Back to the frigid Bering Sea

One of only 3,000 of the world's endangered short-tailed albatrosses - soaring across the Bering Sea. Copyright (c) 2010 Wendee Holtcamp

Boy with the weather this winter in Houston you'd think I was in the Bering Sea again... it normally freezes once or maybe twice a winter but this one has been crazy. Back and forth, up and down. It is now about 22 degrees F outside, and tomorrow it's supposed to feel like 5 with the wind chill! Then by next Tuesday it will be back to 70.

Speaking of the Bering Sea, my second article on the research expedition I spent a month on is out in BioScience's Feb 2011 issue - Rime of the Bering Sea Mariners(PDF). It's not quite online yet at the BioScience AIBS website, but I have the PDF reprinted at my website here. I thought it turned out good and I got to go in more depth and focus on some different research than in the shorter Nature piece - The Tiniest Catch - published last Oct.

In other news- life is good! Some great things happening here, which I'll reveal in future posts. I am about to head to the coast to report for the 10th annual Water issue of Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine and visit places such as the upper Texas coast, which has the highest rates of beach and coastal wetland loss of anywhere on the Gulf Coast (close to Louisiana, which has comparable rates of loss). I will also spend some time in the Columbia bottomlands, a little-known place that has some of the south's only remaining old growth forests.

I'm starting up another session of my online writing class - recently renamed the Magazine Writing Bootcamp on Feb 26 (signup deadline Feb 19)! While originally designed to focus on environment writing, the course assignments can be tailored to any topic, and it gets consistently great feedback! Email me if you would like more info (bohemian_AT_wendeeholtcamp.com) or check out the Bootcamp website.

Welcome to February!

Daydream Island, Whitsundays in far north Queensland, Australia
Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp

Welcome to February! At the moment, far north Queensland is getting hammered by Cyclone Yasi. Category 5 when it made landfall, it was as big as Hurricane Katrina, and is expected to drop more rain. Poor Queensland can't catch a break. Brisbane in southeast Queensland got hit with intense flooding just a week ago. I'm trying to get back over there to report on the aftermath of the floods and the cyclone. Yasi hit right near Mission Beach, a quaint coastal town on the "Cassowary Coast" which I visited in 2008, and wrote this article, Saving Big Bird, for Wildlife Conservation magazine.

A couple new articles have come out. I'm proud of this essay that came out in The Daily Climate: Can eating less meat curb climate change?

And just out today - Rime of the Bering Sea Mariners in BioScience, my second piece on the trip I did last summer.

I am about to head on a road trip along the coast to report for the 10th annual Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine Water issue within the next few weeks, which should be fun.

Well that is all for now! Hopefully I'll be back before another month goes by!

Deep corals, tiny plankton and other recent pubs

I've had a few articles come out that I wanted to mention.

• The cover feature of Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine's December issue is on the Gulf spill and Texas. It is a two-feature series, written by myself and my colleague and friend Melissa Gaskill. My article is
  The Forgotten Deep: The Gulf’s little-seen deep-water ecosystems may bear the brunt of the BP oil spill’s damage.
  
  I focused on the deepwater corals that so few people even know about and they have received scant media attention. The feature also includes a sidebar on "Texas' forgotten spill" about the Eagle Otome which dumped over 400,000 of crude oil off Port Arthur in January. I wrote this piece in January just after the Texas spill occurred, but right before it was to go to press, the Gulf spill occurred and it seemed almost irrelevant while so much oil was gushing into the Gulf on a daily basis. But the Eagle Otome was a substantial spill, and I'm happy that we got to use an updated version of it for the Gulf oil spill article. Melissa's article is The Pain of the Spill. (Remember we went on the Great Gulf Coast Road Trip - day 1-2, day 3, day 4 and day 5)?
  
  
• The Tiniest Catch: Marine scientists are prowling the Bering Sea to learn how climate affects minute sea creatures and the lucrative fishery that depends on them.
  
  This is the feature I wrote for Nature on research I learned about on the Bering Sea trip - it finally came out! You may remember that in June through July I spent a month in the Bering Sea, during which I blogged for Nature. I have another feature coming out in BioScience Feb 2011 issue on the Bering Sea.
  
  
• Putting Numbers to Nature. My piece on the Natural Capital Project for Momentum Magazine's Fall Biodiversity issue.
  
  
• The "Wendee Holtcamp Report" on Adventures in Climate Change has reprinted some of my older articles in new ways, and they look great.




• Silence of the Pikas -Will the American pika become the first species in the lower 48 states to be listed under the Endangered Species Act owing to global warming? This is only part I and the other two segments of the article will be posted soon.
• Mimicking Mother Nature. A feature on biomimicry, the concept of learning from and being inspired by nature's designs - via evolution - to create innovative, sustainable products. Originally published in National Wildlife Magazine.
  
• A Grass Roofs Effort. A piece on rooftop gardens, aka green roofs, originally published in Sierra Magazine.

Last days on the Bering Sea & Unalaska

My favorite shot I took of a bald eagle on Unalaska Island.
The last day, the seas were so glassy and it was very foggy. I think it's kind of beautiful this way, though by this time, I really wanted to get back onto land - which we did on the afternoon of the 13th. But first, I wanted to show photos of the last couple days on the Thompson. Like I said in a previous post, the trip was not what I expected, and was truly not an enjoyable experience for me. However, it's work. I did my job, I learned about the science (which is cool) and then mostly tried to keep to myself other than keeping up with the day to day activities on board.
I really thought this was sunrise, but now I'm thinking maybe it was a sunset. I can't remember! I blotted out those last few days because I was soooo ready to get off the ship!
The last day on the ship, I asked for a tour of the ship from the Captain, to see the parts that I hadn't seen before.
As we got into Dutch Harbor/Unalaska Island everyone was on deck watching the shoreline approach. It was my 40th birthday on the 13th. The three best things about my birthday were: I got off the boat, had an awesome walk around the island with Diane where I got some great pics (below), and in the evening, I got to hang out with Alexei and Russ at the Unisea pub in the evening.
This is Terence and Dominic. Terence, the mess hall attendant was such a sweetheart to me on the trip. He always had good words of wisdom. I didn't even meet Dominic until the last couple days but T asked me to take a pic of them, so I obliged!
When we got into the "City Dock" we were next to this hug container ship which was pretty cool.
Another shot of the container ship.
The Thompson - goodbye!
On the 13th when we got in, Diane and I walked from the ship into "town" (with its 2 stores - ha ha). She knows the flora of the island so it was cool being shown the different species. Diane was my roommate and she was very nice to me!
This is a paintbrush, similar to the red Indian paintbrush we have in Texas but all yellow.
In town the fishermen lay out their long pollock nets and fix any holes or problems.
Back in town there were tons of crab pots. These are what they use in Deadliest Catch!
Another view of the crab pots.
This is one of two stores in town - the Alaska Ship Supply.
This is a shot of some beautiful lupines with the ocean and mountains in the distance.
This is the tiny runway, and the plane taking off. We were walking along the road, but they have to close the road when a plane lands or takes off, so we had to stop and watch it.
Another view of the plane taking off.
Rachel joined us at some point - this is her on the shoreline where we looked for things.
Diane found me some sea urchin shells, which was significant for me (though she didn't know it) because my dad used to call me "urchin" due to my being a grubby little barefoot girl running around in Oregon on his homestead... but even as a kid I liked sea urchins as a result.
Diane with the urchins.
Diane showed me these violet-colored orchids. Beautiful!
Some more beautiful purple flowers on the hillside.
Me and Diane!
A shot of the shoreline on Unalaska. These World War II bunkers were all over the island! The island was actually bombed during WWII.

We saw so many bald eagles on our drive around the island. On the next day, the 14th, the ship was set to leave, so everyone had to find a hotel room - pretty much the one (nice) hotel is the Grand Aleutian. I had hung out with Alexei at the Unisea pub the night before and he told me he would show me around the island the next day (he was set to fly out around 4pm but trying to get on a 1pm flight that day), so I met with him in the morning and we signed off the ship! He had got a rental car at the airport (down the one road...) and he drove me around. I hadn't talked to him too much before then because he worked nights, and I was up on daylight hours. But we'd spent some time talking on board about his research and looked at one another's photos which was pretty cool, and it was really a blessing to have a friend to hang out with on the island the last couple days.
Dandelions on the shoreline.
The first thing Alexei showed me saw was the Russian Orthodox church. This is the oldest on the island!
This is Alexei. He's a biological oceanographer at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks/Seward campus (how's that for a mouthful).
Alexei and I drove around the island and climbed down a cliff (LOL - not really but kind of!) and explored the tidepools. The tide was out so we saw all kinds of things, like limpets, mussels, kelp, amphipods (his specialty), hermit crabs.
We also saw what Alexei thought was a fur seal, but when I got the photos I can tell it's not - it's an eared seal. I don't know what kind - anyone? The bird team know their mammals pretty good (and were also some of the few who were pretty nice to me!)
A closer shot of the seal.
A shot I took of the rocks and tidepool area.
Another view.
I saw this plant with water droplets on the tips, and thought it was cool!
A broader view of the tidepool area.
The hillsides were covered in dense fog. Because of this, Alexei's flight got cancelled, and in fact every flight off the island was cancelled that day! So he and I went to the airport early the next day for the "makeup" flight that they had, which was again delayed due to fog... However it did eventually get in and I was able to get on standby!! After some 24 full hours of flying, I made it home to Houston. Yay!
Another view of the beautiful foggy hillside. Reminds me of Ireland or something.
We saw lots and lots of these guys as we drove around, and walked around. Here are a few of my favorite shots!

Bering Sea Day 22-23: Sunset and clouds

Last night I watched a most beautiful sunset here in the Bering Sea. We finished up "Benthic Nirvana" (an area where Chief Scientist David Shull wanted to visit because it is in an area with a polynya, which means that no ice forms due to it being at the edge of an island, despite ice forming all around. So that does inteersting things to the sediment. I didn't see anything noticably different in the mud itself, but I think that it's more something that will be observable in the data. So last night we had clear skies and so I stayed up to watch the sunset. It started about midnight and the sun finally went down about 1am. Funny how long it takes the sun to set here! But sunset does not mean darkfall... In fact the sky was bright blue all around. I didn't stay up all night but many scientists work nights and sleep days and someone told me that it pretty much just turned from sunset to sunrise... Anyway here are a few photos!

Two murres flying through.

This is a "headache ball" on deck and I thought it made a cool pic.




This is actually today. The cloud formations were gorgeous! More blue sky!
Another photo of the clouds today.