Alaska: So Much To Do, So Little Time

My time in Alaska winds down today with my early afternoon flight out of Juneau to Baton Rouge via one last night in Seattle. Reflecting upon my brief visit here I have to conclude that it's been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life so far. Not only have the beautiful landscapes and intimate wildlife encounters been some of the best I've ever seen, but I also made some good friends, had an immense amount of fun during the trip, and gained some really valuable teaching experience. Most of all, I feel I learnt a lot about myself and am now in the healthiest and happiest shape of my life!

We certainly packed a hell of a lot into the three weeks of our time here. Classes generally started at 8 am and ran all the way until 5:30 pm, with students alternating between lectures with the professors, and labs and research projects with the three of us graduate students in 90 minute slots. On top of this they had to write papers, prepare lab reports, and study for tests and practical exams. Despite this, we still managed to somehow find the time to go on fun adventures and I feel we certainly made the most of the experience. I definitely would have liked to have been able to get out into the wilderness a bit more, but really this trip has just left me hungry for more of this beautiful place. I'd definitely like to come back to Alaska one day with more free time to explore under my own agenda. As the largest state in the US it seems like there are endless wonderful things to see and do: I want to see would be polar bears roaming around the town of Barrow in the far north, Mt. McKinley in Denali National Park (the highest peak in North America), and the aurora borealis (the northern lights). I'm also still yet to see a brown bear or go fishing for salmon, and I'm sure I could spend a few weeks walking the trails absolutely anywhere.

There were many highlights of the second half of the trip despite it seeming to fly by so quickly. We went whale watching one afternoon and managed to spot six or so humpback whales and a bunch of Stellar Sea Lions fighting for prime basking position on a buoy. The boat didn't get particularly close so it wasn't as great as the trip I went on in Maine last year, but afterwards we stopped off at an island to enjoy a fresh pink salmon bake which was absolutely delicious. A couple of days later we had the entire day off to enjoy a cruise to the stunningly scenic Tracy Arm, a huge fjord a couple of hours boat ride from Juneau. We were super lucky to see orcas twice during the trip, including a mother and her calf. The fjord itself was lined with towering rock walls and littered with waterfalls of all sizes (I put my head under one which was pretty refreshing). But the most spectacular scene was the two huge blue glaciers at the end of the fjord. We even got to see a chunk of ice calve off one and rode the resulting wave. I also had a great time getting out and being active thanks to the endless recreational opportunities; we went hiking to the top of Eagle Crest Ski Area and Nugget Falls, sunset walking along Eagle Beach, swimming and kayaking in Auke Lake right on campus (it wasn't even that cold), and I went running every two or three days, enjoying the stunning views as I pounded the pavement.

Thanks has to go out to the many people who made this such a memorable experience. Dr. Bill Stickle and Dr. John Caprio were two great guys to talk to, room with, and learn from - I really owe Dr Stickle a huge amount for inviting me on this trip as a teacher. Both Katherine and Jenessa (the other graduate students up here) were awesome to hang around with, worked their butts off tirelessly, and I now have two good new friends. The students themselves were an awesome group; tons of fun to be around and they seemed to really enjoy the fairly tough field work we threw at them. I'd definitely never got to know any students quite so personally before which was really great. And finally, the weather; what an unbelievable run we had. Out of the 21 days we spent in Juneau we only saw rain about five or six times, which is quite unbelievable considering Juneau is know for getting over 2000 mL of rain per year. The sun was shining on most days and the temperatures were so hot I spent most of my time in a t-shirt, shorts, and jandals - perfect weather! It really made a nice change from the 30-35 °C temperatures I'm now heading back to in Baton Rouge.

I'll leave you with some of my favourite pictures from the second half of the trip (I took over 1500 photos during the four week trip so managed to get a few good ones!).

Sea lions basking in the sun

View over Auke Lake

Orca!

Rock wall in Tracy Arm

Downtown Juneau

Sunset at Eagle Beach

Bald eagle in flight at Eagle Beach

Eagle Crest Ski Area

Mama bear teaching her cubs how to rip up a salmon carcass

Great fun in the kayak on Auke Lake

Yours truly enjoying the final day of field work

The entire class on our salt marsh field trip

Alaska: Glaciers, Porcupines, and Bears!

Sunday was our day off from teaching responsibilities and the three of us graduate students decided to go for a long stress-relieving walk. At the tramway the day before, Katherine and Jenessa had heard of a "secret" trail which could lead you right up to the Mendenhall Glacier itself. Turns out the trail isn't so secret as there were heaps of people on it, but it sure did give us some spectacular views of the glacier and the Mendenhall Lake. It took us around two hours to get right up to the glacier, but we were able to climb right on top of the front of it which was an amazing experience. The weather was perfect as it has been pretty much the whole time we have been here, but it did get cold in the exposed areas with a fierce wind sweeping down the valley. Can't wait to see where we will go walking next.

The first full on view of the glacier

Up close to the glacier with ice climbers for scale

Made it!

Beautiful views in either direction

Later that evening we went to look for bears at the popular Steep Creek boardwalk by the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center. Turns out the third time is lucky (we also went the two preceding days, but had no luck), because we spotted a mother bear and her two little cubs and watched them for half an hour or so. The mother bear shooed her cubs up a nearby tree where they fell asleep while she went about fishing for salmon in the creek. It was amazing to watch her chase the salmon down the stream and she managed to catch two while we were there. There was also a great interaction between her and one of the cubs when she climbed the tree to check on them; she tried nuzzling up to the uppermost cub, who had fallen fast asleep. It woke up, looked down, and gave its mum a whack on the nose with its little paw, as if to say "not now mum, I'm trying to sleep up here!", keeping on doing this until its mum eventually gave up and went back to hunting. I managed to get a semi-decent video of the bear which you can check out below.



At the same location as the bears there is also a lot of other wildlife hanging around. We've seen a few cute red squirrels, salmon, birds, and some deer, but nothing comes close to this adorable baby porcupine which looked like it was going to fall out of its tree at any minute!

Alaska: Getting There and Research Projects

The ferry journey to Juneau

Because Juneau is only accessible by sea or by air, we took a three day ferry trip through the Inside Passage. The MV Columbia (our home for the next three days) left port under brilliant sunshine from the small city of Bellingham, just south of the Canadian Border. This was the last we would see of the sun for the next three days, with the exception of a few tiny patches of blue sky. The ferry ride was largely uneventful, with the only real excitement being the late night rescue of a fishing boat which had run aground. One of the professors also gave a lecture in the ferry's bar, we saw an old deserted cannery, and stopped off for breakfast one morning in a small touristy town called Ketchikan. As part of the faculty on this trip, we were sleeping cabins. The students on the other hand had to rough it on deck cheers in the open solarium. The scenery all around the ferry was continually awesome, and it reminded me a lot of the Marlborough Sounds back home.

Sunset on the ferry

We finally arrived in Juneau at 7 am on Monday morning, and since then it has been all on! Jenessa, Katherine and I (the three graduate students who are helping out) have been kept pretty busy. We've been teaching and attending lecture classes, driving the students around (to the bar in downtown Juneau on more than one occasion), planning out the activities for each day, and then finally passing out in bed at the end of the day. We haven't had a lot of time off to explore on our own, but it also hasn't all been hard work: The entire group spent Tuesday morning walking around the beach at Sunshine Cove, learning about all the organisms that live there. On Thursday we visited the Alaska State Museum in the morning, and the Alaskan Brewery in the afternoon, both of which were pretty cool. And on Saturday everyone took a two hour walk up to the top of the Mount Roberts Tramway, where we ate some dinner, took in the spectacular views, and then took the tram back down. In all, it has been an amazing experience so far, with plenty more to come!

Mendenhall Glacier from just off the main highway

The salt marsh and beyond from Mt. Roberts

While in Alaska, some of the students are enrolled in a course where they conduct research in the field and lab, and then write a paper based on what they find. My main job as a teaching assistant here in Alaska is to design, organise, and run three of these research projects. I had a lot of fun coming up with the projects by reading various papers and talking with Dr. Bill Stickle, the LSU professor who is in charge of the program here in Alaska. While there isn't enough time to collect publishable data, these projects introduce the students to most basic aspects of conducting ecological research, from getting down and dirty in the field to curating and identifying various organisms, managing data, conducting statistical analyses, and writing up results. Below is a brief outline of each project:

Diversity of Insects Associated with Salt Marsh Plants
The Juneau salt marsh is one of the biggest on the west coast of North America, although it has nothing on the ones on the east coast. Salt marshes generally increase in elevation the further they get away from the ocean and this leads to often obvious zonation of plants. The students sample in 1 m² plots along a gradient from the water's edge to the road which borders the salt marsh, collecting data on soil salinity, moisture, and temperature, the plant species present in each plot (we are preserving specimens for deposition in the LSU herbarium), as well as taking samples of any invertebrates using a sweep net, pitfall traps, and hand collecting. The students will then identify the species present (or at least to family level with the insects), how they are related to one another, the abiotic conditions they tolerate, and how the community changes with elevation in the salt marsh. So far they are having a great time wading around in the marsh, and it has only rained on us a couple of times!

The salt marsh crew

Effects of Marine-Derived Nutrients
Every year, hundreds of thousands of salmon make the journey from the ocean back to Alaskan streams where they hatched. Here, they spawn and then die, their life cycle completed. All these dead salmon and their eggs add a whole lot of nutrients to the water, which also must have an effect on other organisms downstream of the spawning sites. We decided to test this using a simple design: we would sample above the salmon spawning sites (i.e. past a barrier such as a waterfall), within a salmon spawning site, and below the spawning sites (near the mouth of the stream). Data to be collected includes taking water samples to test for nutrient and chlorophyll concentrations, sampling epilithon (the algae and plant material on river stones), and counting the numbers of dead and alive salmon in a 50 m stretch of stream. In one stream sampled so far we estimated there to be over 4500 live salmon in the 50 m stretch. They are so densely abundant you have to watch where you are walking so you don't step on them and you could literally reach into the water and pick them up if you wanted to.

Sheep Creek, one of our amazing field sites

Aquatic Insects as a Food Source for Salmon
The final project the students are working on (and probably my personal favourite) uses the same design and field sites as the marine-derived nutrients project, but the students are examining the effects these nutrients may have on higher trophic levels, in particular the aquatic insects in the streams. Students are sampling aquatic insects using a kick-net and debris bags, and also collecting habitat data such as stream width and depth, number of coarse woody debris, number of deep pools, and amount and type of overhanging vegetation. We have also obtained a permit to trap young fish (hopefully some juvenile salmon) and pump their stomach contents to determine which of the aquatic insects make up the majority of their diet. This will allow us to determine if top-down (the fish predators), bottom-up (nutrients), or environmental (habitat) variables are having a greater effect on insect abundance and diversity. After working at these amazing field sites I wonder why I don't change my PhD to studying aquatic insects in Alaska!

Sampling for aquatic insects

I have a lot more great pictures and a couple of videos from today's adventures which I will post in the next couple of days too!

The Spectacular Pacific Northwest

Waking from my slumber on the flight between Dallas and Seattle, I lift my window shade and glance outside. I'm greeted by a sight I haven't seen for seven long months - mountains. But this is not some small hill; it's Mt. Rainier, a huge peak, over 550 m taller than New Zealand's tallest, Aoraki (Mt. Cook). An intense feeling of excitement instantly takes me over. My heart starts beating faster, breaths become heavier, and it feels like a kaliedoscope (yes, that's the correct term) of butterflies have been let loose in my stomach. Before delirium sets in I try to remind myself that this is just the first of many awe-inspiring sights I'll be seeing over the next month.

My ultimate destination is Juneau, Alaska, where I'll be spending a little over three weeks helping to teach and conduct small research projects with a group of LSU undergrads who chose to spend the summer semester studying somewhere other than hot and humid Baton Rouge. Of course, it won't be all work - we intend to have a pretty good time while we're up there too!

But before I arrive in Juneau, I had a couple of days to tour around Seattle and its surrounds. I spent Tuesday evening downtown, walking along the waterfront before launching up the famous Space Needle to view the awesome sunset. The city kind of reminded me of Auckland, with the downtown area being built on steep hills beside a harbour. But I wasn't really interested in the city so much during my short stay here, rather I wanted to check out Olympic National Park, home to the mountain ranges behind which the sun was setting.

I rented a car and decided I would drive around the entire Olympic Peninsula loop, around 1000 km total. So the next morning I took a ferry across Puget Sound and promptly started my adventure by getting lost. Luckily it wasn't for long thanks to Google Maps, and soon I had made it to the first stop of many, the spectacular Hurricane Ridge. This spot provided beautiful panoramic views of the Olympic Mountains and also into Canada. I climbed to the highest point the walking tracks nearby would allow, stood there, and took it all in. The mountains weren't as singularly breathtaking as Mt. Rainier, but there were so many that it more than made up for it. My next stop was Lake Crescent, where I walked a couple of kilometres to check out a waterfall, before cooling off with a swim. The water wasn't even that cold and I could stay in for a few minutes!

One of the greatest things about Olympic National Park is the variety of landscapes and ecosystems it contains. Within little more than an hour of driving you can get from the top of Hurricane Ridge to the coastline, and I spent the evening checking out the many beaches on offer. Rialto Beach and Ruby Beach were the most picturesque, with towering sea stacks housing their own forest communities, trees dead from sea spray lining the forest edge, and the shoreline littered with giant logs washed ashore during storms.

The forests in the park are also extremely pretty, filled with spruces, cedars, firs, hemlocks, and maples, all clothed in dense swaths of hanging moss, with an understory dominated by ferns and other small trees and shrubs. Photographs can't convey just how green and lush the forests are, especially on the west side of the peninsula, where they are classified as one of the world's few temperate rainforests (another being New Zealand's west coast hardwood forests). Hoh, Sol Duc, and Quinalt forests were all particularly pretty, and I spent a few hours wandering their many trails.

Wildlife highlights included a big black bear (actually outside the park), a herd of elk, some black tailed deer, lots of large and colourful slugs, the discarded skin of a garter snake, a single bald eagle, and what I think were a few sea otters playing in the surf. Other than the different species of flora and fauna, the whole park bore a striking resemblance to many places in New Zealand. The mountains made me think of the Southern Alps, Lake Cresent looked just like one of the Nelson Lakes, the beaches were as wild and rugged as those on the west coast, and the rainforests may as well have been taken right out of Lord of the Rings. It was a great feeling to be reminded so much of home.

Today begins the three day ferry trip to Juneau, where more exciting new adventures await!

Snake Venom Self-Immunization

Do not try this at home! Browsing one of my favourite YouTube channels last night I stumbled across this interesting video. It's a documentary about a guy who has regularly injected himself with highly toxic snake venom for over 20 years. While it seems he's lucky to be alive, he claims that the venom has anti-aging and immunological properties, and gives him a burst of energy that lasts up to four days. He certainly doesn't look or act like a 46 year old, and claims he hasn't even had the flu for the last six or so years.

On initial viewing, it seems an incredibly stupid thing to do - handling the snakes the way he does is unbelievably dangerous (although he seems to know what he's doing) and injecting yourself with venom is even dumber - but I think it's very likely there is something to his claims. If ever there is a strong argument for urgent conservation, inventory, and research into biodiversity then this may be an excellent example of it; there are potentially hundreds of cures for major diseases to be found within nature. This is something impossible to put a dollar value on, and something we should be desperate not to lose. After all, these potentially useful biomedical resources are the result of millions of years of evolution, and once gone, may be lost forever.



The YouTube channel the video is from is really good. It is called VICE, and they produce a huge number of short documentaries on a diverse range of topics, ranging from . Here's a link to their main page if you feel like checking them out - VICE.

Sigur Ros in New Orleans

One of my all time favourite bands, Sigur Rós, is coming all the way from Iceland to do a North American tour later this year and will be playing on October 3 in New Orleans. I bought my ticket to go see them today and am excited to finally see them live! They have tons of awesome material and lots of music videos, like the awesome one below for the song Dauðalogn off their 2012 album Valtari.

Insect Taxonomy

This semester I took my final full time class to qualify for the Master's degree at LSU, and it was my favourite class I've taken so far. The class was Insect Taxonomy and taught by Dr. Chris Carlton and Victoria Bayliss. The class material consisted of learning the life history and key characteristics for identification of over 200 total families of beetles, flies, moths and butterflies, bees and wasps, and other insect groups. We also had a lab each week where we put this knowledge into practice by identifying specimens presented to us using dichotomous keys, our notes, pictures in books and on the internet (www.bugguide.net is an excellent resource), and the guide of our teachers.

One of the main requirements of the course was to assemble an insect collection. This needed to include 150 different insect families as well as additional specimens. Unfortunately I wasn't all that stoked with my final collection, which is far from a perfect example as you can see below. However, I enjoyed the course so much I intend to start my own personal collection, while the knowledge of identifying insects I gained from the course will also be immensely important for my research, where I am currently collecting many species of fly, wasp and beetle from inside galls of Phragmites australis, such as the cool-looking beetle and wasp in this post.