Umak and Great Sitkin

hold on to your peanut butter stick.

Sunday July 28, 2024

Someone is always working on the Tiglax, and things happen while we sleep. In the morning there are magically two more passengers on the ship, freshly collected from Adak Island at midnight. Adrienne has rejoined us after culture camp in Sand Point, and we have a brand new team member - Erica, from the USDA (she works with Mike and Katie, but they’ve never met til now). She’s working on the National Environmental Policy Act document to go along with the Environmental Impact Study we’re doing, as well as dropping some smokin’ hot bird puns when you least expect them.

We have three full days left, and Stacey is determined to make the most of them. The first skiff is scheduled to launch at 7am, but we’re now so far west that the sun doesn’t come up til 8am. So we’re all dressed in the pitch dark drinking coffee and waiting for the sun to come up. No one seems to mind one bit. By 8:10 I’m on a beach on Umak Island, wearing waders full of creamy peanut butter and helping Kim and Erika put down rodent chew blocks.

It’s the same routine as yesterday, and with three people we have it down. I have my jar of rat butter in my front pocket, Erica’s got the peanut butter wax tub, Kim’s got the eagle eye for places rats might like to be. They’re probably not on this island, but damn it we’re gonna make sure.

 It’s not the rattiest beach we’ve seen, but it’s heart-stoppingly pretty, especially with the morning light. The sun is rising behind the Tiglax and I’m losing my mind over things I want to draw. As soon as we finish putting down these peanut butter pucks I’m drawing for the rest of the morning!!!

…and then the fog rolls in. I still get one quick drawing done but my magic light is gone. Grumble.

The skiff relocates us to a fresh part of the island. This beach is teeny tiny and we’re done with rat stuff in half an hour. Now I have time to draw - maybe too much time to draw. Rocks. Other rocks. Grass. Rocks AND grass. I love rocks and grass but I’d kill for a tree right about now.

It’s going to be a while til pickup, so I head up the hilltop to see what I can see. Umak is gorgeous - the impossible-to-walk-through grass quickly turns into squishy tundra and wildflowers. Lapland Longspurs sing all around me and I flush a family of ptarmigan. I’m sick of drawing, so I just sit for a while watching the light move across the hillside. It’s really really nice.

Then my radio jumps to life and it’s time to tromp down to the beach to be collected/rescued.

Lauren’s driving the skiff this time! Smoothly enough that I can draw her. We watch puffins taking off and landing around us - they nest up in the cliffs of Umak. I like this island a lot and wish it a rat-less future.

Back on the Tiglax for a quick debrief and announcement of the next stage of the plan. This is a very dynamic and evolving sort of day. 

Out again - this time I’m with the rat team on the southern part of Great Sitkin. Mike, Erica and Adrienne are placing game cameras, snap traps and chew blocks in places where rats are likely to be. And Great Sitkin has a LOT of rats. I wander off up the hill to draw, though there isn’t much time.

Sitkin was a WWII military base, and lots of rotting infrastructure is left, including some unfortunate fuel tanks rotting away and leaking into the ground. The rusty colors are kind of beautiful against the green, and the snowy mountaintop appears through the clouds for me, but it’s still not quite enough time to get something good done. I lay down a sketch that maybe I can paint later, and do a quick one of some giant rusty pipes at the dock. Then it’s time to go. We only have three days left and so much to do.

Back for a quick dinner (bbq chicken and amazing potato salad with little bits of ham), then the next morsel of plan - a team is going to survey fish (more on this later), another rat team is going out, and I’m going on one of two eagle surveys. I’m thrilled for more birdwatching.

Sitkin is a huge island, so we have to divide and conquer and take different sections. I’m in Team South girlboat, with Rachel at the helm and Adrienne and Katie and I counting eagles, peregrines and gulls. Katie is incredible at spotting movement (she does it for a living) and doesn’t even need binoculars. I definitely do.

The ride is low on eagle, high on gull, and absolutely bonkers with dramatic rocks and waterfalls. This side of Sitkin is stunning. It’s hard to believe it’s the same place that has that nasty war infrastructure all over it. We encounter puffins, pigeon guillemots (whom I love almost as much as puffins), oystercatchers, and a big reefy rock full of sea lions that all flop back into the water when we approach, except for one that stays. Looking closer I see he’s got an enormous wound on his chest, from a fight with another sea lion, or possibly a shark or orca. He raises his head to look at us but isn’t in any shape to swim. It makes my heart hurt to see. I don’t have the stomach for anything suffering. 

This section of coast is reefy and treacherous, and as we turn the corner we see an enormous shipwreck on the beach. It’s the Ekaterina G, a Greek steamship that was lost in 1965. It had lost its propeller and was being tugged back to Adak when it separated from its tug and ran aground. We are all desperate to explore it but the birds aren’t going to count themselves.

We are at 99 gulls as the end of our transect appears. “One more gull! One more gull!” chants the girlboat. Thankfully it’s the Aleutians, and within seconds three more fly over the cliffs ready to be counted. The girlboat erupts in cheers. We return triumphant with a grand total of 103 gulls, 2 peregrine falcons, and 3 bald eagles.

It’s 9:30pm when we get back. My bathing has slipped from daily to every other day, with a personal grossness record of 3 days. Look, what’s the point if you’re just going to be wet and salty again in eight hours? But tonight is the night, even though it sounds like another skiff might go out after dark to listen for songbirds. I shower and put on my pajamas to aggressively broadcast that the workday is over, even though it’s still broad daylight.

I’m working on sketches in the galley when Lauren comes in and tells us the clouds have lifted and we have Views. We sure do. Everyone heads out to the deck and we watch the volcanoes cruise by as the sun reluctantly sinks and a peregrine falcon does laps around the ship over and over again. It’s 10pm. This felt like the longest day we’ve had so far, but such a good one.