonderful seen of a lot of ice. We witnessed first hand caving of ice from the tip of the glacier into the water - this created a distinctly loud crashing sound and subsequent wake on our small boat.

The Sawyer Glacier

What to do when you're not diving

... dissect some crabs!

I have spent a good number of hours helping graduate student Joel on his work on female snow crab egg production and life history traits. Each crab takes about 15-30 mins to process as we separate the ovaries, hepatic organs, and sample her eggs. It was nice to take a small break from diving and get back in the lab again especially since I apparently have no qualms about cracking open crabs to get at their inner organs. At least I don't sing "it's a hard knock life for us..." to them. But these crabs are put to very very good use as Joel and the Alaskan Fish and Game department hope to study snow crab populations over time. One main question Joel hopes to ask though analysis of this data is how are female crab populations and snow crab reproduction effected by over harvesting? I had a good time learning the techniques and talking about the questions.

The wet lab

Working alongside Joel

One of my crabs ready to be sampled

more ice pictures

Entrance into the melting cave

I'll take that with ice, please

Today was amazing! It was a gorgeous, sunny day (rare here in Juneau) so I decided to go play outside. I ended up biking out a few miles, leaving my bike in the bushes, and heading out on the West Glacier trail - one that would take me literally to the Mendenhall Glacier. Previously I had only seen this glacier from afar but nothing prepared me for the sights today.

The Mendenhall glacier -note the hikers for size reference. This is a large chunk of ice

The glacier is absolutely stunning - I got to touch the glacier, go underneath it, step on it, and even taste it! Surrounding the ice is barren rock freshly emerged from thousands of years of darkness. The glacier is receding fairly rapidly - it was great to talk to locals at the site who told me how the glacier looked even a year ago.

Underneath the glacier

The ice is beautiful

Due to melting and wind there are caves carved out that allow you to go underneath the glacier itself. Because of melting, this is quite dangerous so I peaked in, took a look around, and came right back out. But it was worth it - ice was completely blue and the melting had carved beautiful geometric shapes. I then walked to the edge of the glacier where it melts to form Mendenhall lake.
The edge of Mendenhall glacier

All around the glacier are plants, lichen, and moss starting to grow and form soil. It was quite amazing to see. The hike itself was full of interesting sights and difficult climbs.

Plants starting to grow between glacier erratics