Friday July 19, 2024
The day starts with incredible blueberry bread pudding - Janice says she’s hitting her stride. There’s lots of behind the scenes logistics for feeding this many people over such a long period of time. They can resupply in Dutch Harbor and fly things to Adak, but that’s it.
Janice is the relief cook. Tara, the main cook, starts ordering food in March/April for the trip, and they also go shopping together in Homer closer to departure. We’re eating extremely well, with fresh salads at every meal and bottomless candy to supplement. My personal favorites are peanut m&ms and chili-lime roasted almonds.
We’re heading to Ukolnoi Island, still in the Pavlof area. Ukolnoi had foxes that were removed in 1990 and rechecked in 1995. We’re poking our heads in. There are no critical access points, which means the beach is long and accessible from many spots. So we break into 3 teams and each take a section. It’s a test of doing multiple survey types in smaller isolated groups, and it seems to go well. There’s sign of ground squirrels, bald eagles and rough-legged hawks, and a handful of crabs. Stacey finds a very ripe sea lion skull that I do a drawing of. The brain is leaking out.
We’re heading to the Sandman Reef Islands later today, which are teeny tiny uncharted islands 10-50 acres in size. We’re starting to shift priority from foxes over to European black slugs.
They’re enormous, 4-6 inches long and over an inch thick, fast-moving and ravenous. They’ve been present in Alaska since the 80’s, and are trickling out to the Aleutians. They were discovered on Midun Island last year by Ray and Brie, and we’re checking to see if they’ve cropped up on any of the other small islands. Not much is known about them yet, including how they spread or what their impact is on the environment. Hence: this research trip.
On the beach at Ukolnoi we practice slug-detection protocol, marking off a 30 meter area into nine plots and checking them for slugs as well as inventorying plants.
No one’s expecting to find any slugs anywhere but Midun Island, but as we get closer I’m feeling a little spooked. They’re limiting who goes onto Midun for contamination purposes, because it’ll mean soaking all our gear in hydrogen peroxide to kill the eggs. I don’t think I’m going to the slug island, which I feel ok about.
Back on the boat I warm up with curry and turkey wraps and finish up the painting I started on the beach. I’m trying to help with survey work and keep up with what the team is finding. But now that a bit of routine is forming I feel a little more comfortable ducking away with a radio to sketch. That’s my actual job here, after all. I haven’t been drawing much in the last year (mostly writing) and I’m getting back in the habit. It feels pretty good.
After lunch we head to Outer Iliasik Island. This is a much more popular part of the Refuge, and we see several other boats on the water. It feels weird - we’ve been the only people on the water for almost a week. The sun comes out and the Pavlof volcanoes are fully visible. Everyone seems giddy, hanging out on the deck and in the wheelhouse. I even find Rachel tanning.
The freezing cloud that sat over Ukolnoi is gone and now it’s another magical sunny day on a lush green island. Spirits seem high and the teams are gelling really well, efficiently parceling out the marshy field to count the plants. I “help” for a while and then go draw on the beach, eavesdropping on the radio. Katie and Ben come to do mammal surveys along the grassy edge.
After a few minutes I hear a swear word. Then Katie calls Ben over. There’s a slug, and it’s black.
I drop what I’m doing and hustle over. Sure enough there is a four-inch, juicy black slug eating some beachgrass. As we look closer we notice that the false arnica along the shore is munched, there’s slime trails everywhere, and sluggy chonkers are everywhere. Well, crap. We gather a bunch up in plastic bags and it does not feel dissimilar from cleaning up after my dog.
Everyone musters up on the beach to figure out what to do next. We’ve all been cheerfully tromping around on a slug island for the last hour, contaminating everything. We weren’t expecting to find them here, and while we had a decontamination protocol worked out for Midun we weren’t quite ready yet. Things very quickly pivot from this being a surveillance island to a very real slug island. It was super impressive watching everyone calmly run through the logistics of scrubbing our waders, packs and gear on the shore, figuring out the risk to the skiffs, and working out a plan for once we were back on the boat.
Joey and Lauren go first and make tubs of hydrogen peroxide solution, and once we’re back on the boat everyone proceeds to do laundry. The aft deck is covered in drying waders and packs, and boots are neatly lined up on every surface. Our evening plans have changed from visiting another island to workshopping this slug thing. Do we have enough hydrogen peroxide on board? Can we get more at a nearby town? How do we safely visit all these other islands, if there is now a chance that black slugs are going to be there waiting for us?
The discussion is interrupted by someone going into the wet lab and discovering a slug on the loose. One of them somehow escaped the baggie it was in and was booking it across the floor.
“The idea that slugs are slow is a misnomer,” says Kim. “These guys can HAUL.”
The escapee is returned to his compatriots and they are all submerged in a tupperware of ethanol to drown. The lid is closed very very tightly.
As we enjoy our short ribs, pineapple slaw and banana pudding, someone realizes that today is the one year anniversary of Ray and Brie finding slugs on Midun, to the DAY. Eerie. And also gross.
Oh dang! I can't wait until next week when we find out which member of the crew is secretly a slug!!!
I love how this entry reads like a horror novel.