It's been one year

A whole year has passed since I came to Alaska; it's hard to imagine time has flown so quickly.  Dan, David, and I went out in Dan's boat during work.  It's herring season and that's when Sitka really comes to life.  The fishing season begins with the intense herring openings. Herring seems to be the snack of the sea, so all the other wildlife, like whales and eagles, are out and about.  We were going to try and make it out during one of the fishing openings, but the timing was too hard to manage with work on the house.  When we went out, the department of Fish and Game was doing a herring sampling.  We also saw a very large gathering of bald eagles and a few whales.  We had a good time.

  

There's Dan taking his famous pictures.  You should become a fan of him on facebook.

 

This is my picture of the bald eagles as they perched in the trees watching the activity in the ocean, waiting for a good opportunity to nab some fish. Dan got some pictures of when they were feeding, there were at least fifty of them!

I'll write more later!

<3 Joshua

Fishing and camping over the weekend

I got to go fishing and camping with a friend of mine, Jasper, whose dad owns a boat. We went a few miles North to a spot known as Nakwasina. Before we went to the camping spot we put some Halibut skates down. The halibut skate consisted of a long rope with a couple of anchors. The anchors drop down to the bottom (about 450 ft) and the bait lie in the middle of the two anchors. We let it sit for a while as we went to set up camp and wandered around the beach and the woods.
When we came back to bring up the skate we pulled up many eel. The last hook had a halibut on it and we were very happy. That night for dinner we ate halibut. I got a share of the halibut to take home and I ate halibut for the next few nights. I enjoyed it very much. It was also really nice to get out of town for awhile and camp out on the island.

The halibut skate all ready to go

Catching the halibut