Posted by julie_ry on 07/11/2007 05:39 am

Greetings from the Esperanza,

Akutan, the village we are at today, has about 75 year round residents. Many of the other communities we are visiting on this tour are also small. Some of them undoubtedly have less residents than you may have had students in your high school. The village is very remote and doesn't even have an airstrip because the terrain here is so steep. The only way to arrive at or leave Akutan is by boat or seaplane.

I'm sure you can imagine that even little changes have a large impact on such small communities. If five or ten people, or even less than that, lose their jobs doing small boat fishing or aren't able to obtain as much food as is necessary for their subsistence needs – it can be disastrous. Not just sad or unfortunate, but truly disastrous for families, and therefore for the community as a whole. It is sobering to think about and adds a sense of urgency to the work Greenpeace is trying to accomplish out here.

My shipmates tease me for always telling them that the next place we are visiting is beautiful, and so is the next, and the next... But it's true! The people are kind and the landscape is stunning. There are very few places in Alaska that have not had the power to awe me with their beauty. And Akutan is....well, beautiful! This village is tucked into a small bay on Akutan Island with green mountains rising up behind the group of small white houses at their feet. This is a harsh place – there are very few trees or bushes and there is an active volcano not far from the village. The island is primarily covered with grasses, sedges, and many flowering plants. The weather can change dramatically from one hour to the next, and the wind can blow and blow and blow. But this all adds to the beauty of the place and to the importance of helping these communities stay viable. There is something about the place, each place, that keeps people here. This is their home and it has been for generations. They'd like to keep it that way and so would I.

It is easy for most of us to go about our daily lives without thinking about small communities such as these along the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. This is to be expected; out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. But I think we all need to make ourselves aware of the difficulties that people in these communities are dealing with on a regular basis. Why? One important reason is because their fate is linked to ours, and everyone's fate is linked to the health of our environment. Most importantly, their lives, and their way of life, is just as important as everyone elses. I think of these small struggling communities kind of as the 'canaries in the coal mine'. We should all be taking notice of what is going on out here. Old Harbor, Sand Point, Akutan – all of these communities, and others in the region, are on the front lines of declining fisheries, climate change, and other global environmental problems.

So you might think: what can I do, as one person, in the face of these large challenges? In fact there are many things you can do, such as supporting Greenpeace. By doing so you support the community outreach that we are doing right now that we hope will lead to positive changes. You can also learn more about these communities, by searching online or at the library. Tell your family and friends what is happening out here. Knowledge is power, and with it you can make informed decisions about your consumer and lifestyle choices – decisions that impact us all.

-Julie

Posted by diek on 07/11/2007 03:53 am

Setting course on a GP ship is different from a regular ship. As a navigation mate I try to get a head start, this because I've got to check the course line for rocks and other things a ship is not build for and calculate and program and re-check. But because the courses, campaigning and planning are three different things, sometimes my work is for the paper bin. A waist of time? Or waist of energy? Not in my point of view. I do my little thing for the bigger picture. Just like others on board sometimes work on something what doesn't work out. That is nothing special, that happens everywhere around the world on boats, offices, in heads of masterminds and one braincell organism. It is called evolution. Progress.
Flexibility and creativity are the keywords in that process. And sometimes I want to do something completely different: the laundry! All the way down in the ship we have two washing and drying machines, this week I signed up for 4 days. All by my self, surrounded by spinning machines and soapy air, I can think about something else than courses...