DURCKIES!

A few people have wondered about what kind of animals I've been working with in my new amazing 'Aviculturist' position at the Alaska SeaLife Center. I'm in the eider position, which means I help take care of our endangered eider duck species. Above is a male Steller's Eider, which has had about a 96% decline and is very very endangered. We have two research flocks: one of Steller's eiders and one of Spectacled eiders. They're research birds which provide us with a lot of information we didn't previously have about these endangered ducks. We have the wonderful position of being really the only facility in the world that can breed and research this very pretty bird! And being that it's breeding season, we've got over 30 Steller's eggs right now, not all of which we'll be hatching. We have 6 currently incubating, so hopefully in about 22 days, we'll have some baby Steller duckies! I have limited picture space on my blog, so I'm only showing you the male spectrum of the Eider duckies. This is a male Spectacled Eider. They're really my favorite duck because not only do they have spectacles from the minute they're born (much like I had spectacles from a very early age) they also have green mullets! The females are also a very pretty duck, with chocolate brown coloration. They're very large sea ducks, and can dive very deeply, which is rare overall in duck species. Most ducks, although waterfowl that spend a substantial portion of their lives on the water, can only pivot, not dive, in the water. But see how big his feet are? He can swim super well with them! This is a spectacled eider egg in a nest box! We currently have 4 eggs incubating that should hopefully hatch in about 9 days. I can't tell you how excited I am for the super cute little ducklings!! 

This is a picture from our aviary: a rhinocerous auklet! They're super cute sea birds, which we use for public presentations and whatnot. They're very good at standing on my hand!  And this is a very cute little horned puffin! He is another bird that we're able to utilized for educational presentations. And he's soooo cute! 

Just wanted to update everyone a little on what I was doing. Hope you enjoy!

We're gold-diggers, yo

Ah, Tyler and the man-mobile. Question: How many man things can you find in the bed of our truck? How many woman things? There's at least one of each....but yes, manness most definatly wins. Chainsaws, guns, augers, all the things an Alaskan man needs to bring home the family necessities, the three "F's": Fire, Fish, and Food. 

We've had amazing weather the past few days, and Tyler and I were lucky enough to have a day off together. We decided to head for Cooper Creek, the closest area to us that's supposed to have decent gold panning. We met quite an amazing man in the campground last summer when we were living between various tent sites. His name is Robert, and he's the quinticential Alaskan gold panner with the long grey beard, aviator sunglasses, and a bicycle to ride anywhere he may need. He spent last summer living in Seward in his tent, collecting derelict (or lost) fishing gear at low tide. He'd shine it up and sell it from his tent. This, of course, intrigued Tyler, and the two of them struck it off straight from the bat, having plenty of conversations regarding fishing in Resurection Bay. We soon found out that one of Robert's favorite pastimes is gold panning, and Tyler soaked up all gold digging information he could get. Robert left at the end of last summer, and graced us with camping and fishing equipment galore, not to mention another bicycle! So, when Robert showed up in town about 3 weeks ago, we were both quite excited to see him! He gifted some gold pans, and showed Tyler where to go on the map. After about a week, he decided to skip town and head back to Oregon, so we ended up with his slush box, and two pairs of cross country skis, boots, and poles! We were sad to see him go so soon, but greatful for the toy additions!  We headed towards Cooper's Creek and found a wonderful spot to camp the first night, right on a lake teeming with baby trout. You can see the mountains behind me, too...quite a beautiful day! And so warm---we'd gotten above 70 that day! The next morning we woke up, went to breakfast at a wonderful hotel/lounge in Kenai, then began our day of gold panning. You can see Tyler using the slush box above. The idea is to pile river gravel on top of it and let the river's current work the gold out of the gravel. It was a little difficult to get the hang of--we only got three flakes out of it, but I'm sure if properly used we would have harvested more.  This is Tyler with the gold pan. Here, the idea is to pile a bunch of gravel onto the pan, then start sorting and shaking until you're left with all the heavy materials on the bottom. Gold is heavier than most rock you're sifting through, so if you shake the pan with water in it, the gold will sift to the bottom.  Here's Tyler getting water in his gold pan to sift the rocks some more. We did get some gold flakes this way. It's exciting to think there's gold just hanging out in the river and we can actually find it! However, our find was anything but glorious for all the hours of work we put into it :o). We'll have to perfect our technique and try again. 

Days of the Dead

This picture was taken just before the herring started spawning in the small boat harbor. Notice the time of day: it's dark and we're getting closer and closer to the solstice, which means this was taken at about 12:30am. He had seen them earlier in the day, so we of course had to share the excitement and take our friends fishing. At midnight. Tyler will fish anytime, anywhere, so long as there's a body of water in front of him. My goal is to fool him with a puddle one day.  His vigor does indeed pay off, though! He brought home a limit of sea-bright red salmon two nights ago! They've just started running, so there are still a lot of tastey bright ones out there. Don't they look it?  The weather that day was very Sewardian: windy, rainy, chilly. But through the dreary weather, Tyler fished on for 2 hours at the banks of the river, and another hour filleting and cleaning the fish at home. We had tried unsuccessfully the day before in similar weather. To get to the fishing location, you have to wade through the river, so hip waders are a neccessity. I, however, did not want to spend $50 on waders to go fishing. So, being resourceful, I dawned my wetsuit and booties, waded the river, and although I was wet, I stayed nice and warm (although not quite toasty). I did get a few funny looks for being the girl on the beach with a fishing pole and a wet suit, though.  We made fresh Alaskan Salmon Sushie that evening! Me oh my, tastier than pumpkin pie! You can't get sushi fresher than that, and Tyler did a wonderful job cutting it up. We served it wrapped in cabbage and cucumber. He caught a few females, so we had fresh salmon caviar as well. Oh, the tastiest meal in a long time! Fresh salmon sushi is most definatly yummier than fresh clams. Thank you Tyler!  Now for a random work picture: Can you tell what it is? I'll give you a hint....it's cut open from a necropsy done on it that afternoon! It has flippers! And a very large head that was cut off and turned upside down! It's brown on the outside, red, white, and blue on the inside! That's right--a big ol' male stellar sea lion! Somebody reported a dead bloated sea lion on the other side of the bay, so the SeaLife Center picked it up to do a necropsy on it to determine cause of death. They cut it up yesterday on the beach right in front of the center, deciding it died from a blood clot caused by a long term infection. Then they tied it up to the docks so it wouldn't float away, but would decay some more. Somebody probably wants the bones. Yummy. Sea Lion stew anyone? We also got our first rehab animal in for the summer on the same day, a female Spectacled Eider, which just so happens to be the same species I work with! Exciting, huh? 

Clams Ahoy!

We took the opportunity of super low tides this past weekend to go on our first clamming adventure. We had quite the harvest, and decided the most appropriate portrait of the moment would be most exemplified by the above picture: the purely puritanical American harvest portrait. Frumpy wife next to farmer husband, the tool of torture positioned betwixt us and our farmland. Oh the clams! Growing up in Washington, I already had the skills to hunt and conquer the amazingly fast razor clams.  Tyler, being an Iowan native, can expertly pick out a corn field from a soy bean field, but lacked the razor-sharp clam-o-vision my Washingtonian eyes had already fine-tuned. He had never been clamming before. Yes, it really is true--I knew more about hunting and harvesting an animal than Tyler did! Hooray! I have finally won some man-points! Our first day on the beach, we dug up just over 60 clams, which is no easy task with those fast little shellfish. 

We spent the rest of the day in Homer, on the other side of the Kenai Peninsula from Seward. I had been there a few times for work, but Tyler had yet to venture to the 'hip' town of the peninsula and also the 'halibut fishing capital of the world'. So, once again, I got to be the expert. It was really quite a head-inflating trip for me. We stopped at the most widely known bar on the peninsula- The Salty Dawg. It's in the middle of the Homer Spit, which is a 4.5 mile long sand spit. We ordered some tasty local Homer Brewery beer, which Tyler is holding in the above picture. And no, it's not in a pint glass, but rather in a recycled Sobe container. Tyler kept imagining his beer tasted like Sobe flavors. Personally, I think he just had to light of a beer. You may be asking what's in his other hand--a pocket tool and a re fabricated ball point pen! While at the pub, our one and only pen broke while discussing our clamming operations for the next day. So Tyler, being Mr. Can-Do-With-A-Multi-Tool disassembled the pen, evaluated the situation and fixed the problem. We then had an operational writing utensil and could finish the our plans to seek out and conquer the quick-footed razors. 

After a day of sight-seeing and sun-bathing, we camped right on the Homer spit. We were lucky to just miss all the memorial day traffic, so we had a nice secluded spot on the beach. By about 11pm, we were privileged to a glorious sunset, too, with reds and purples and a lot more color than we've been seeing in Seward. Most likely, it had to do with the notorious volcano Mt. ReDoubt that we could see steaming across from the spit. Volcanic ash makes for the most colorful of sunsets. 

The next morning, we woke up, hit my favorite restaurant in Alaska, Twin Sister's Bakery, for breakfast, and headed out to a new beach for more clamming. Above, Tyler is digging like crazy for a fast little bugger! It took both of us digging, one with the shovel, the other with our hands, to get to the clam fast enough. As soon as the clam feels the digging vibrations in the sand, it starts booking it, digging deeper and deeper into the sand. It was all we could do to keep up with them. We definitely did better than anyone else we watched on the beach--and I could feel the results in my arm muscles the next day! By the end of the day, we had 99 clams in about 4 hours of work! We packed up, headed home, and cleaned and cleaned those clammies for hours on end. I made clam chowder with them yesterday. Thanks to Dad's recipe, the chowder was AMAZING!

This is a view we had from one of the beaches we were on--the only place in Alaska that launches boats with a tractor! There were stacks of corroded, worn tires next to the office building. Tractors aren't built for salt water. It was fun to watch a tractor push a boat into the ocean, though! And when the boat comes in, a poor grunt has to go out in hip waders to hook them together. It's really dangerous work most days, when the surf's breaking on the beach! Tyler met one of the guys who does that for a living. He had broken teeth. 

Ball and Chain

Tyler and I enjoyed our very first wedding anniversary May 3rd. I am officially deamed the 'ball and chain', and Tyler's officially the 'old coot'. We decided to celebrate the loss of our newlywed status with a camping excursion. I got off work the night of the 2nd, we packed up our gear, and hiked about 2.5 miles south of our apartment to the southern tip of Tunsina Beach and camped right on the dark glacial sand that makes up our beaches. It was quite literally the nicest weather we've seen since we moved here--blue skies, no wind, and warmth! 

Above pictured: married life with Mr. Tyler Pelo Barenjager. If there's a fish to find or an animal to hunt, any outdoor activity is made to fit his favorite pastimes. Notice, this is the first thing he accomplished when we picked camp. The tent is still in the bag, the gear is still in the pack. He really does love me more than his fishing pole. He promises :o). After we set up camp, we collected some driftwood and lit a beach fire. Tyler used only 1 match, and the fire was actually embery and HOT! It was our first hot, easy-to-build fire since we moved here, thanks to our recent warm and dry weather. When we lived in the campground, we tried building a fire a few times, and pretty much failed at all attempts. We had nowhere to dry our wood, and the wind usually puts a stop to most lit matches before you catch enough tinder on fire. We were quite pleased with our fiery blessing and our chance to roast some dogs marshmallows. After the stars came out, Tyler jumped up sprinting to his pole because something big yanked on it, too! Unfortunately, it stole the bait and moved on. 

We woke up to sun and warmth the next morning. I'm enjoying my morning tea above, next to our scenic campsite. I am wearing the Seward uniform: XtraTuffs and a hoodie. Tyler was shirtless, working on his tan. I knew I was German and Norwegian, but I never knew just how white and veiny I could become until we moved here. Don't look at Alaskans with their shirts off. Sick. We hiked back out that morning and drove to Soldotna and Kenai to enjoy the beautiful day on a long sandy beach, and hopefully find wildlife we don't see much of in Seward. We did find some sheep on the hillside, and some great birding was to be had in Kenai. 

The area we went to is about 1 1/2 hrs from Seward, and far enough on the other side of the peninsula that you can see Mt. ReDoubt, our infamous exploding volcano that hasn't been able to shut up since it started exploding in March. We saw a big cloud of steam coming out of it when we drove over there, you can even see it in this picture! We continued on to Kenai, and found the longest, widest sandy beach we've seen in Alaska. It's right where the mouth of the Kenai river meats the ocean. This is us on the beach, and if you make the picture big, you can see Mt ReDoubt behind us once again. We were even privileged to a free F-22 flight show, which is the army's new fighter jet. It goes so fast, and went straight up from sea level like a rocket!

After our big day, we went to Soldotna's brewery for a sampler and some great pizza. You can't find something like this in Seward, so it was a great treat! Since we had the camping gear already packed, we made use of the still beautiful weather to camp again on the way home. The bugs have woken up, and we were swarmed by mosquitos for most of the night. Despite the blood thirsty buggies, we still had a great night camping, and made it back early the next day so Tyler could get to work. A great first anniversary!

More of the fishin!

On Friday, Tyler and I both had the day off. Since Thursday had provided such a bounty of fishy herring, we of course were spending the day pickling and canning the herring. Mid-way through the process, surrounded by fish and vinegar, a friend stopped by to ask if we wanted to hop on a buddy's charter boat and go trolling for salmon. We of course jumped on the opportunity of a virtually FREE boat ride around the bay, especially considering it was one of the warmest, calmest, nicest days we've seen in the year we've been in Seward! So, we quickly wrapped up the herring project and ran towards the harbor. 

While waiting for the boat to get ready to leave, we watched sea otter swimming around the docks eating kelp covered with the herring roe we'd seen deposited the day before. I managed to capture his quite adorable little tongue.  When the boat was finally ready, we headed out to fish. It was a little 6-person boat, and we had four lines in the water, but no fish bit! Salmon trolling is about the unluckiest type of fishing you can do in Seward, you're lucky if you fish the bay all day long and get one sea bright salmon. I think it's mostly just an excuse for the guys to go fish, smoke and drink beers on the bay, and it was quite the perfect day to be on the water. So calm and sunny!

We passed a pretty nifty little cave hole around the south end of Fox Island, which is right at the end of Resurrection Bay (the bay we live on). If you were to look at the other side of the boat, you would be met with nothing but deep, vast blue water--the Gulf of Alaska. As soon as you cross the line between the bay and the gulf, the waves suddenly become much bigger, and almost every fishing charter or sight seeing cruise ship that ventures out of the bay comes back with at least one sea-sick vomiter on board. We were lucky to have the water be as calm as it possibly could be. I even ended up with a sun burn! The sun set before we came back to Seward, so it was actually blue sky behind the mountain, but I snapped this shot from the boat. Our apartment is the brown 4-plex right in the middle of the picture, across from the RV campers, next to the bright blue house. Seward is about 8 streets wide before the town stops and Mt. Marathon, the big mountain behind us, begins, which is too steep to easily build on. Consequently, the town is long and skinny. If you kept going left in this picture, to the very end of the road, you would get to the SeaLife Center, where I work. If you go to the right, that will take you North, past Tyler's workplace and eventually towards Anchorage. Seward is quite literally the 'end of the road'. We have one 2-lane highway between us and Anchorage that takes about 3 hours to drive. They did road work on it about a week ago, so we couldn't leave Seward for 4 days, and couldn't get things like mail, either!  After a long day of pickling and fishing, we decided to head to a newly opened-for-the-season restaurant next to the docks for some fancy cocktails, something we don't do very often. I really wanted some cherries, so I asked the waitress for an Adult Shirley Temple. After the initial look of 'is this lady seriously crazy, or playing a joke', she decided I really was that crazy and put the request in to the bartender. Mmmm....sweet and tastey. 

Tastey herrings anyone?

Spawning herring have arrived in Resurection Bay! Tyler and I have spent the last week looking for signs of herring spawn, hoping to find a big ol bunch of tastey fish. We've trekked all around the bay on rumors of where they were spotted the day before, only to be just a little to late each time to watch a spawning event. They've been around in big schools, spawning on whatever they can. Herring actually don't exist in egg form very long, they develop in only 10 days! The kelp around the bay is all quite quickly becoming covered in little clear herring eggs, which will soon all disapear. And those little eggs have been mocking us all week long--where are your parents little babies?!? Well, on Tyler's lunch break yesterday, he went across the street to see if he could catch anything in the bay (yes, he does this regularly. And yes, he really is Mr. Hunter/Fisherman of Seward...he spends more time with a pole in the water than I think even the fisherman do) In a few short seconds he caught 5 herring! So, after work, some of his coworkers and I headed back down to the docks to try our luck, and did we score!

Bob, in the bright yellow jacket, works with Tyler. He caught 3 fish at once!

This is Tyler showing his co-worker's son how to fish. Tyler proved to be quite the fishing mentor, and spent most of his time while we were at the docks helping this little tyke catch his fish. He doesn't get out fishing much, so he was a very excited boy, especially when he got to catch more than one fish at one time! He kept grabbing the fish and shaking them, trying to prove how much of a man he was to the fish. I don't think death by little man shaking is a preferred method of fish killing, so Tyler quickly threw them in the bucket instead. 

This is our bucket of herring filling up! My project today is to can and pickle it. I will be busy for the next few hours....Between the 6 of us fishing, we caught about 2.5 gallons of herring fishies. And I've been craving some pickled herring! 

This is one of my best wildlife pictures so far--a little arctic tern mid-flight! There were a bunch of them at the docks with us, scooping up tasties from the water. They were screaming and dive bombing right next to a little sea otter that was fast asleep. It was quite an adorable scene. Arctic terns are pretty amazing birds. They just arrived in Seward in the past week or so, where they have a breeding colony. They spent their winter all the way in Antartica fishing, and flew all the way back here to have little ternie babies! No wonder they were all gorging themselves in the bay...I'd be quite hungry too. We have one arctic tern at the SeaLife Center, and she's the only on we know of in captivity anywhere. They're so cute!

After all the wildlife viewing and catching, we came home to clean and eat some fresh fish. The deal: I will cook the sides and can the fish if Tyler cleaned it all. Yes! I win! So, we grilled the herring on the barbeque and I made some rosemary potatoes and a greek bean/pea side dish. The sides were very yummy, but I do have a recomendation: Pickle your herring. It's oh so much yummier. 

Wish me luck with the pickling!