Wow I just came back from a one month long trip to The Aleutians.
It was amazing. I was on the Us Fish and Wildlife research vessle Tiglax. I was crew not a scientist. I was able to see things and go places that I never even dreamed of.
I saw all sorts of birds. All four kinds of auclets, all tree Albatros yes, even the Short tail, Motled and forktail storm peterals, Harliquin Ducks, Rosy Finches, Pidgon Gullemots, Muirs, and Norhtern Fumars light, dark and intermidiate phase, plus some others.
Sperm Whales, Fin Whales, Fur Seals, Sea Lions, Harbor seals, Dall porpous, Orca, Wow the list goes on. And Crashed WWII Bombers.
I walked and beachcomed on Amlia(My favorate, Bogoslof(one of the most amazing Isalnds on the plaet), Climed Kasatichi and looked in it caldera, Went to the Probilofs, And St Mathew and Hall Isalnd, and a list of about ten more. I even traveld around Adak. That place is wild. a modernday ghost town. I can harldy decribe it.
Is there still an Air Force Base out on, I think, the second to the last island?
My dad was stationed there when I was a little kid. (The family stayed in CA)
Yes I took many pictures with my new Canon digital Rebel. About 3 plus gigs or so. I still need to sorth them out before I post them. I will let you know when.
I went to the old base at Adak. It was kinda wild. The population ion the hayday was about 7500+ there are two really nice schools, boling ally, two movie theaterws, Mcdonalds, Baskin Robins, Exc-Exc. More than enough for 15,000 people. Now there are only 79 year round residents. But the town is still kept up. No broken windoes and the like.
The research was wide in scope.
Several tyes of Bird-Nerds. Bleedeers we call then doing bood work on several species testing hormone and stress levels, Tally counters many counting and logging, Plankon tows for testing the palnkon leves and locations, Mid and deepwater trowls to see what fish are down there. Tis was mainly around The Probilofsa in several 50 mile transects they try to do every couple years. Checking up on St Mathew and Hall Island to see how it is recovering from the Carabo thatThe military places on there for emergency food supply. The animals ate almost all the lichen. Droping off and picking and resuppliing several camps. Fur seal and sea lion studies.
Wow there was even more.
There are beaches around the island here where just walking along a person can find lots of artifacts just lying there, where the storms have uncovered them. I have found rocks which had obvioulsly been either works-in-progress or broken tools. I found a jaw bone once, I re-buried it.
I didn’t intend to sound accusatory, if that’s how you took my comment, I offer my apologies.
Yeah, I know how it is. It used to drive me nuts when I lived in the village and the Outside hunters would go digging. Several of us village folk used to get vocal and run 'em off, but they still made off with stuff.
Still, it was awesome to go down and walk the creek after a big storm/big tides, you never knew what you were going to find.
