Sea Otter Diary - 6 Aug


Walking the shore and grabbing the bottom again

An early start for the shoreline survey. Randall explains how we are to document the shore between low and high tide marks using cameras and GPS units to record features. We take the boat out to the next stretch of coast to survey, in the left fork of Simpson Bay. I'm using my GPS to give coordinates to LauraLee who is note-taking at first. Randall strolls along, describing the mud, the sand, and the rocky substrate. There's lots of mud. LauraLee sits down in it at one point. It grabs Bruce's boots and he walks right out of them. Diane poses as Miss Rocky Substrate 2001.

We wander the shore, taking pictures looking along and back every so often, and marking notable features such as rocks with GPS readings. We find lots of mussels much like what yesterday's otter must have been feeding on. They are hard to remove from the rocks, and we marvel at the otter's ability.

After a couple of miles on foot Fred shows us a small spring of wonderful cool fresh water, which we name Fred's Fountain. By now its lunchtime to we head back to camp, and Fred stops at every otter we see so I can get some more film and Bruce can take some photographs. As we get into Alice Cove we see Barney waving to us on the far shore. Fred takes the skiff over and Barney shows off his catch - a halibut ready for the pot, given a large enough pot! He offers to bring some over for tea tonight.

We have a very lazy lunch - I while away the time balancing rocks on the shore while some of the others relax on the sun lounger that forms 'Club Med' for us. Randall is probably having a siesta up in the cabin. It has been a warm and sunny day.

Eventually we get some energy back and head up with Fred to the left side of the right arm of Simpson Bay where we saw the otter yesterday. Randall wants to see what the bottom is like where the animal was feeding. We take some bottom samples while Randall's crew drop the camera down and unsurprisingly see lots of mussels.

While we work another boat with a small family on board zooms past us into the lagoon, and five minutes later zooms back again. We head up into the lagoon to see if anything is going on, and because Randall wants to pick berries.

Some zip-loc bags intended for mud samples are requisitioned as berry bags. People get down to the important business of picking fruit once Randall has told us what the best ones look like. Fred suggests we wander upstream to a waterfall he knows, but a short way there he spies some fresh bear prints. The bear may not be too happy about us taking his fruit. We walk back to get some more berries. Several people have full bags now, and Randall is king of the berry pickers.

We take the boats back out of the lagoon and now there is an otter diving and feeding right where we were doing the survey earlier. Its probably the same otter that we saw yesterday. He dives down, pops up, and crunches mussels, turning over to get more out of the pockets of skin under his arms, and crunching them. Then its down again for a few more armfuls. Randall gets some pictures. By now its late and time to get home.

Its gone six before we arrive back, and dinner is getting ready. Barney's fish is cooking and the berries we picked have been turned into a fruit cobbler. That means lots of washing up for us.

There's some excitement later in the evening as Mark, the fisherman who brought Sonya here, arrives to tell us of a ship sinking out in the bay. We listen in to the emergency channel on the shortwave and watch a rescue helicopter heading out. After a while it seems the crew are all okay. We head down to the tents on the shore and Mark's boat is moored there, where he stays for the night.

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