The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea... 

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea... 

Gales and big seas, rain and fog.

We didn’t think we’d be going anywhere today. At 0200 it was really howling, well over 50 knots of wind blowing us around on anchor and making the little ship vibrate. However it appeared to have eased somewhat in the morning so we called up the weather people in kodiak for a forecast and heard 35knots and 12 foot seas easing to 25 and 8 foot in Bristol Bay, so we decided to head on out and see how right they were. They were pretty right except for the 15 foot swells that occasionally put us on our ear and set the bilge alarms off and emptied the galley cupboards onto the floor, they’re all gaffa taped shut now as the little clips they have are obviously not strong enough. I’m having to type with one hand at the moment, using the other to look after my cup of tea and stop myself sliding away from the table.
We’re headed for another little bay called security cove, sounds good eh?! If the weather gets better we’ll head on by and into our search pattern in Bristol Bay. If not we’ll hide in there for a bit and reassess.

The time we have left is getting shorter and shorter so feel free to pray for a break in the weather so we can achieve or objectives for this leg of the tour. We need to find sea mammals to illustrate that they live here in the heart of Pollock fishing mismanagement country, and are part of the ecosystem that relies on the fish that are being taken out by the mega tonne. As well as that if we see any giant trawlers we’ll check out where and what they are fishing, maybe find out how there season is going if they’ll talk to us. I really look forward to the day in the not too distant future when seeing a fishing boat in the Bering doesn’t immediately mean something really wrong is happening. It’s a campaign that will be won if the locals and environmental groups work together well and send a united and clear message to the pollies and the industry bigwigs in the lower 48 that the only acceptable way is-ECOSYSTEM BASED MANAGEMENT FOR THE BERING!!!!!

Adam

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

July 29

We spent another day anchored in Nash Harbor, waiting for the storm to pass.  Even here in the lee of the island, the wind is blowing so hard it makes the boat vibrate. Makes for a refreshing breeze when you step outside, though. Tomorrow’s forecast is for more of the same, followed, Sunday, by more of the same again.  With the weather eating ever deeper into our work plans for the final week of the expedition, we’re strategizing ways to make the best of the situation.  If conditions permit, we’ll up anchor tomorrow and make the 30 hour transit to a cove just north of Bristol Bay, so if and when the weather does break, we’ll be ready to begin work immediately. 

There’s much to be done in the last days of the tour:  photo identification of humpbacks in the northern half of Bristol Bay, killer whale research along the Alaska Peninsula, documenting trawlers in the Southeastern Bering, and documenting the remarkable beauty of this region wherever we find it.  Gale force winds for the next few days will make the job difficult, and maybe a little uncomfortable, but hopefully not impossible.  In the event the impossible comes up, however, we’ve got a plan for that, too.

Carroll

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

28th July
Howling wind and rain

Well we’re still pinned down by the storm that started yesterday. It is on schedule with the forecast and has swung to the south west and picked up in intensity. The front should be passing us about now so hopefully it’ll start to ease up this evening and over night and allow us to poke our nose out in the morning and head west towards Etolin pass and then south to Bristol Bay.

We’ve made today useful by helping Craig get footage of various things on board that are hard to get when the boat is under way. I gave him a tour of the engine room and explained the tasks down there, and Captain Bob is explaining all about the ship and its systems and his responsibilities as captain. James is making samosas again as they were so good the first time, so we’ll get some of that on tape too so people can see how hard we’re doing it here on the good ship pacific Storm.

We’re all itching to get under way and on with the work we are supposed to be doing. The end of the tour is drawing nearer and nearer and the urgency we feel to collect the information we need from Bristol Bay and the northern side of the Alaskan Peninsular is growing.

There’s not a lot to see out the portholes except spray and grey skies and the low green island. We did see a herd of reindeer that had come over near our beach for shelter from the storm. They must be hardy critters indeed to live on this low treeless island that is covered in snow and surrounded by ice for most of the year.

So that’s it from me for today, not a very exciting update, but it is what’s happening. Hopefully people in the south are working hard on saving the oceans and the forests and fighting the water wasting coal and oil burning fools that seem to have so much power at the moment.

SAVE OUR SEAS!!!

Adam

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

We’re sitting in Nash Harbor, on the north side of Nunivak Island, waiting for the storm to pass. There’s no town here. Just a handful of huts that look to be abandoned. At least for now. The deep silence is broken only by the hum of the ship. And by the wind. Even in the shelter of the harbor, protected on three sides from the worst of the weather, the wind is howling, creating white caps on the water, and occasionally rattling the roof of the ship.

Back on St. Lawrence, the wind is one thing the Yup’ik are worried about. The wind blows harder and more often in the spring and summer, they told us, and from a new direction. Whipping up the waves that make it hard to hunt and fish in their tiny boats.

Like the residents of the Pribilofs, the Yup’ik make part of their living by fishing, mostly for halibut, and the salmon that run along the coast. Even so far north, they were concerned about the spread of industrial fishing in the Bering. They are worried that trawlers could come to their island next, once the fish further south are depleted. It’s a reasonable worry. The history of factory fishing is one of serial depletion. When a new fishing ground is opened, vessels converge there, fish ‘til its exhausted, then move on to the next area. This history has repeated itself in the Bering just as it’s repeated itself everywhere factory fishing occurs. And the remoteness that once safeguarded places like St. Lawrence is affording less and less protection as vessels range ever farther in search of unexploited—or less exploited—fisheries.

In Savoonga, people told us that the shallow waters around their island are an important fish nursery, critical not only to their own well-being, but to the health of the whole ecosystem. Many of them felt that those waters, and similar waters around other Bering Islands, should be protected from industrial fishing, not just for the sake of the islanders, but for the sake of the Bering Sea itself.

But they also worry that no one will listen to them. Some of them asked how a handful of people on a tiny island could take on an industry worth a billion dollars a year? But George told them that they are not alone, they are part of a growing community of Bering islands that share these concerns. And unlike the fishing vessels, that come and go from a thousand miles away, the Yup’ik, and the Unangan of the Pribilofs, and the Aleutian Islanders are as much a part of the Bering as the fish and game they hunt. The sea’s fate is intertwined with their own. If they can speak with one voice, it will be the voice of the sea itself.

And hiding out in this tiny bay from the Bering in full roar, I can tell you from personal experience, that’s one very powerful voice.

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

Our little protected bay is getting some pretty darn strong winds. I’m super happy to have this snug little tank of a boat to hide in and that we are on the north side of Nunivak. It must be pretty scary over on the south side. We have been monitoring the radio over a coast guard request on the whereabouts of a fishing vessel not far to the north who’s EPIRB (emergency satelitte beacon) went off. We were about to call in and find out if it was near enough for us to give assistance when it was found and all ok. A collective sigh of relief…
Even though we are only a few hundred yard from the beach it’s still to rough to launch the RIB so no island exploration for us. We’ve pumped the bilge and cleaned the heads (Bathrooms), cooked too much food, watched vids etc etc. everyone’s pretty stir crazy and bored. It looks like we’ll be stuck here another day or two as well.

We got some news today on the state of the world. It was scary. Sounds like the middle east is going nuts and that we are along for the ride. I wish they could just can it as it’s making it hard for the plight of the environment to be heard above the war cries.

SAY NO TO WAR! And SAVE OUR SEAS!!!

Adam

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

It’s a day of straight passage making with nothing else on the agenda. In fact we are racing as fast as the big ol’ diesel below me will take us (8kn plus or minus current), to a safe little bay on the north side of Nunivak island, about 170nm south south east of St Lawrence. The reason I call it a safe little bay is that there is a storm approaching from the south west, 40kn winds and 15 foot seas, and we really don’t want to have to be out in that if we can possibly avoid it. When they give those numbers in a forecast it can mean a lot worse. If you have a 15 foot swell that coincides with another swell and the wind waves get piled up on top of that, and at the same time you happen to get a stronger than 40kn gust, it can all add up to mean a terrifying moment for our little ship. A nice deep bay on the north side of a mountainous island is exactly where we want to be. All things going well (touch wood) we will be in way ahead of trouble.
Not much to talk about campaign wise today. It’s a mental day off from the world of climate change and sea mammals. A day for getting the domestics done, maintenance on the boat, reading, writing, and watching vids, catching up on sleep. Sleep is a wonderful thing at sea. The rocking of the boat makes it possible to go to sleep anytime you want to. You can sleep 6 or 8 hours, get up, do a few things and if there’s nothing else to do, lay back down and fall right back to sleep. Something I cant do on land.
Well I guess that’s about it for todays update. If something interesting happens I’ll add it before we do our evening up/download.

I hope the Yup’ik are having a lovely day!

Adam

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

Cloud, fog, light winds.

We said goodbye to the good people of Savoonga at 1200 today. Once again I have to say how friendly, wise and forgiving, and amazingly in touch with nature the Yup’ik people are. The stories of change in the ecosystem and climate were too many to count. Ice, winds, temperature, coastline, mammals, birds, fish, bears, even the ground under their feet. . . all changing rapidly over the last few years. If the rest of the world could really hear their story and feel the fear of an invisible and deadly threat so huge it takes hope away, maybe the complacency of the rich comfortable energy gluttons could be exposed for what it is.

We weighed anchor, (which wasn’t easy as we’d been anchored in a 3-4 knot current for 34 hours so the anchor was probably about 6 feet underground by the time we pulled it), and headed east along the north side of the island, the beginning of the final leg of the journey. Nine days left. It doesn’t seem enough to answer all the questions we have and document all that is changing. Once again Greenpeace has opened my eyes to a vital part of the world under threat.
Some would give up at the enormity of the task ahead to protect this place from those that would destroy it, but that’s not a luxury that environmental groups and aware people that take responsibility for their world can enjoy. So unless you live in a war zone or are desperately poor (like no food, water, or shelter), or are mentally insane, PLEASE BECOME ACTIVE!!! Start small, click on the “send an email” request that is on just about every enviro website. Then send another one. Then volunteer a few hours, then a few more. Your planet needs you.

SAVE OUR SEAS!!!!

Adam
Ps we just saw (and of course photographed extensively) a couple of Gray whales.
Pps Also an amazing volcanic plug sticking shear and high out of the ocean with a Mur rookery on it. Very beautiful and dramatic in the fog.

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

Savoonga, St. Lawrence Island

Yesterday was a really full day, which is why I’m a little late in writing. We woke up to clear skies and calm waters in a tiny bay off the village of Savoonga, about 30 miles east of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island. After days of fog and rock, the neat houses set against rolling green hills were a welcome, and welcoming, sight. For a long time, we all just stood there, taking in the sunshine and the view.

Around noon, a skiff arrived to ferry us to the island. One of the skiff drivers described a bird—black with orange legs—that his wife had photographed a few days ago, and asked if I knew what it was. They had never seen one before. Later in the day, as I walked up the gravel road to the meeting hall, another man showed me a songbird nest, complete with chicks, a strange bird had built in his eaves. “The mother is a very little bird,” he said, “with a red head. Do you know that one?”

We spent the afternoon, and late into the night, talking with tribal elders, council members and people from the village. Savoonga was founded in the early 1930s, when a handful of Yup’ik families from Gambell moved here to be closer to the reindeer herd that ranges the eastern half of the island. Everyone we met had grown up here. A few of the elders had been in the village almost since it began, making their living by understanding the reindeer, and the weather, and the sea.

Like those in Gambell, the Yup’ik of Savoonga told us about the changes in the ice. And how they sometimes have to travel 100 miles or more to hunt animals they once hunted in the bay where the ship sat. They told us that the currents have changed, making the ice move more quickly and carry game away before they can reach it. For the first time, we heard that there’s been less snow lately, and that for the first time ever they’ve had summer days reaching 80 and 90 degrees.

They feel that the waters are rising and the waves are worse. As a result, their land is eroding, or simply sinking beneath the advancing sea, and camps and houses have been moved back from the water’s edge for fear of being lost. They showed us photos of a wide, sloping beach in front of the village from the 1960s, and photos of the same beach taken yesterday—or rather, the sliver of it that remains. They had photos from the same era that showed a long spit of land running out into the bay. Today most of it is gone.

We talked not just about global warming, but about traditional ways of knowing and how they’d been ignored for so long. They told us that scientists, and western people, rarely listened to them and rarely understood. I agreed with them, and confessed that environmentalists, too, had been slow to recognize the value of traditional knowledge. Slow to recognize that long memory and experience can sometimes give us a far deeper understanding of the world than numbers on a page. But this is changing, I told them. And our presence here is evidence of that.

The Yup’ik had questions of their own—not just about global warming, but about the industrial pollution that works its way into northern waters, to end up in their sea, and in their fish, and in themselves. They asked why the waters around their island were being polluted; and what was being done about it; and why it was taking so long.

They asked the same thing about global warming. To the people of Savoonga, global warming has been real for years, and they wanted to know why our government, all governments, haven’t done more to stop it—to stop their beaches from disappearing; their game from moving away; their houses from slipping into the sea. I offered what answers I could, about treaties, and politics, and signs of hope. But I knew in my heart it wasn’t enough. Not here. Not for them. For the Yup’ik, global warming is not just tomorrow’s problem, but today’s problem, and yesterday’s problem, and last year’s problem. They see their own lives changing rapidly and worry about the prospects for their children. Worry whether their children will be able to maintain the old ways in a world that’s different every day. I wanted to tell them that everything will be alright; that we’ll find a way. But the best I could say, with a clear conscience, is that more and more people understand now, and more and more people are trying. Making little changes that, one by one, add up to bigger changes. And hopefully, before it’s too late, it will be enough.
It isn’t yet. Not by far. They know that better than I do.

We left Savoonga on Tuesday morning with new friends, a deeper understanding, and a pledge to return. As we sailed around the east end of St. Lawrence on the way to our next leg, we encountered a group of gray whales feeding near the coast. Right where the Yup’ik said they would be.

Carroll

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

 
Finally, a clear blue sunny day. It’s been a while and it’s great to be able to see into the distance and feel the sun on our faces.

Last night we got back to Gambell with the two Yup’ik hunters Mike and Clarence that had taken us south of the island to look for whales. When you are with the Yup’ik you are confronted with how far out of touch with nature we from the cities have become. You can see that they are fully connected. They know every bird and animal’s habits. They notice if any animal is not doing what it normally does, if it’s a bit early or late or it’s numbers are different. They notice the wind is different and that the noise of humankind is growing closer and the animals further away. Most of all they know it is warming up, and they are really worried about it. They know exactly what is going on in their world.

About 10pm we got back to Gambell to drop the men off but the wind and the swell had come up, so people on the island were unable to launch a boat to come and pick them up. It was also to rough for us to launch the RIB so we had to motor around the headland to find a lee where we could launch and get the guys home. It all went well until we got trapped in the rocks with the RIB and managed to dent the prop. It was a slow vibrating trip back out to the ship followed by a prop swapping session in which I managed to bash my hand quite hard. Only a flesh wound though so no worries ?.

We left about 11 to do the 40 or so miles to Savoonga arriving there at 3am. We dropped anchor in 6 fathoms about half a mile west of the village and hit our bunks for a wee bit of shuteye. I awoke to the smell of huevos rancheros and coffee, mmmmmm. Can’t speak highly enough of James’ creativity in the galley. Then it was into Savoonga and meetings with the locals to hear their concerns and hopefully join forces to fight the onslaught of factory fishing. Like one guy said to me, it’s like a nightmare. A nightmare that you know is on its way to your home.

Stop the ocean destroyers!

Adam

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea... 

St. Lawrence Island

On the morning of the 21st, we awoke off the southwest corner of St. Lawrence Island to the sound of thousands of birds. St. Lawrence is a major stopover in the flyway between Asia and North America. In addition to the murres, puffins and cormorants nesting on the sea cliffs above us, huge numbers of geese, eiders and cranes stop to rest and feed here each spring and fall before continuing their journey between east and west. As a result, St. Lawrence is considered a globally important bird area. Unfortunately for the birds, and for the Yup’ik Eskimos who live here, St. Lawrence is among the places where the effects of global warming are becoming most apparent.

The history of the Yup’ik on this island stretches back some 2,000 years. Walking through the gravel streets of Gambell, our first stop on St. Lawrence, there were testaments to that history all around us. Bits and shards stuck out from the ground everywhere we looked; and all day long, artisans came in to share their stories, offer carvings, and show us artifacts pulled from the fields and hills near the town. Needles. Harpoon heads. Even a snow shovel made of bone. I was a little dumbstruck that ancient Eskimos used snow shovels. But after a while, it kind of made sense. What with all the snow and everything.

Talking informally with people in Gambell, we heard how their environment and their lives are changing. There are little signs, of course, like the cranes coming earlier than before, and the arrival of new species of birds from the South that hadn’t been seen here before. But there are also larger, more troubling, signs. The ice is coming later now, and retreating sooner, not just on the sea but on the lake behind the village. And the very nature of the ice is changing—from thick, solid cakes pushed down from the north, to smaller, broken up chunks that are not safe to walk or hunt on. For people who make their living from the sea, and the ice, it’s an unwelcome and threatening change.

With the early retreat of the ice, gray whales are spending less time near the island, and more in the colder waters to the north. We asked about the humpbacks, as well, and began to understand the results of our own search. For a long time, in the wake of commercial whaling, few if any humpbacks came near St. Lawrence. Sometime after whaling for humpbacks was banned, the species gradually reappeared around the island, but never in large numbers. Then, about five or so years ago, one man told me, there were a whole bunch of them. But not so many since. People see humpbacks occasionally, but they’re still uncommon. Whatever brought the humpbacks to this region in 1999, they haven’t returned in the same numbers in the last few years. Ironically, while the rest of us were onshore in Gambell, James finally saw a whale—a minke—right from the ship. And two bowheads showed up just around the point. Our luck.

As for the killer whales, they come when the gray whales come, heading north in the spring then south again in the fall. There were lots a few weeks ago, people tell us. Two men from Gambell, Mika and Clarence, agreed to ride along for a day to show us where the whales are. There won’t be as many as in June, they told us. But maybe some. So, with their guidance, we headed down along the west coast then around to the south side of the island, where we’d been just the day before. As we made our way along the coast, through the ever-changing fog, we talked with Mike and Clarence about their environment, their culture and their lives as subsistence hunters. They told us stories about their families, about friends lost to the ice and waves, and their own narrow escapes. About their efforts to maintain a centuries-old way of life in a culture and a society awash in change. And to be honest, I didn’t mind so much that we didn’t see a whale.

-Carroll

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

St Lawrence Island. Town - Gambell. Weather - still, 45 degrees warm, some cloud and a little patchy fog.

From the beach you can see Siberia, people walk there in winter across the ice to visit relatives and to hunt bear and walrus. The town is built on a gravel spit of land, exposed to the elements, a few tufts of grass the only green in the whole place. The gravel is deep, made up of small round rocks and pebbles that are extremely tiring to walk in. As a consequence everyone drives around on 4 wheel farm bikes, I mean everyone. The population is 600 and there must be about 600 bikes there. We were the only ones on foot.

The one way people can make money here is by selling ivory carvings, and artifacts that are in abundance buried all through the village. Gambell has been here for thousands of years, it’s a good spot for fishing and hunting.

As soon as you step off the boat onto the beach there are people wanting to sell you new ivory and ancient tools, bone harpoon heads, bone needles, fishing weights, bone shovel heads, and many other tools from the past. Beautifully carved whales and bears in gleaming white ivory with baleen eyes and polar bear claw tails.

 Above the beach is the refuse from years of subsistence whale and walrus hunting. Huge bones the size cars, sculls that weigh tons. Walrus hides stretched out on wooden frames, drying till ready to skin the frames of sleek wood frame skiffs. Big chunks of the meat also hang near by drying, the smell is intense.

The people are tough and hardened to life. I spoke to one man who had harpooned a whale from his little skiff with a hand held harpoon, just like the drawings in Moby Dick. He said whales are scared of human hands so when the whale tried to come up under the boat he would lean over and put his hands and arms down in the water where it could see them, and the whale would go back down. This is survival, not even vaguely related to the commercial mechanized hunts that Greenpeace so strongly opposes.

The one thing the Upik are worried about is climate change. I was surprised that this topic was brought up straight away without a word said about it by us. They say the big ice from the north isn’t coming down, and the ice around the island is only as thick as a man's height. They know it’s to do with carbon dioxide and what people down south are doing, but that it's clearly too big to fight. They said what can Greenpeace do?? You guys going to fix it?? What an awful question.

I do not know how Greenpeace wants to respond to that question to these people at this time, so all I could do was commiserate and tell them stories of the native island peoples of the south pacific, where I come from, and the problems they are facing there as a result of climate change. And that all over the world people are fighting the burning of oil and coal. It was a solemn conversation.

At the end of this eye-opener of a day we are back on board. Two men from the village are with us and we are heading down the coast in search of whales. We will hear their tales, and show them how to record what they see, so that it can be useful as data for the science people need to argue more strongly the case of the Bering sea.

I better stop there or I’ll end up writing a book!

SAVE OUR SEAS! For the people and animals that live there.

Adam

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea... 

I could throw an apple into Russia from the back deck at the moment. The water over there looks exactly the same as the water here though. The birds are blatantly flouting international regulations and casually flying this way and that across the line with a total disregard for the law.

The sea came back down during the night (all 3 hours of it) and the dawn brought another calm day on the water, the boat shrouded in fog. Frustrating stuff for all involved. People are starting to get a little annoyed at not being able to see anything.

All that changed though at the end of the last zig, or zag, not sure which, when we approached St Lawrence. The fog lifted and there in front of us was a spectacular sight. Shear and craggy cliffs with snow and ice reaching down to the water in the gully sections that the elements have cut away. Millions of birds swimming and diving and flying along have congregated here from all over the world. That’s how important the ecosystem is here. It’s a major stop over and destination for birds all the way from Tasmania and beyond, its rich waters feeding them and its cliffs giving shelter. All of us breathed a sigh of relief to have something solid to look at. After a week of nothing other than fog and flat ocean (apart from yesterday’s stormy stuff), it actually feels good on the eyeballs to look at a real feature.
There has been no sign of sea mammals on this side of the island so we are headed back out for another night (like day) of zigzags, then in the morning we will head into the northern of the two towns on the island, Gambell. There we will see George again and do some more of the community work that went so well in the Pribeloff Islands. We will also find out what the locals know about whales in the area and hopefully take some of them out so Dave the scientist can show them how to record what they see in a way that is useful as scientific data.

I’m really looking forward to meeting the people here and hearing what they have to say about the environment and how it’s going. What their concerns are and what they think of Greenpeace being in the area. Hopefully we will ally as strongly as we did south of here and build another block in the Bering that wants to see its ecosystem protected from the factory trawlers and ignorant fisheries management.

Let's leave some fish for the birds and the animals and the locals!!!!!!!!

Adam

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

Well like I said no day’s a normal one.

Last night the sea came up. We drifted for 4 horrible hours. No one could sleep because waves kept hitting the back of the boat with huge thumps and rattles. It was a relief when we started the main up and got moving again at dawn. It’s been a rough day so we will keep motoring tonight so that people can get some rest.

Dawn came gray and foggy but this time with strong winds and big seas. The 150 ton ship is getting rolled about like a toy in a bathtub. For most of the day we’ve had to ban going up in the rig to search for whales for fear of someone being flung into the ocean.

Of course, seeing as it's rough, the excess transmission oil pump decided to blow up. It didn't do it yesterday when it was calm of course, no, it had to wait till today when it’s a real pain to be working down there. Luckily there were other old pumps and parts on the boat that weren’t in use so was able to put another one in without too much trouble.

With the difficulties of being onboard out here today it really makes you see that the only possible reason anyone would come out to pillage and destroy this ecosystem is for that quick mega buck. That quick, short-sighted, greed fueled, who cares about our kids or the locals, mega buck. They certainly wouldn't do it just for the fun.

Yes we need to protect fishermen’s jobs, but I’m afraid that, quite simply, giant take everything factory style fishing’s going to have to go. It's an ECOSYSTEM we’re talking about here, not a free barrel of money that’s being left unattended by the government.

SAVE THE BERING SEA!!!

Adam

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

We woke this morning…yesterday morning at this point…to 10 foot seas and high winds.  They’d given the boat quite a lashing all night and continued to bounce us around for most of the day.  By dinner time, I was trying to make spaghetti while watching three pots of boiling water and sauce slide around the stovetop like a bad episode of I Love Lucy.  Needless to say, it wasn’t conducive to getting much writing done.  But as luck would have it, the weather calmed down sometime shortly after I finally went to bed.  I’m on night watch now, in the wee hours of the morning; and between glancing back and forth at the windows and the radar screens, thought I’d take advantage of the relative calm and quiet to catch you up on the days events.  Which, in a nutshell, I just did.

It may seem surprising that we can be out here for days on end without seeing humpbacks—or other whales for that matter. In these days of Animal Planet and whale watching tours, it’s easy to get the impression the ocean is teeming with whales. Fishermen often have the same impression about fish populations, and for a similar reason: people tend to focus their fishing efforts, or their watching efforts, on times and places when the animals are concentrated in a relatively small area. While this approach makes it much easier to hunt or see what you’re looking for, it can create a false sense about how much there is to be enjoyed, or taken.  It’s only when those animals are spread across the vast distances where they spend most of their lives that you can appreciate their true scarcity.

It’s like that with whales. In the southern hemisphere, where the majority of humpbacks are found, commercial whalers killed more than 200,000 humpbacks during the 20th Century, reducing the species to less than 10% of its original population. More than 28,000 humpbacks were killed in the North Pacific during the same period. Although the species has been slowly recovering, the current official estimate is that there are between 6000 and 8000 whales in the entire North Pacific—an area stretching from California to Japan, from Central America to the Bering Strait.  Spread out over millions of square miles of ocean, these numbers are still vanishingly small. 

If applied to the whole region, the 1999 sightings that brought us up here looking for humpbacks suggested there could be nearly 1200 humpbacks summering in the central Bering Sea.  But the sightings all occurred in a short time, in a small area, not scattered evenly around the sea.  Just as a whale watching tour off the Baja Coast might lead you to think there were hundreds of thousands of humpbacks in the Pacific, many people think the 1999 survey is a poor indicator of the abundance of humpbacks in the central Bering as a whole.  It is estimated that fewer than 400 humpbacks winter in the waters south of Japan.  If, in fact, it is those whales that are coming to St. Lawrence to feed, that might give us a better sense of how many whales are here.  And that’s why we’re here, of course.  To help make, or negate, that connection. Time will tell.

As I wrote this, the Southwest Cape of St. Lawrence has slowly slipped onto the radar, a collection of green blotches gradually transformed into a solid coastline.  The first land we’ve seen for days.  As we make the next turn in our transit, we’ll spend a few hours following the coast before heading back into deeper waters.  There’s a sea lion rookery near the Cape that makes the area a good candidate for killer whale work.  And maybe, just maybe, Here Be Whales.     

-Carroll 

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

At mid-morning, a ship showed up on the radar: a big one, about 5 miles dead ahead. We hoped the fog would lift long enough for us to get a good view of it from the crow’s nest, thinking it might be a Russian vessel that had slipped over the border to fish in U.S. waters. There’s a large pollock fishery in Russian waters just a few miles to the west, fishing the same pollock stock being fished in the U.S.—the pollock circulate around the Bering in an endless flow between deep and shallow waters, between warm and cold. The Russian fleet has been catching about 500,000 metric tons of pollock a year recently, and much more than that in years gone by. Rampant illegal fishing there means the real numbers are almost certainly much larger. But these numbers aren’t taken into consideration in determining whether the U.S. pollock fishery in the Bering is sustainable. We go on acting as though they are different fish in a different ocean, separated by a concrete wall rather than an imaginary line. And OUR fish are doing just fine, thank you.

When the distance between us had fallen to 4.5 miles, the other ship began to move out of our path, following a track to the northeast at a high rate of speed. We were near the end of a leg, so we cut it just a bit short and changed course to try to come closer. But it was moving too fast. Using the whale research as an opportunity, we hailed it to try and determine what it was doing out here. The operator came back with a heavy accent. Filipino, Bob and Adam agreed. Certainly not Russian. They hadn’t seen any whales, but were otherwise cagey about what they were doing. The heading they gave paralleled the U.S.-Russian border, perhaps 10 miles on the U.S. side. It might have been a Russian patrol boat, except for that accent. It could be a fishing boat, but without a good look at it we couldn’t tell. When the fog lifted, it was gone.

Shortly after that, we entered the heart of our search area, and tightened our pattern to cover as much of it as possible. In an effort to use every whale-finding tool at our disposal, I cycled through my entire repertoire of whale calls, starting with the straightforward “Here, whale, whale, whale!” When that didn’t work, I tried an assortment of seafood-related enticements. “Krill! Get your fresh krill here!...Herring! Cold, salty herring!....Arctic cod! All you can eat!”

I thought for sure the cod call would bring ‘em running (or swimming), since many of the sightings here in 1999 were associated with schools of cod. But no luck. Craig, our cameraman, suggested that the whales couldn’t hear me so well up in the air, and maybe I should try sticking my head under water. But personally, I think the problem was not one of biology but linguistics. English is one of the most complex languages to learn and I have no idea how many whales speak it. I plan to spend the evening translating my calls into Humpback, so we can try again tomorrow. If I can just convince them we have fish, I’m sure they’ll head our way.

The Japanese government has tried to use this obvious fact—that whales eat fish—to justify it’s program of “scientific” whaling. Rather than acknowledge the problem of overfishing, Japan argues that fish are disappearing because there are too many whales in the ocean. That’s right: too many whales. To prove its point, Japan killed more than 900 whales this year in the Southern Ocean, cutting them open to check their belly contents, then turning the rest into steaks no one will ever eat. It plans to add the endangered humpback to its lethal research program in 2007. You know, to save the fish.

The problem I see with Japan’s argument is this: Whales have been eating fish for millions of years. And for millions of years, the ocean got along just fine with them doing it. I wish I could say the same for trawlers. Or whalers for that matter.

-Carroll 

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea... 

Well today has outdone yesterday for fog so far. 1800hrs and still only small patches of visibility every now and then. And cold, like a winters day in Tasmania, although it’s the middle of summer. I went to bed about 0130 this morning and it was still totally light.
The most exciting thing to happen so far today is that a decent size ship appeared on the radar. We tracked it for a while and figured out it was running straight up the borderline. Of course we all speculated on what it could be- a US border patrol? A Russian one? A big trawler? We thought probably not the former or they would have hailed us as we are driving around in zigzags which would seem odd one would think. And we had no reason to hail it either to slake our curiosity, until some bright spark, and I wont say who, came up with the innovative idea of calling them and telling them we are research vessel Pacific Storm and had they seen any whales on their travels? They did not respond on the first set of calls, but about ten minutes later when we tried again they did. Bob, who has extensive offshore coastguard captaining experience sounds very official on the radio and we got back a rather timid response from a Filipino crewman who answered all Bobs questions on their course and destination. They had seen no whales but promised to call us if they saw “any whales or objects floating in the water”, which is great. At least for a little while we have another set of eyes in the fog.

Not a lot else to say today. Well I did spend a fair while pondering how the kittiwakes make a living out here. I’ve never seen one dive for fish or anything. They just seem to fly and fly, occasionally picking a spot on the water with great deliberation where they land and fold up there wings and just float around for a while before taking off again. According to the book they mug puffins for their food sometimes, steal eggs, eat refuse from fishing boats etc but there’s no fishing boats and very few puffins out here. They look healthy enough though so I’m not too worried about them ;-)

As the fog gets thicker the cooking gets better-
James is making samosas.
I made fried rice with vegies and strips of egg in it and a satay sauce
Carol marinated chops in some sort of orangey sugary gingery stuff

Adam

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

This afternoon we entered the southern part of our search zone for humpback whales, in the area northwest of St. Matthew and southwest of St. Lawrence. It’s less than 200 miles between the two islands, but our search will take us back and forth across 700 miles of sea.

It seems like a long way, but it pales in comparison to what the humpbacks themselves do every year. The humpback whale has the longest migration of any mammal, making a ten-thousand mile roundtrip between its calving grounds in temperate seas and its feeding grounds closer to the poles. Even though the humpback is the most studied large whale on earth, our understanding of which humpbacks go where in their annual journeys is still incomplete.

Humpbacks have three major winter calving grounds in the North Pacific—off the coasts of Mexico and Central America; around Hawaii; and in the western Pacific from south of Japan to the Philippines. Scientists have also identified the major summer feeding grounds—off the U.S. Pacific coast from California to Washington; from northern British Columbia across the Gulf of Alaska; and in the Aleutian Archipelago and Bering Sea. But the connections between these areas are still being worked out. Most humpbacks from Mexico and Central America winter off California, Oregon and Washington. But there is a smaller, and seemingly distinct group, that heads farther north to British Columbia and the Gulf of Alaska. Some Hawaiian humpbacks also summer in the Gulf of Alaska. Still others, however, have been spotted in the Aleutians and southern Bering Sea. And what of the humpbacks from Japan? No one knows for sure yet, but one hypothesis is that at least some of these whales travel north into rich waters of the central Bering. It’s an open question, that hopefully this trip will help answer.

In 1999, a whale survey of the region identified significant numbers of humpbacks in the waters southwest of St. Lawrence, near the Russian border. The same waters we’re sailing through now. With any luck, we’ll encounter some of those humpbacks and get close enough to take the photo identification shots necessary to match the whales here to individuals already documented further south.

It won’t be easy. The 1999 survey had 10 humpback sightings in more than 6,000 miles of effort. Nearly ten times the distance we’ll be covering. But finding even one match will help us better understand the movements, and the habitat needs of this remarkable migrant and open an unexplored new feeding ground to humpback research.

It’s worth a few hundred miles at sea.

Carroll

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

Another unusual day on the Bering sea. Then again they've all been pretty unusual so far, so that makes it normal I suppose. We came to the stunning conclusion last night that there is no point searching for whales in the dark and fog, so we decided to turn off the engine and just drift for the few hours of darkness, thus not missing a big chunk of the search pattern and saving fuel (think global act local!). The morning started off the same, cloaked in thick fog, visibility down to 20 metres at times. We adjusted our pattern a little to account for the lost time and set off again optimistic the fog would clear for us. Eventually, it finally did at around 2pm.

It can only be described as eerie out here right now. The water is like undulating molten glass. Biggish rolling swells but not a ripple in sight, all the way to the horizon. Naturally the lookout watch has resumed and as I speak Todd and James are up the rig peering into the distance with binoculars. I wish them luck, not just for the

environmental data we search for, but also for their sanity. It can be difficult for busy motivated professional people to be faced with inactivity that they cant do anything about. The ship's clean, engines are greased and happy, skipper's having a nap, all the good movies have been watched, it's so quiet there's not even a single seabird as far as the eye can see. And there's plenty of zig zags to go till we reach St Lawrence in a few days. Everyone's looking forward to that as there will be lots to do and plenty to film and record.

3 minutes to my turn up the rig so I'll finish this update later, after I spot the humpbacks!!!


Some time later...

Well I didn't spot any humpbacks but I did see a few birds, and a plastic wrapper. It's got me thinking that a hundred and something years ago there were something like 90% more whales in the Bering than there are now. Is it possible that a reason we aren't seeing any here is because most of them are gone? There are less than 1% of Blue whales left now, which is a tragedy. One would think that the experience of loosing the whales would make people think twice about fishing out whole fish populations in the region, but sadly it doesn't. That is the challenge environmental groups such as ours face- How to educate the people that they don't have to accept huge companies destroying their ecosystem for a quick mega-buck, and to find a way to stop them, as quickly as possible.

STOP THE OCEAN DESTROYERS!!!

Adam
ps the fog's back

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

Sitting fogged in at St. Matthew this morning gave me some time to reflect, for the first time in days, on what we’ve seen here so far and what it might mean. In a famous essay, the ecologist Aldo Leopold wrote of thinking like a mountain—understanding nature not in terms of any one species, but as a whole far greater than the sum of its parts.

I draw a similar lesson from our time in St. Matthew and the Pribilofs. The whales, the seals, the seabirds, the fish, the Unungan are all part of the larger story of the sea itself. To protect those parts, and to protect the Bering, we have to begin thinking like an ocean. We have to recognize that the species of this and other waters are interwoven in a web of relationships we are only beginning to understand. To focus our efforts on harvesting one or a few species, even “sustainably”, without considering the effects on other species, risks unraveling that web.

In science and policy-speak, this consideration of broader impacts is called ecosystem-based management, or EBM. EBM is about humility in the face uncertainty; about acting with caution when we’re unsure what the real-world consequences of our actions will be. The concept isn’t novel. Just underused. Particularly in the context of fisheries management, which is remarkable, because the law already calls for it.

The heart of the federal fisheries management system in the United States is a law called the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Magnuson-Stevens is also called the “Sustainable Fisheries Act” because, when it was adopted in its current form in 1996, Congress expected it to bring about a revolution in the sustainable management of U.S. fisheries. And it did help; though it was more evolutionary than revolutionary. One evolutionary step the law took was to require the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal agency that governs our fisheries, to develop recommendations for expanding the use of ecosystem principles in fishery management. So, NMFS convened a panel, which developed recommendations, which have yet to be systematically applied anywhere.

As I write this, Congress is debating whether and how to improve the Magnuson-Stevens Act. One thing conspicuously absent from the proposed revisions to the Act is any solid requirement to adopt ecosystem-based management instead of the outdated and disproven single species approaches on which we currently rely. This is a serious oversight. It’s been three years since two major commissions concluded our oceans are in crisis driven chiefly by overfishing. Ten years since Congress recognized the need for an ecosystem-based approach to managing our seas. And more than half a century since Aldo Leopold first thought like a mountain.

It’s time, at last, to start thinking like an ocean.

- Carroll 

The following posting is from Captain Bob Pedro, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

I’m sitting in my chair and thinking. Thinking about how we set anchor last night in calm protected waters with a patchy low fog embracing the peaks of St. Matthew Island here in the middle of the Bering Sea. At this latitude, were it not for the fog, it would have been bright daylight even at 11 p.m.

When we awoke this morning, the fog was heavy right to the water line and at best we could see about 50 yards. This was not at all cooperating with our desires to circumnavigate close around the island hoping to see what bird and mammal life might be living here.

We were a little disappointed, but after a little discussion we decided to move plans forward to the search pattern route we’d set between St. Matthew Island and St. Lawrence Island. We will be traversing an area from about 5 miles from the International date line/Russian waters and 100 miles east of that line and back and in a somewhat north easterly general direction.

This is already the farthest north I’ve ever been and we are going even farther. Thinking about this is very exciting. It’s a new life experience. I keep wondering what I’m going to see next. The lookouts on watch up in the crows nest keep scanning for whales as far as they can see. Every time I see a whale, I am in awe. They are such magnificent animals, and simply breathtaking to see up close. And yet we know so little about them.

As I am learning on this trip, whales and many others of the sea are on a proverbial “tight wire”. There are many good and dedicated people from all walks of life, who are trying desperately to help maintain that critical balance between animal and man.

As I stand and look out the wheelhouse side window and breathe in the cool fresh sea air, I can’t help but think of how lucky I am to be here, and have these great life experiences that most people will never have. And then, to have a job like mine as Captain of this great research vessel, doing what I can to help the efforts going on all around me to make the world a better place.

I look out the wheelhouse window and know words could never describe how it feels to be at sea. I’ve seen severe storms and I’ve seen flat calm with cloudless skies a thousand miles from shore. I’ve seen sunrises that caused my whole being to smile and sunsets that set fire to the sky from horizon to horizon.

I truly have an affection for the sea. Not unlike the affection I have for my beautiful wife. I believe that if we treat each other with the mutual respect that we each deserve, our relationship and love will go on forever. And also with the sea, I believe that there can be a balance where, if well maintained, we can have an abundance of life that will go on for all future generations. Working together we can and will find that balance. Working together we can not only enjoy the fruits of our efforts, but know that future generations will be proud of us for having done it. We must find that balance.

As I stand and look out the wheelhouse side window and breathe in the cool fresh sea air, I know that I am in love with life. My life! And I’m a very lucky man.

Thank you for sharing it with me.

- Captain Bob Pedro

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

There is virtually no wind now and the fog has left us for the time being. We have a low swell so it's a very comfortable ride.

The day started off with us cocooned in fog. It's sort of strange going along on the calm sea in a little circle of visibility about 100m wide. It makes you think the Marie Celeste or some other ghost ship will suddenly appear out of the mist. Nothing to see but the odd Puffin or Kittiwake

Around 1700 the fog cleared so the whale lookout rotations started again. I just got down from my turn. The ocean is flat to the horizon, which is perfect for sighting a whale's blowing, but no one's seen any so far. We are headed into an un-researched section of the Bering where rumor has it that a population of humpbacks was spotted some ten years ago. We are to confirm its existence here and collect some data.

It's a zig zag search pattern we are on now that will take us up to the Russian border and back a few times and eventually to St. Lawrence Island.

Enjoy, wherever you are, and do something to help save the oceans please!!!

- Adam

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

After a 25-hour transit from St. Paul, we reached St. Matthew Island. We won’t put into port here, because there is no port. No airport. No roads. No town. No people… except, temporarily, for us. Nearly 200 miles in any direction from the nearest human habitation, St. Matthew is by far the most remote place in Alaska and the lower 48. This is no doubt a relief to the Steller sea lions that haul out on Hall Island, a few miles away.

St. Matthew is beautiful. Much bigger and more majestic than I’d expected. As we approached from the south, sheer rock walls rose hundreds of feet straight up from the sea. I half expected to see giant stone skulls in the surf and hear chants of “Kong! Kong! Kong!” floating down from the heights. But as we rounded the point and came in near shore, a new St. Matthew came into view, with rolling green slopes that looked more like Ireland than Skull Island.

Heading up the island, we saw our first whale.  We anchored at Bull Seal Point. We didn’t see any seals, but lots and lots of birds. Kittiwakes, puffins, murres so heavy with fish they could barely get airborne.

The waters around St. Matthew are rich in the herring, capelin and juvenile pollock critical to the diet of these birds, just as it is critical to their neighbors in the Pribilofs. Although the Bering Sea hosts more than 450 species of fish and invertebrates, only a handful of these species account for the majority of the seabird diet. This handful overlaps greatly with the 20 or so species that account for 98% of the fish caught by humans in the Bering.

In the Pribilofs, the ecosystem’s ability to feed fish-eating birds has already been compromised. In the mid-1970s and 1980s, around the time the major declines in Steller sea lions and fur seal began, there were also substantial die-offs of kittiwakes and thick-billed murres, resulting in population declines of up to fifty percent. As with the seals and sea lions, these seabird declines have been linked to a reduction in forage fish like the pollock. Fortunately for the birds of St. Matthew (and unfortunately for birds elsewhere), most of the pollock fishery is still concentrated in the Southeastern Bering, at least for now. Fishing boats come up this way—a fact abundantly demonstrated by the fishing floats we found scattered along the shore—but the great distance from port makes it a little less appealing. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Reducing fishing impact may not be the end of the story, however. Birds that feed at the sea surface are known to be affected by stormy weather, which makes it much tougher for them to feed themselves and their chicks. If, as predicted, global warming leads to an increased number of storms in the Bering, the birds of the Pribilofs—and St. Matthew, and St. Lawrence, and the Aleutians—may face a new and even more serious threat. Continued heavy fishing in the seas where they feed will only compound that threat.

One solution may be to set aside pristine areas, like St. Matthew, or coastal waters around the Pribilofs, where industrial fishing is prohibited or sharply curtailed. Doing that could not only protect forage for seals and seabirds, it could also create a natural laboratory where we could better assess the relative impacts of fishing and climate change. In high school biology experiments, we called it a control. Which is something human activities could use a bit more of these days.

- Carroll

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

We are now about half a day north of St Paul. It’s a comfortable ride as the swell and breeze are coming from behind us gently helping us along at about 8 knots on our way to St Matthew’s Island. The fog is patchy so every now and then we can see the horizon and people on the bridge pick up binoculars and look around for whales and factory trawlers.

It really feels like we’re on a new stage of the journey as a lot has changed onboard. When you are working with a team doing something as intense as this you really get to know each other and bond, (or the opposite), and we had such a fantastic team on the first half of the voyage that it feels strange now that they are gone and a new bunch have arrived. We will go through the process again though and in a few days everything will feel normal again.

It was sad and a bit scary waving goodbye to Willie and George on the dock. Willie’s the kind of guy that subtly makes you feel safe at sea with his total understanding of, and ability fix, every square inch of the boat. But he gave James and I a very thorough lesson on everything we will have to do for the week he is gone.

We should arrive at St Matthews in about 20 hours or so. It’s an uninhabited (by humans anyway) island and a sanctuary, so we will not be allowed to set foot on it. Luckily there are three or four really good spots to anchor, so whichever way the wind blows we will have a nice lee to be in.

James is cooking what he calls an “experimental dish.”  It’s smelling good though and its still in the pot, which is good because in the last 20 minutes or so the swell’s gotten bigger and changed direction to a bit more on the side so we’re rocking and rolling quite a bit.

Feels like a loooong way from home out here...

- Adam

Note: Adam is a radio operator and RIB driver.  He has worked with Greenpeace in Australia and internationally since 2003.  He is also an industrial rope access  specialist, which involves rigging for skyscrapers and large scale events such as the Olympics, as well as a licensed yacht skipper.

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

Today was a day of transitions. We spent today getting a little down time, preparing for departures and arrivals, plotting the next leg of the trip, and watching the fog roll in and roll out at five minute intervals. All my life, I’ve heard the cliche “If you don’t like the weather here, just wait five minutes and it will change,” but the Bering Sea is first place I’ve been where that saying is literally true. It’s sunny. It’s foggy. It’s sunny. It’s rainy. It’s calm. It’s choppy. It’s warm. It’s freezing. The local weather god clearly has a fear of commitment.

We spent the morning charting the course that will take us north to St. Matthew and St. Lawrence Islands, where we’ll begin our humpback research in earnest. We’ll leave tomorrow (weather permitting), spend two days around St. Matthew (unless we only have one), spend the next three days crisscrossing the northern Bering looking for humpbacks (if all goes as planned) and anchor in St. Lawrence on July 21st (um…probably).

Today was also a day for crew changes. Happily, we have two new team members to share the wealth. One of whom is Dave, who will lead our efforts on killer whale and  humpback research and who, we are told, makes killer grilled-cheese sandwiches. So, we got that goin’ for us.

Even with all the comings and goings, we managed to get out to search for killer whales around Otter Island. The frequent fog made spotting difficult, and the calm seas got progressively rougher as we approached Otter Island. At times, the island itself vanished into the fog, so it’s not too surprising that we didn’t see any whales. We didn’t see much of anything. Despite the name, there are no more sea otters on Otter Island. They were driven nearly extinct by commercial hunting in the 18th and 19th centuries. They recovered in much of Alaska during the last century, but never really made a comeback here. The Aleutian populations have been declining again since the 1990s, for reasons that are not yet fully understood.

Nor will you find sea lions, George told us, on Sea Lion Rock. From more than 500,000 animals in 1960, Steller sea lion numbers have fallen to around 20,000 adults today. Overfishing for pollock, a key prey species for the sea lion, is a key suspect.

I’d tell you the story of Walrus Island. But you can already guess the punch line.

All around this remarkable, wild sea, the ecosystem is changing. Seals, sea lions, walruses, even seabirds, are declining at staggering rates. Crab fisheries have crashed in one region after another. Other fisheries have followed the same trend, including, in some areas, the pollock fishery. The causes are complex. Overfishing is one obvious source of problems, but not always the only one. It is beyond doubt now that the climate is getting warmer here, and scientists are increasingly recognizing how that warming affects the wildlife of the Bering—disrupting food webs, causing some species to shift northward, and threatening others, like the walrus and the polar bear, with near-certain extinction. Many fishermen have seized on facts like these to argue that global warming, not overfishing, is the cause of wildlife declines. This tactic, in turn, has made some people who fight overfishing leery of talking about climate impacts. But I don’t think the answer is as simple as one or the other.

The sea lions, the birds and the pollock cannot choose which of these forces to be affected by. They are affected by both of them (and others).  And just as combining two different poisons can result in a new and far more toxic potion, the combination of overfishing and climate change has effects on this and other ecosystems that we’re only beginning to understand, but which appear far more toxic than either force in isolation. The question we have to ask ourselves is not “Which poison is worse?” but “How do we reduce both to make their combination less lethal?”

Stopping global warming demands immediate change, and we should, all of us, work to bring about that change. But even if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, it will take decades to work the poison out of our global system. In the meantime, we have to adapt our fishing practices—all of our practices for that matter—to the new realities and great uncertainties of life in a rapidly changing world.

- Carroll 

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

We've been here for a few days now, getting to know the people and the place and sounding out what people think of an ecosystem management based fishery. So far it's clear that it's what people want. I met an old guy the other day who started the conversation by saying "I hope you guys make those draggers go 100 miles offshore." The locals are being forced to go farther and further to get fish while the big factory draggers pillage their traditional waters.

The results of having to go farther were rammed home to everyone this morning. We awoke to the news that the boat George's son was fishing on had lost radio contact and hadn't come back in at midnight as planned.

Luckily another boat found them, 11 hours after last radio contact, upside down, the four young fishermen huddled on the upturned hull, hypothermic and lucky to be alive. George's son was a young hero in the situation. He had clambered over the rail and onto the bottom of the boat as it went over. He was able to haul his buddies up and as he was dry, he blocked the wind with his body while they shivered. Eleven hours in the frigid waters, scared, not knowing if anyone was looking. Good thing the Aleuts are so tough or they would not have made it.

As soon as the crew was brought back in and George had hugged his son, we went out to try and salvage their boat, the tool they need to survive and earn money. We had a rough idea where it was when they were rescued and luckily we found it. We ended up attaching some heavy lines and then dragging her back to the harbor at St. Paul.

The whole town was there to meet us with a big crane on the dock and many willing hands. All were quiet when they saw the damage to the boat and gear and the expressions on the faces of the guys that survived. It was a shocking way for all to see how dangerous it can be to be a fisherman in the Bering Sea. And how if they could fish by the island like they always have, this situation would not arise. Fishing is always dangerous, but you see my point I hope.

Going to sleep well tonight...

SAVE OUR SEAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- Adam

Note: Adam is a radio operator and RIB driver.  He has worked with Greenpeace in Australia and internationally since 2003.  He is also an industrial rope access  specialist, which involves rigging for skyscrapers and large scale events such as the Olympics, as well as a licensed yacht skipper.

From George:

"I thought I was going to die, Dad." My son Justin told me as I cried and cried, hugging and holding him as tight as I could.

Just yesterday’s blog, I spoke about him going out into the frigid Bering Sea to fish for halibut commercially, farther and farther from the beaches of the Pribilof Islands. Little did I know that I would soon be woken up at 4:30 a.m. and told there was a problem. Their boat crew had not checked in at their usual hour, and were feared missing.

We all hoped and prayed for the best. Thankfully a local fisherman in his skiff discovered all four crewmembers of the boat after 11 hours clinging onto the overturned hull of their 26-foot aluminum vessel. Thankfully they are all doing well.

Nothing can prepare the parent of a fisherman for something like this. Every day that my son, 25 years old, goes out into the Bering Sea to fish, my mind and heart races with thoughts of grave concern. Perhaps I should insist he no longer fish? Perhaps there should be rules on the time of day and conditions of the water a boat can leave the harbor? Perhaps we should stop the fishery all together? Many questions with few answers.  I will talk with him more about the choices and the chances he and the younger people seem to be taking during these trying times in the local halibut fishery. What I will say, I do not know. But I have to. I love him so very much.

All over the world events such as this unfold. Some end tragically, others end with relief. What are we going to do to lessen the dangers of life? Do we need more regulations, more government involvement, more training? Probably each of those would be good. Do we need more conservation of our resources to ensure that small boats are not traveling greater distances to access their resources?

What about the next time he wants to go out fishing again? What do I do? Forbid him from going? Only he can decide. My questions will continue to be about the health of the resources, the safety of the vessel, making sure that all the necessary safety equipment is on board and the crew is trained. Do we, for the sake of safety and the protection of resources work to ensure our children need not take life-threatening risks to find food and make a living? Our work is important and must take on renewed vision and vigor. There is no time to waste, especially since our youth will continue to love the Bering Sea and all her beauty and richness.

I feel much relief now, tired and emotionally drained. I feel much better. The entire crew helped me through this experience. They held me, calmed me, and comforted me. The expressions on their faces of concern and relief when we heard the news told me much, and I am thankful. Mostly I am thankful to the Lord for His help and protection, not only for my son, but for his mother, brothers and sisters. They too were spared on this day.

- George 

The following posting is from Carroll, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

Two days flying from Washington D.C. Two days adjusting to the rhythm and routine of ship life. Four days and four thousand miles from home. And I’m finally ready to write my first blog. “This is a good day for it,” I told myself this morning. “We’ve got a lot of great stuff to write about.” Ahh, the best laid plans…

After losing our first rigid inflatable boat also known as a "RIB" or “zodiac” to a mysterious oil leak yesterday, we dropped the second one, “Marrakesh”, in the water this morning and headed out to look for killer whales. A RIB is smaller than a ship and bigger than a canoe, and it’s full of air we’ve got two of ‘em…Or, so we thought. As we passed through the channel into open sea, Adam opened the throttle to give us some speed and …nothing. Marrakesh just kept puttering along, even with the throttle wide open. In five foot seas, this is not a good thing. You need to go fast enough to stay on top of the waves, unless you want the waves on top of you. Less than ten minutes into the trip, we turned and headed for home. We were starting our day 0 for 2 on the RIBs.

This would have been inconvenient even at the best of times. Today was not the best of times. Allan Springer, a research professor from the University of Alaska, was coming at noon to get our help retrieving a killer whale research buoy. The killer whale calls recorded on the buoy will help scientists better understand the volume and nature of killer whale activity in the waters around St. Paul. Assuming, of course, we could get it out of the sea. We needed at least one working RIB to do that. Adam and Willie (the first mate, and fix-it-guy-in-chief) hauled Marrakesh back on board and started pirating parts from inoperable RIB #1 to get at least one of them working again. They were still working when Allan showed up three hours later. Twenty minutes after that, Marrakesh was running and ready to go. Little miracles.

While Adam and James headed out with Allan to fetch the buoy, the rest of us went to a community feast, to which we were graciously invited. The good food, the friendship and the folding chairs would be familiar to anyone who’s been to a small-town potluck just about anywhere. But it was something else that got me thinking of my own hometown in rural Kentucky. Before the meal, two priests led the community in singing The Lord’s Prayer. It was a version unlike any I’ve ever heard, drawn not only from the Unangan’s Russian Orthodox faith, but from their history in this harsh and beautiful land. It was a slow, rich, sonorous sound that rose and fell like the Bering winds, with a deep, thrumming bass line like the crashing of waves. It was the sound of sadness, and stillness, and memory. But mostly, it was the sound of belonging. The sound that comes from being so much part of a place that the place becomes part of you. Runs so deep in your veins that it aches to be away from it. This is what I heard in the Unangan’s song, and this is what I know is at stake here.

Again and again, people on St. Paul and St. George have told us how factory trawlers are ravaging their coastal fishing grounds, forcing local fishermen far offshore in search of a vanishing catch. The explosion of industrial-scale fishing is making it ever harder to make ends meet with the small boats and small crews of the Pribilof Islands. In the face of this economic pressure from industrial giants, more and more people are leaving the Pribilofs in search of new opportunities. Just as people from my county were forced from farms into factories when the growth of massive agribusiness made it impossible to compete. In fishing, as in farming, economies of scale don’t account for family, or community, or belonging—any more than they account for ecology. The trawlers will take from these waters and from these people until there is nothing more to take. Then they will move on to new fishing grounds and start the cycle all over again. Never still, never remembering, never belonging.

Shortly after we returned from the potluck, the Marrakesh returned from her errand. Despite some skepticism from us armchair quarterbacks back on the ship, they’d managed to find and retrieve a 2-foot research buoy hidden under several fathoms of water in a patch of ocean nearly half a mile square. Allan looked pleased.

After the buoy was loaded up an on its way, the sun came out from behind the clouds for the first time in two days, and I decided to take advantage of the rare sunshine to photograph the seabird cliffs nearby. As I clambered over the sofa-sized rocks of the seawall, I saw fat, fast puffins torpedoing across the sky, least auklets feeding their young, graceful kittiwakes sailing the updrafts, and a factory trawler sitting not a mile offshore, transferring its catch to a cargo vessel. Sitting there on the rocks, I found myself quietly singing a song from Sesame Street. “One of these things is not like the others….”

- Carroll 

The following posting is from oceans campaigner George, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

Today is the patron feast day of St. Paul Island. The island was named after and in honor of the Apostles Peter and Paul, which were also the names of the vessels in which the Russian Garasim Pribilov used when he accidentally found these islands. I say found because in the Unangan folklore we talk about our ancestors knowing of the existence of these Islands eons ago but never settled here. We never settled on these islands because although for five months out of the year they are teeming with wildlife, the other seven months they are barren. It is almost impossible to subsist here. We had no land animals until reindeer were brought here. We have no salmon streams. Nonetheless, we are celebrating our holiday today, and the island has quieted, at least from the normal activity of other weekday work noise on the street and in the homes. People are going to church. And the crew is invited to their potluck to join in the celebration. It does my heart good.

At supper last evening we watched a documentary, Man’s Thumb on Natures Balance by NBC News, done back in the day, around 1972 when the issue of the commercial harvest of the fur seal was at its peak. It brought back many memories for me. Some good, because I got to see the images of people who are no longer with us and for whom I have a lot of love and respect. And it brought back some not so good memories, mostly because the exploitation of any animal is not good. The killing of any animal is not fun. When done for any other reason but for food, is not something one takes pleasure in. But that is what I thought, and still do, as I watched how the Unangan of the Pribilofs were a captive workforce for the United States of America, Canada, Japan and Russia because of a treaty between these governments to share in the bounty of the Pribilofs, the fur seals, and on the backs of its Unangan people. Thirty-three or so years after this documentary was made it still conjures up many mixed feelings; anger, love, and very little peace.

My son is fishing for halibut here, doing what I did to help supplement my income when I was the Russian Orthodox pastor here for fifteen years, a position I no longer hold. He is hopeful, young and strong. He goes to school in Anchorage during the rest of the year. He is working hard with the rest of the crew in a small 28-foot boat. I wonder if he wonders if I am doing enough to ensure he can catch fish. Maybe that’s my own wondering? I have a need to work hard to do the best I can, as does any parent, to ensure that my children have a choice in life. When it comes time for my five children to want to come home and be Unangan, they need to have something to come home to. It seems a daunting task. The commercial fishing industry and all its culture is so big, wealthy and powerful compared to the people on the Pribilofs. But talking with the other crew on our ship I have hope. Hope that we will prevail in protecting the Bering Sea’s resources. Hope that we can and will make a difference. Hope that one-day before too much longer my son will know that I am doing well in my work.

Again the weather is chilly, for July standards, and misty. Maybe for good reason. The seals need this kind of weather to survive and be comfortable. The birds seem to be happy. And the people are opening their homes to us. We, Greenpeace, are welcome. As we prepare for our community meeting this evening, we cannot know for sure who will come or what will be said. We all need help; help in supporting one another’s work and efforts. A little encouragement goes a long way, and we accept any crumb that falls our way. But today is a holiday, a time to put aside our worries for a bit and meditate on the blessings we have. Tomorrow will soon be upon us, and my son will be going out for another trip. I need to rest today for I know the challenges of tomorrow will still be there and I must be clear of mind and spirit to ensure there are fish to catch and families to feed.

- George

Note: George was born and raised on the Pribilof Islands, is Aleut (Unangan) and has worked on environmental issues with the Bering Sea for almost 30 years.

The following posting is from oceans campaigner John, who is onboard in the Bering Sea... 

Greetings from St. Paul Island, the slightly more developed Pribilof partner to St. George.  There's more of a commercial fishing industry here; Trident Seafoods has a plant right across from where we are docked, and we've seen a couple trawlers pass through.  

The Defender, a large bottom trawler from Maine that pulled up next to us today, said they moved up here eight years ago because the fishing in the northeast had gotten terrible.  This is a common story.  Too often we fish until populations are depleted. Instead of learning from our mistakes, we then just transfer the fishing pressure somewhere else and start the cycle over again.  

Whether you're at the airport in Anchorage alongside scores of camo-clad big game hunters or at a commercial fishing hub like Dutch Harbor alongside factory trawlers out of Seattle, it is hard to escape the feeling that Alaska is where the rest of America comes to kill things.  Unfortunately, the cost for subsistence and small-boat commercial fishermen is pretty steep.

This morning, we had a visit from Phil Zavadil of the Tribal Council's ecosystem office.  We took the boat out and helped him deploy a buoy that will monitor sub-surface temperaturesas part of a project by the Tribal Government of St. Paul and World Wildlife Fund.  This data will be useful in tracking global warming, which, along with fishing, is having enormous (and little understood) impacts on the Bering Sea ecosystem.

Craig-the-killer-whale-biologist has left the boat, soon to be replaced by Dave-the-humpback- and-killer-whale-biologist.  Carroll and James from our Washington D.C. office are now on board, getting ready to take over for Steph and I when we leave in a couple days.  At least that's the plan!  The Bering Sea tends to laugh at travel plans of any kind.  When we got to St. George, they had just welcomed the first flight in after 28 straight days of cancellations.  St. Paul has a bit of a better track record lately, but they still went nine days in a row without any flights making it in.

It's been an adventure.  We've learned a lot, made some friends, and made a good start at documenting the people and wildlife that make the Bering Sea so special.  Tomorrow, we'll meet with the community here to talk about what we've seen so far and get their input on the plans we're starting to develop for the future.

The best thing we've learned on this trip so far is that we've got a lot of people who are ready to work with us here.  That's a good thing, because there's a lot that needs to be done.

- John

The following posting is from oceans campaigner George, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

We all know how difficult it is to say good bye to family and friends. For me, saying good bye or a “see you later” to my home and the many wonderful people of St. George Island this time seemed more difficult than times before.

Maybe its because I don’t know when I will visit next, or maybe its because visiting home and the people just becomes all the more special the older one gets. Whatever the reason, we are leaving St. George Island and all its wonders behind, going forward on our journey. Although the distance between St. George and St. Paul is only 40 miles, in the Bering Sea, those 40 miles are a long way.

I honestly did not know what to expect returning home with a boatload of Greenpeace activists, but I soon found out. As I mentioned earlier, I did get many, many “welcome home” greetings. And to my delight, so did our crew. The people literally opened their doors and invited us in. I recorded five interviews with local leaders while John spent an afternoon with researchers looking at the health of the island’s fur seal population. And in the evening, we had our community meeting. And what a meeting it was!

After brief introductions and an outline of what Greenpeace is here to do, we opened the floor to discussion. The response and questions were wonderful. Along with questions about what Greenpeace is doing here, about the killer whale research, and some concerns about the community’s subsistence activities, the talk began to center on factory trawlers.

What can we do to ensure the needs of the community are met, both our subsistence halibut needs as well as the small commercial halibut fishery? How can we make sure that the factory trawlers keep a reasonable distance off the shores of St. George Island? Is it necessary for them to drop their nets as close as one or two miles from the beach and begin their tows? Is there a way we can respect one another’s needs and still continue to fish? Will we ever be able to see a time when the once healthy stocks of halibut return? Localized depletion is a major concern. Along with this are the ever-nagging questions about the health of populations of birds, fur seals and sea lions that help provide food to get people through the long Bering Sea winters.

There were also questions about toxic contamination of marine life. Are the animals we have lived on for thousands of years still healthy? An elder I interviewed said: “We don’t eat them (traditional foods) any longer. They (outsiders who come to the Islands for research and other reasons) keep telling us about contaminants and other diseases, like the bird flu.” It is so sad. Our traditional foods are much healthier for us to eat than the burgers and other processed foods now taking a larger role in our diets. Hypertension and diabetes are very common in our people, and cancer is increasingly taking a toll.

As the meeting went on, the Tribal President began to voice a litany of concerns and observations about the environment. And then he said something that I did not expect to hear. He said, “let’s work together to try to find solutions to these problems.” Needless to say, John and I were both excited and humbled when thinking about what we can do to help make a difference for our wonderful Unangan family of St. George Island.

As we departed the harbor in the dark of night, with winds blowing from the northeast at about 25 knots, the dim lights on the Island began fading in the mist. St. George Island… What a wonderful place… a beautiful place. What will the future bring? When will we return, and return we must. My home. My people.

- George

Note: George was born and raised on the Pribilof Islands, is Aleut (Unangan) and has worked on environmental issues with the Bering Sea for almost 30 years.

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

Foggy and very cold.

We got up early to make maximum use of the calm weather. It was a little daunting heading out in the RIB, knowing we would be at times fogged in and unable to see land or our ship. Safety first though: GPS, compass, radio x 2, water, food, first aid kit, survival suits, basically the works. Plus the ship could see us on radar and we made regular radio calls.

We searched and searched and searched some more, but not a whale in sight. About 1300 we gave up and went back to the ship for lunch. Shortly after, the fog lifted so it was up in the rigging with the binoculars for another couple of hours.

We had just decided to change our search area when there in front of us they appeared: A huge male and three females.

We scrambled the boat again and took off in pursuit, lost them for a while then found them again. Then it was a game of cat and mouse as we tried to get close enough for Craig to get a biopsy and attach a satellite tag.

My lesson for the day was that killer whales are extremely crafty.

I actually felt privileged to be outsmarted a number of times. He would let me drive up nearly alongside then dive and come up on the other side of the boat. He would then cruise along just ahead leading us on so we wouldn’t notice the females had gone, then he would vanish and we’d spot them all together again hundreds of meters away going in the opposite direction. Eventually though I guessed his next spot to come up right and Craig got his biopsy.

After all that this pod of whales was not going to let another be tagged. Their evasive action was second to none and they outsmarted us on every turn. At about 8 p.m. we decided to give up and let them get on with their lives without the pesky RIB chasing them all over the ocean. I’m very glad there are strong rules about not harassing whales. I sent a silent apology and thanks as they swam off on their way. They have helped to protect themselves and the environment without knowing it.

Now back to the island, a quick dinner and back up the rigging to do more spotting in the last few hours of light (dark’s at about  1 o’clock in the morning). Make hay while the sun shines as its forecast to blow and rain tomorrow.

Going to sleep well tonight

- Adam

Note: Craig Matkin has Scienific Research Permit No. 545-1761-00. It was issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under authority of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and the Endangerd Species Act (ESA).

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

We arrived at St. George before dawn. Slight breeze, very chilly... We got in around 7 and were met by the harbor master Andy, who was standing by a big sign on the dock that read "rat infested ships are not allowed to dock". Of course the jokes flowed over who could and who couldn't get off the boat...

Myself, George, and Steph drove across the island with Andy to pick up our gear that had been shipped here, and for George to say hi to his friends and begin setting up a community meeting for tomorrow night. He was born here so they’re many greetings and introductions. They were a friendly bunch all getting ready for a big party night in honor of July 4th (it was raining and stormy so they put it off). I think these people must be among the toughest in the world. This isolated island is bare and windswept, surrounded by cliffs and the Bering Sea. In the middle of summer there is still snow on the ground.

Around 10 a.m. we were all back on board and ready for our first real look for Orca with Craig. I spent several hours up in the crow’s nest in a survival suit hat, scarf, gloves and hood, scanning the ocean for the telltale tall dorsal fins. It was amazing. The cliffs had rookeries with more than a million birds. A few vertical acres of chirping and squawking kittywakes. On the water were another couple of million birds all diving and feeding. It’s hard to express the sheer  scale of sea life here. When we turned off the engines it was like being engulfed in sound. Between the bird rookeries were the fur seal colonies. I reckon between us we must have taken hundreds of photos.

No whales, so we've decided to up anchor and make the 40 mile trip to St. Paul where there are bigger seal colonies and the fishermen have reported more recent sightings. We have found out that there are few fish left in the waters close to the islands, so the Aleuts that are subsistence fishing are going way out to sea to the continental shelf. The big commercial trawlers have done what they do everywhere and taken everything with no thought for anyone else or the future. I hope and pray for the Aleut that the our campaign to bring in ecosystem based fisheries management is successful.

Well I'd better get rugged up and back up to the crow’s nest. We need all eyes on the water for this transit!

- Adam

Note: Adam is a radio operator and RIB driver.  He has worked with Greenpeace in Australia and internationally since 2003.  He is also an industrial rope access  specialist, which involves rigging for skyscrapers and large scale events such as the Olympics, as well as a licensed yacht skipper. 

The following posting is from oceans campaigner John, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

We pulled in to St. George Island this morning, and the first thing we saw was a large sign declaring that rat-infested ships were unwelcome.  Rats and other mammalian predators can wreak havoc on islands ecosystems, and the Pribilofs have worked hard to remain rat-free.  It only takes one pregnant rat to start a cycle that can quickly lead to disaster - particularly for sea birds, which nest on cliffs and are extremely vulnerable.

We planned to just grab a few boxes of gear at the post office before getting back on the water to start looking for killer whales.  Of course, this being St. George, our short trip ashore included walking by a snowy owl and two unbelievably cute arctic fox cubs.  And as much as we wanted to start looking for killer whales, it was impossible to walk by the bird cliffs without taking some time to appreciate the enormous numbers of sea birds.

Populations of fish-eating birds have been declining here in recent years.  Red-legged kittiwakes and murres have not been reproducing well, a sign that they are not getting enough food.  Unfortunately for the birds, fisheries managers do not account for their needs when setting catch limits.  Climate may be a factor as well, but it seems clear that fishing is contributing to the birds' decline.


The weather is good today, with minimal fog and calm seas that are perfect for spotting whales.  We'll keep you posted on what we find!

- John 

The following posting is from oceans campaigner John, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

Among many other things, George (our lead oceans campaigner in Alaska) is a former Russian Orthodox Priest. Yesterday he invited Father Jonah Andrew of the Holy Ascension Orthodox Cathedral in Unalaska onboard to bless the boat. Father Jonah was joined in the conducting of the ceremony by George’s wife Leonella and Rufina Shiashnikoff, a powerful Aleut woman who I first met at our meeting with the community here last week.

After the blessing, Rufina spoke about her experience as a three-time cancer survivor. Two of the doctors that have helped her get through it all urged her to “eat the food of her ancestors.” Rufina said it has been a real struggle, because it’s no longer possible to eat many of the kinds of seafood and coastal vegetation her grandparents enjoyed. The wild beaches of her youth have been replaced by industrial fishing docks, and the marine life that she used to catch from shore has gone the way of “localized depletion.”

Craig-the-killer-whale-biologist and Dave-the-cook came on board in Dutch Harbor, and now we are en route to St. George Island, a 24-hour trip. The wind’s gusting to 35 knots, but it’s coming from behind us and so far the swells aren’t too bad. Early this morning, we had a pod of six or seven Dall’s porpoises riding our bow wave, looking a little like a miniature, more hyperactive version of the killer whales we’ll be studying for the next ten days.

There are two distinct types of killer whales in the North Pacific: transients, which feed primarily on marine mammals; and residents, which are largely fish eaters. The two populations share the same waters, but do not interbreed and are genetically distinct. This gives evolutionary biologists fits, because it looks like we are witnessing the divergence of killer whales into separate species without any geographic isolation or mutation to drive the split. Could this be the first known example of behavioral modification leading to speciation?

That’s just one of the questions we’re here to try to answer as we focus our attention on the transient killer whale population around the Pribilofs. We’ll take photos and record vocalizations to identify individuals, take tissue samples to provide information about genetics, contaminants, and diet, and, if we’re really lucky, attach satellite tags to allow us to track their movement.

How many fur seals and sea lions are killer whales eating? Is that contributing to the decline of these species? Or is the million and a half tons of groundfish we remove from the North Pacific each year causing fish-eating seals and sea lions to go hungry? Most indications point to the fishing industry, but in a system as vast and as complicated as this one, the only responsible thing to do is to err on the side of caution as we work to improve our understanding of what is really happening.

- John 

The following posting is from oceans campaigner John, who is onboard in the Bering Sea... 

In the middle of the darkest part of last night, we relied on the charts to get us through a particularly shallow channel.  According to the charts, there was a narrow pass where it looked like it would be just deep enough to accommodate our boat's 11 foot draft.  Willie and I were on the bridge sweating it out with Captain Bob as we all stared at the depth sounder, which reads the amount of water below the boat’s keel. 

We started out in plenty of water, and then watched it drop off steadily all the way down to zero.  Bob didn’t flinch, and after a few minutes of nail-biting the depth started to climb back up again. And then we continued on our way to Dutch Harbor, with the knowledge that we had a skipper who could make an awful lot out of a little luck.

After a few days of smooth sailing, today the odds caught up with us.  Cold, fog, swells…  It was probably not the roughest weather we’ll face on this expedition, but it was our first test so far and everybody came through in good shape.  In the past three days, I think we only saw one other boat, and only a couple more were even close enough to register on radar. 

For our team, coming from cities like Washington D.C., Austin, Tacoma, and Sidney, this was a kind of isolation few of us had ever experienced.  As we bounced around in the open ocean waves, we passed creatures who felt right at home – puffins bobbing in the waves, shearwaters swooping gracefully by, and humpback whales occasionally surfacing near the boat.  My favorite sighting of the day was a sleeping Steller sea lion, calmly floating on her back in the middle of the swells.

Now we’re finally arriving in Dutch Harbor, where we’ll pick up Craig and Dave and begin the first research leg of the tour: killer whale population ecology.

Wish us luck!

John H

The following posting is from Adam, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

We're really in the heart of Aleut country now. Thick fog and a heavy swell today have made a marked difference to the sunny clear “whale-y” day we had yesterday (although I did spot one big whale fluke through the fog as it dove earlier on.)

It’s been a day of moving from hand-hold to hand-hold, making sandwiches instead of fancy meals. Peering out into the weather marveling at how the people of old didn’t die out from simply getting lost. I can only think that it was because they were still so closely linked to the ecosystem that they were part of, that they could read the water and the birds and the wind like a book.

It’s the modern day disconnect with nature that leads to the shortsighted devastation of life that we are here to try and help bring to an end I think. I really look forward to meeting the Aleut people that see this too, and forming a bond between us that can lead to a broad and comprehensive way of speaking to the problems that face them, and ultimately all of us. Problems that stem from the way this environment
(read resource) is managed.

We’re about 50nm from Unalaska and have just entered Unamak pass, the boat has leveled out a bit and we can get back to doing some normal things like writing blogs and doing chores. We’ve readied the RIBS
(rigid hulled inflatable boats) and all our other gear and cant wait to get the scientists onboard and get out there doing what we came to do!

Adam

The following posting is from oceans campaigner John, who is onboard in the Bering Sea...

We've been making good time, taking advantage of the calm(ish) seas as we cruise out to Unalaska Island. There have been a few whale sightings so far, mostly short glimpses of dorsal fins from afar with an occasional flash of a tail fluke. This afternoon, though, was something special.

A mother and calf put on a real show, with an hour of breaching, flipper-slapping, lobtailing acrobatics. No one knows for sure why they do it, but watching these whales leap and splash for an hour made it pretty easy to believe that they were just having fun.

Meanwhile, Japan is moving ahead with their plans to start hunting these incredible animals, in spite of the international ban on commercial whaling. There is so little market for whale meat in Japan today that much of the meat will end up in pet food. What a pointless and shameful waste.

But for today at least, we can’t get the toothy grins off our faces. We have just witnessed something that will stay with us for a long, long time, and all we feel is grateful.

- John

The following posting is from oceans campaigner John, who is onboard as Greenpeace begins our 2006 tour of the Bering Sea...

We are heading west out of Kodiak Island and life is good. The sun is setting behind the mountains; the sea is silky calm. It's 11 p.m., the end of another long Alaskan summer day.

Our boat is gorgeous, an 84 foot former fishing vessel that has been refitted as a research vessel. Our team joined the boat in Kodiak, after Captain Bob and Willie drove it up here from Newport, Oregon. This was a last minute partnership, so these guys really had to go all out to get the boat up to Alaska in time for us to begin our work.

We're here to take a good look at the Bering Sea, one of the wildest and biologically rich places on earth. Everyone knows that the Bering Sea is changing, but there are a lot of different thoughts on what is causing it – and what, if anything, needs to be done to protect the Bering's ecosystem and the billion dollar fishing industry it supports.

Steph and George saw the first whale of our trip today, a giant humpback that surfaced right next to our boat. Humpbacks are one of the most dramatic of the nearly 30 species of marine mammals found in Alaska waters.

This was the second endangered species we've sighted so far. The first was a male Steller sea lion, probably about 1500 pounds, that cruised by our boat while we were in the harbor at Kodiak. Their numbers declining dramatically over the past 30 years, Steller sea lions are at the heart of the controversy about what is happening to the Bering Sea.

Steller sea lions feed on pollock, a cod-like fish that has long been abundant in Alaska. Unfortunately for the sea lions, humans also feed on pollock, and in numbers that stretch our ability to imagine. Laid end to end, the Alaska pollock caught in 2004 would stretch 957,900 miles, enough to circle the globe almost 40 times. As much of this catch occurs in areas that are critical habitat for the sea lions, fishery managers have recognized the “acute” potential for conflict between the pollock fishery and the food needs of sea lions. Despite recognizing the conflict, fishery managers do not account for the needs of sea lions or other predators when setting catch limits. This is a fundamental problem with the way fisheries are managed in the U.S., and something that Greenpeace is working to change.

Now it's time to grab a few hours of sleep before I need to stand watch at 4 a.m.. After all the months of preparation, I’m going to sleep well knowing that we are finally underway!

-John 

The following posting is the first from oceans campaigner John, who is onboard as Greenpeace begins our 2006 tour of the Bering Sea... 

Yesterday, George and I held an open meeting with the communities of Dutch Harbor and Unalaska.  Located in the middle of the Aleutian Islands, Dutch is the largest fishing port in the USA and home to the factory pollock trawlers that supply fish sticks and fake crab meat to consumers all over the world.  It's a stunningly beautiful location - volcanic islands with snowy peaks and emerald green hills surrounding rocky bays and deepwater harbors.  There were wildflowers everywhere, along with puffins, foxes, and something I was completely unprepared for: bald eagles by the dozens.

But Dutch is a company town, and while we knew there were quite a few people around who were concerned about overfishing and localized depletion, we weren't sure if there would be any who would come out to a meeting with Greenpeace to talk about it in public.  The pollock guys are like the ExxonMobil of the fishing industry, spending enormous amounts of money promoting junk science to shift the blame from fishing to pollution, climate change, or even killer whales.  For over twenty years, it has been a dangerous thing to criticize the pollock industry.  Reputations have been attacked, careers have been destroyed, research funding has been taken away, and scientific conferences have been cancelled.

Even our humble expedition to the Bering Sea this year has not escaped the industry's attention: caving in to pressure from people in Dutch Harbor who said they would not service a Greenpeace vessel, the owner pulled the plug on our contract.  Of course, we are not going to give in that easily, so we scrambled and found a boat that may turn out to be even better (and cheaper).

George and I are both pretty low key, up-beat guys, but all this industry bullying had us wondering what to expect when we showed up at the Museum of the Aleutians to hold the meeting.  When we discovered that the doors were locked, we just laughed and resolved to have the meeting outside.  It was the nicest day of the year, so people were happy to be out in the sun (at this time of year, the sun can stay out until after 11:00 at night).

After a quick interview with the local radio station, George and I told the people assembled in the parking lot about our plans for the expedition. (I'll tell you more about that next time.) We kept it short so we could hear what these folks had to say about the changes they've witnessed in recent years, and it was truly eye-opening.  Many of them were Aleuts, indigenous Alaskans who have been living off the Bering Sea for 10,000 years.  They were dismayed that the days of catching everything they needed right off shore seemed to be ending, as people had to go farther and farther out to catch fish that seemed to be getting smaller and smaller in size. They were upset that trawlers were operating right in their bay, and wondered aloud if we could help kick the trawlers out into deeper water. People also talked about global warming, sharing observations about delayed salmon runs and changes in bird migrations.

Despite being locked out of the building, people from America's largest fishing community stood and talked with us in the parking lot for two hours. All of us had more questions than answers, but we started discussing a few potential solutions too.  All in all, not a bad beginning!

Now George and I are back in Anchorage, pulling the rest of the team together and getting ready to meet the boat on her way out to the Pribilof Islands.

-John