Sitka Nature

With the warmer weather over the last week, the blueberry blossoms are really making more of a showing. Unfortunately, many of them are brown and dried up at the opening. I think this is due to damage from being frozen after opening up before the cold spell a couple of weeks ago. I suspect this will make it more difficult for them to get polinated. The berry crop may be small this year as a result.

I finally finished a journal entry for my trip to Piper Island. One of the things I did while there was to follow a set of otter tracks from the beach up through the center of the island and back down to the beach again. I also have pictures of a number of tracks from squirrels, a winter wren, and a mink.

They apparently did not reach the quota of herring in the opening yesterday, so they opened the fishery up for another hour this afternoon. Although I did not hear the official boundaries, it appeared that they were similar to yesterday’s. Melissa, Connor and I walked down to Lincoln street beach to watch. Unlike yesterday, there were some boats that put their nets out quite close where we could easily observe. We watched for awhile and the one that was closest seemed to have an empty net while another boat that was only a short distance away must have caught quite a few as it was soon surrounded by the larger tenders. Unfortunately, the larger boats blocked my view of what was going on. After we arrived home a little later, we could see activity from through our window. There were fish being transferred from one boat to another, so someone must have caught some fish.

There seemed to be far more bird activity today than yesterday. I think there were at least 40 or 50 eagles flying around the boats, in addition there were numerous gulls. The eagles would swoop down to pick fish out of the water. After we got back home, an eagle flew up and landed in a tree near our place. It was carrying a herring in its talons, but it took off again to eat it elsewhere.

This afternoon I spent some time watching the buildup and start of the herring opening. Initially boats seemed to be fairly evenly distributed from Crescent harbor down to the mouth of Jamestown Bay. The larger tenders seemed to be off to the side, presumably to allow the seiners room to put out their nets before moving in to take the fish. I counted 14 planes and one helicopter flying circles in the sky above. The people in these planes are spotters in radio contact with the seiners below. The spotter’s job is to tell the seiners were the fish are. Up until the time the actual fishing starts, there is only moderate activity and boat movement. Even without hearing the countdown, it was pretty clear when the fishery opened. Boats started moving around quickly, nets were put out, and the tenders moved in to start taking on fish. There were a few sets made right in front of Totem Park, but most of the action seemed to be taking place down towards Jamestown Bay. It did not appear to me that any of the boats near the park (where I was watching) had a significant catch, but I might be wrong about that.