An uneventful day spent doing vessel maintenance. Testing bilge and hiqh water alarms, alot of bilge cleaning, etc. Near the end of the day, I happened in a conversation with a lead person who is doing seismic work for the 8 mile long Liberty drill. He said the seismic is not for pinpointing the oil, but to determine the earth strata from the drill site to the oil so the easiest path can be drilled. Then the folks in the discussion further remarked how different where we were standing would look now if today’s technology was present in the 70’s – most of it wouldn’t be here. Sunny and dry today, and a bit breezy.

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com

Spent all day on a boat ride to the Ooguruk (sp?) drill pad. Like Northstar, it’s a tiny man-made island you can walk across in less than 5 minutes. The trip was about 2.5 hours each way, much of it through the fog. We went there to jump on a small boat to do sounding surveys for a company that is testing to see how far the sound from area boat traffic will travel so as to protect the marine mammals in the area. Saw the first marine mammals here of any kind – some seals – and many rafts of ducks, which I thought were eiders.

We ate lunch at Ooguruk. What a spread. In this tiny camp, there was good grub. Philly cheese steaks for lunch. And too many sweets. A Dreyers Ice Cream machine, cookies galore, donuts, and even banana nut bread. I thought we were in the middle of nowhere, but no – Ooguruk…that’s the middle of nowhere.

As per most camps here, friendly folks who seemed to enjoy seeing some new faces.

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com

Yesterday, I crewed on the boat taking employees to and from the Northstar rig. This operation is on a tiny island. And by tiny, I don’t mean one you can walk around in an hour. I mean one you can walk around in 5 or 10 minutes. Just tiny.

And from here, the captain told me jBP pumps 35,000 barrels of oil a day. Alot of oil from a tiny foot print.

Today the wind died down late in the day, and the fog burned mostly off by 6 pm. We set a boom with the boats that will shelter the docks where we moor our boats.

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com

There was a big rainstorm the day before we arrived – complete with thunder and lightning. A rare occurrence here. Today was my first day out on the vessels. I thought I might only run boats here and there, but I was thrown right in today – and loved it. Funny – I was nervous with my skills for driving the vessels here, and I realized it was the one set of skills that I already have. It was like riding a bike, and it’s the same riding a bike wherever you are.

I crewed the vessel at 6 am on retrieving crew from the North Star pad, and brought them back to our docks with their luggage and their trip home to their 2 weeks off.

Next, we deployed oil boom from a couple connex vans down the beach.

In the late afternoon, we did Spill Response Training with workers from across Prudhoe Bay. We took them out to get familiar with running the boats, pulling up to barges for pushing or towing; docking the vessel; etc. The sun came out, too, and the wind died down from the morning. A perfect day to be out on the water.

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com

I’ve only worked on the slope a short time, but was in wonderment when I’d hear workers say how glad they were to be back. And how relaxed they looked. Now I know. Seems like I got off the plane yesterday, and 2 weeks are gone. I painted, commercial fished, sport fished, “camped” at a cabin and set crab pots, solicited orders on short notice for our Juneau delivery business, and today delivered 800 lbs of sockeye to our local customers. I’m so ready to go back and have no other worry than going to work!

It was great to see our customers again. One couple said they read my blog, and were pleased to see me describe my observations on the North Slope in – at least in their view- objective point. Another processor where I took fish for a customer for smoking said he couldn’t see how 1 degree change in temperature could cause global warming or melt the poles. He thought maybe it was the water or wind causing the melting.

The fishing crew was still on a high even tonight after the great catch Sun-Tue. After no sockeye, they showed up in force. Which is not great for the fish markets and restaurants that would like the fish to come in slow and steady over the whole summer, rather than at one time like this. But of course late is better than never. Many of my local customers already bought fish (which I had directed them to) when I thought we would not get any. Yet I was able to round up, in the end, enough of the earlier orders plus new ones. Our customers are so loyal and so nice to us. We only show up with the best fish, and they’re happy to get fish of a quality they trust and don’t have to worry about. I was thinking today buying a 2×4 is alot different than buying fish. 2×4’s might be 2×4’s, but fresh fish certainly are not the same.

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com

My brother sent me this article on blue crab stock decline in Chesapeake Bay:
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080716/ap_on_bi_ge/blue_crab_blues

It’s amazing how many times you see “overfishing” in an article like this. Yet if you were to look at the harvest, it’s likely the fishermen were not fishing illegally, but were harvesting according to regulation. Which means whoever was managing the fishery did not set regulations properly – or were not allowed to by the political system. This government problem almost always sets the commercial fishermen as the scapegoat. It would be like saying the deer population is down because hunters “overhunted”, even if each hunter only harvested up to what the government said he could.

I saw the same attitude in the south, where commercial fishermen were blamed for “overfishing” red drum stocks, the same government that should have been regulating the fishery properly then shut down the fishery (because that’s a whole lot easier with so few employed in commercial fishing and appease the sport fishing interests). Then – what a surprise – all the Louisiana cajun restaurants were now out of fish for their trademark blackened cajun redfish dishes.

The people always left out of the discussion are the biggest users of these resources – the non-harvesting consumer. Commercial fishermen don’t harvest fish for “fun” or “sport”, they harvest it because consumers want to eat their catch. And if they are US consumers, they are the people who “own” the fish, and should demand more accountability from their government if they want to continue to eat wild seafood.

>

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com