Catching up

Written on May 9:
I missed this place more than I thought. You leave a place, you stay away from it for a while, your start to let it drift into your past. Then suddenly, before you know it, you are on a boat rounding the tip of Riou Spit at the entrance of Icy Bay. The sun is low and flooding in bright and yellow from the west, lighting up all 18,000 feet of Mt St Elias as you wade through whales.

It's good to be back.

Bull Orca and glacier near Cape Fairweather.


Mt St Elias after 9:30pm sunset.


The Curlew anchored in Icy Bay.


The head and the view.


The galley.

I've only got a few minutes. The short of it is, we made it to Icy Bay. The boat almost broke down, but we got here. Maybe it will break down on the way home. We've caught a lot of murrelets. Gray and Humpback whales are taking over the Bay. I held a Bald Eagle a few days ago; it kinda smelled bad.



Written on May 10, about May 9:
Black-legged Kittiwakes and Glaucous-winged gulls start following the boat. White-winged Scoters jump out of the waves to fly out of our path. I climb up on top of the pilot house in the sun and wind as we come alongside Riou Spit. We are close now. We reach the point of the Spit and make the final turn into Icy Bay, the Curlew pointed straight at Mt St Elias, now hulking and bright white above the Bay. Marbled and a few Kittlitz’s Murrelets flush from the water. A flock of Greater White-fronted Geese flies west from the tip of Riou across our bow, contrasted in size by a tiny pair of Semipalmated Plovers. Then there are whales everywhere. Gray Whales. More than I have ever seen here. Blow sprays shoot up left and right, at least a half dozen are nearby, and one surfaces and dives right off our bow. We pass Long-tailed and Harlequin Ducks on the edge of Riou Bay and cruise into Moraine Bay, where the Arctic Terns still roost on the metal buoy and Pigeon Gullimots troll the water, plunging their faces below the surface to look for a meal. Caspian Terns screech pterodactyl calls and all is calm but for their splashes as they hit the water diving for fish. Joe shuts down the motor and generator, we float quietly around our anchor line. The Bald Eagle is still perched in a spruce above Moraine Bay Creek. Icy Bay Lodge, my old home, still sits on shore catching the late day sun before it slips below the Robinson Mountains and we sleep.

Written on May 21:
Last night was my birthday. Under the half moon, out searching for murrelets, I suddenly was beside a few Gray Whales resting at the surface. A good gift, indeed.



What am I doing here? I realize that I haven't really talked about it, maybe because I've worked here before. The short story: I'm studying an enigmatic seabird, the Kittlitz's Murrelet, that is potentially threatened.


This is a pair of Kittlitz's Murrelets. They look different. The one on the right is still in basic (winter) plumage. The one on the left has already molted to alternate (breeding) plumage.

We come to Icy Bay, we capture them, we put radio-transmitters on them, we track them, we invade their private lives. It's somewhat invasive; however, we hope that what we learn about this little-known species will benefit their conservation. We come for a month, all of May. We live on the MV Curlew. We go out night after night, catch murrelets, welcome them to science, and release them.