Fast

You haven't worked up a beach seine set FAST until you've done one while simultaneously: 1) the tide is rising and threatening to inundate the little scrap of beach you're working on; and 2) a sow brown bear and her two cubs are foraging on the tidal flats about 400 meters away.

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We're now in our third anchorage on the Alaska Peninsula, Kujulik Bay. We had a ripper run down from Port Wrangell this morning, making 63 miles in ten hours, which while not remarkable under sail, is very good for us under power.

The Peninsula has shown us some new patterns in the fish communities, including sets that are strongly dominated by juvenile Pacific cod and - news flash - hundreds and hundreds of juvenile pollock in some instances, which we don't normally associate with the very nearshore.

Elias also found a clump of bear fur on some salmonberry thorns while we were hiking, we continue to feast on dolly varden, and we saw our first purely continental mammals today - ground squirrels. The lessons of island biogeography, and the paucity of species on Kodiak, are brought home to the boys.

Oh, yes, and fin whales. Lots and lots of fin whales, at least by a modern perspective.

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This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!

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