Beluga Days--ATB Edward Itta

ATB Edward Itta aŕriving on September 25, 2019

While scanning the waters of Knik Arm for signs of beluga whales this year with the Beluga Whale Alliance, I have witnessed the comings and goings of various vessels around the small boat ramp and the Port of Anchorage.   These movements, which we dutifully note on the observer’s log sheet, take place near the high tide. Our two-hour observation periods also occur around the high tide, when beluga are likely to be present.

My observations on the late afternoon of September 25, 2019, recorded the arrival of a tug pushing a barge, which on first glance looked like a single vessel.  I had seen the barge departing the port on a high tide during a previous session.  Today, it approached Knik Arm on the incoming tide and arrived off the port as the tide was peaking.  Another tug met the vessels to escort them into the harbor. The barge hull bore the name EDWARD ITTA—a name I immediately recognized as that of the late Inupiat Whaling Captain and Mayor of the Alaska’s North Slope Borough whom I had met some years earlier.  “So how,” I wondered, “does a tug barge come to bear his name?”

A quick internet search revealed some details about the tug-barge, known as articulated tug-barge unit or ATB, which the consists of a tank vessel (barge) matched with a large, powerful tug that is positioned in a notch in the stern of the barge  A hinged (articulated) connection allows for separate movement between the two parts.

An article dated November 2, 2017 on the Professional Mariner website reports “the vessel names have a very personal meaning for Harley Franco, chairman and CEO of Harley Marine Services…The barge is named for Edward Itta, an American Inupiat politician, activist and whaling captain who died of cancer in 2016.” 

A Harley Marine publication “What’s in a Name: The Story of Our Vessels” from 2018 provides additional details on the barge’s name.  The publication explains, “Harley Marine’s mission statement emphasizes involvement in the communities where we work and live. We have been inspired to give back by a variety of individuals who exemplify good citizenship…we salute past and future leaders and friends who we believe make our world a better place.” The entry for Edward Itta, an 83,000-barrel capacity, refined product barge with a length over all of 430 ft, 3 in and a beam of 76 ft. 8 in. states

Edward Saggan Itta was born on July 5, 1945 in Barrow, or Utqiagvik, Alaska. Growing up in a house of 11 children, Edward learned how speak up and be heard from an early age. After he graduated from Mt. Edgecumbe High School in 1964, Edward trained as an electronics technician at the Griswold Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, and in the U.S. Navy.  He was raised in a traditional American-Inupiat household and loved fishing, hunting and camping which eventually led him to a career as a whaling captain.

The proud life-long Alaskan was a pillar of his community and served two consecutive terms as the Mayor of North Slope Borough (2005-2011). While serving as mayor, Edward Itta was met with the challenge of maintaining and protecting the strong traditions of the Inupiat lifestyle while also facilitating the potential of economic growth from the oil and gas industry. In 2012, President Obama appointed Edward to the seven-member United States Arctic Research Commission. He also served as vice chairman of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, as President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council of Alaska and as President of the Barrow Whaling Captains Association.

Edward Itta lost his battle to cancer on November 6, 2016. “His achievements and contributions to Arctic policy and the state of Alaska will long be remembered,” said Alaska Governor Bill Walker in a statement to the Anchorage Daily News. It is very fitting that the EDWARD ITTA will continue to serve Alaska and her citizens for many years to come.

The ATB Edward Itta departed Anchorage the next day at 1600 hours on the rising tide.  Its stay in Anchorage lasted about 24 hours.

Beluga Days--Ship Creek

I stop, look both ways, and listen for a train whistle or the sound of rolling stock. The approach appears to be clear. My car lurches across a double set of railroad tracks.  Stacks of shipping containers tell me that I am on the edge of the Port of Anchorage.  I continue down the road to the dead end that marks my observation point for the evening’s Cook Inlet beluga monitoring session. 

To the left, the two bays of the small boat ramp await the flood of the incoming tide.  To the right, the tidal flat extends to the mouth of now-exposed Ship Creek channel.  A flock of seabirds mills just above the tide line.  

Straight ahead is a huge ship’s anchor and exhibit of the fishing village and people that once occupied this place.  

At the end of the promontory, two park benches offer an unobstructed panoramic view encompassing the entrance to Knik Arm, the mouth of Ship Creek, and the wharves of the Port of Anchorage.  The dockside’s alive with the bustle of machinery loading a green barge with all manner of shipping containers and other cargo.  Two motor coaches sit atop a stack of containers, most likely heading south to serve other tourist destinations as the Alaska summer season winds down with the shortening days.  Overhead, a small, single-engine airplane heads for the traffic pattern at Merrill Field.  For the next two hours, two or three observers, including myself, will scan the waters for signs of the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales. If the belugas are present, given today’s nearly ideal  viewing conditions, we should be able to see them from this elevated location at water’s edge.

I am amazed at how many people in Anchorage seem unaware of this place.  When I talk to them about the monitoring project and this location, I sometimes get a perplexed look in return as if they are thinking “Anchorage has a small boat ramp?  Why? I have never seen any small boats on the Inlet.” The more adventurous sport fishers know this location.  They thrive on the prospect of getting first crack at the salmon and a little bit of relief from the shoulder-to-shoulder combat fishing farther up Ship Creek at Kings Landing and the Bridge.  Tourists on bikes seem pleased to stumble on this spot while following the downtown attractions map in the tourist guide.  The entrance road, not well marked, has an “On the Waterfront” look to it.  The reward for their perseverance is an absolutely breathtaking view of the Arm in front and the cityscape behind. 

Over the next two hours, in addition to documenting the presence of beluga and their behavior, as well as that of other marine wildlife, the crew will make note of some of this human activity.  Tugs occasionally dispatch to escort an incoming or departing cargo vessel or barge and the very rare cruise ship.  The dredge with its clamshell bucket sometimes operates scooping mud from the bottom and depositing the muck on an adjacent spoils barge to maintain the ship channel.  Without this activity, I wonder how long the channel would remain navigable.  A trailer-launched small boat fleet, mostly skiffs but a few runabouts and couple of inflatables, use the ramp.  A well-stocked “Kids Don’t Float” station at the top of the ramp offers free use of personal flotation devices.  Once in the water the boats quickly motor away, most of them heading in the direction of the opposite shore.  Small boat operation in the Inlet with its cold water, huge tidal swing, powerful and contrary currents, every changing bottom, and sometimes adverse weather conditions is not for the inexperienced.  These circumstances may account for the scarcity of activity.  I have seen a solitary kayaker (not counting his dog) unloading at the ramp in the last few sessions.  This part of Cook Inlet does not really seem that conducive to water-borne recreation.  By far, the most plentiful activity is airborne, with a number of small airplanes passing overhead as they arrive or depart Merrill Field.

People come and go to the end of promontory.  Kids scramble up and down the rock rip rap as their parents caution them to stay well away from the water and mud.  The kids pick up rocks and chuck them into the water in a ritual that I suspect has gone on as long as this point has been peopled.  Most people take in the view but really don’t linger too long.  It is as if the vastness and solitude hurries them away.  A visitor will sometimes regale the observers with “you should have been here this morning or yesterday when I heard so-and-so saw lots of beluga just swimming around for about an hour.” While such reports are invariably second- or third-hand, with the number and duration increasing with each telling, they are frequent enough that I sometimes wonder if the belugas’ echolocation senses my car’s approach to the parking lot as a sign that “the observers are coming, time to clear out quick.”

The conversation I am never quite prepared to have is when a long-time resident stops by and asks “what happened to all the beluga?  I’ve been here thirty (or more) years and we used to see them all the time, now we hardly see them at all, if ever.”  I can respond with information about the decline and the current population estimates that place their numbers in the mid-300s.  I can speak about how our monitoring effort is part of overall recovery strategy.  I can educate the folks in a conversation about beluga conservation efforts.  What I can’t do is assuage their feeling that something magical about the not-too-distant past is now missing.  You can sense their nostalgic yearning to see the plentiful pods of beluga and the sadness that what once was common is now rare.  They long to show beluga to their grandchildren.  I can only hope that the data I collect as a citizen scientist beluga monitor collect will help in the beluga recovery.   That prospect keeps me coming back for another shift.  Hopefully, the belugas, known as “the canaries of the sea” for the sounds they make are not now “the canaries in the coalmine.” 

Remembering the M/V Conception

“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.” Psalm 107:23-24

On Labor Day, September 2, 2019, I awakened to news of the tragedy that was still unfolding in the waters off Santa Cruz Island.  The NPR news report mentioned that a dive vessel had caught fire off the Southern California coast and that 34 passengers were missing and feared lost.  Accessing on-line news accounts, I discovered that it was one of the Truth Aquatics vessels, Conception.  My disbelief gave way to shock and sorrow as details emerged throughout the day.  I wondered if I knew anyone who might be on board the vessel that day.  You see, my connection with vessel conjures fond memories of adventures and friends in the not-to-distant past.

I started diving thirty-five years ago with a certification trip to Anacapa Island on July 20, 1984.  Thereafter, my buddies and I frequented beach dive spots along the Santa Barbara coastline, exploring remote entries to see what was out there and then reporting back what we found.  Some of us worked in dive shops, others as instructors or divemasters, a few as deckhands, and a couple as research divers.  We served in these apprenticeships mastering our skills and forging lifelong friendships.  We hung out at Santa Barbara Aquatics, the SBCC Marine Technology building, and the UCSB Marine Science Institute.  We loved the UCSB Scuba Club’s underwater pumpkin carving contest, Easter egg hunt, and start of school shrimp boil. We would not miss Ed Stetson’s Catalina Island trip.

Yondering to the islands on the horizon usually took us to Anacapa or Santa Cruz Island on vessels out of Port Hueneme, Oxnard, or Ventura--Sea Ventures, Barbara Marie, Bold Contender, Liberty and Specter.  These vessels, with the exception of Specter, have long ceased operation.  My memory of the hundreds of dives, the places, and the vessels recedes a bit more each year, recalled only by deciphering the fading ink on the pages of long-neglected dive logs. However, I fondly remember the people I met along the way, many of whom that I still count among friends today, decades later. 

Rare visits to the beyond the horizon islands of Santa Rosa or San Miguel meant a trip on the “Cadillac”  of Socal dive boats operated by Truth Aquatics—Conception, Truth, or Vision. The lineup of the three vessels side-by-side at Santa Barbara Harbor’s Sea Landing, a kind of trinity of excellence, was emblematic of a golden era of Southern California diving.  We savored the prospect of such passage--a special treat on our limited budgets.  Fortune smiled on some of our crowd who worked on these boats.  They were the “high men” of our diving coterie. 

The “Truth boats” offered long range passage to fabulous diving, spacious decks, and exceptionally great service.  Still, in our persona as hearty California divers, we revealed in the reputation of the boats’ amenities as somewhat Spartan compared to “luxury” tropical liveaboards profiled in the likes of Undercurrent and Scuba Diver magazine.  Let the crew carry your gear to the boat and assemble it for you?  Nope. No self-respecting California diver would allow such coddling. No way.  We hauled our own stuff to and from the boat. Besides, no one touches my gear but me.  O-dark-hundred departures? So what. The diving begins at soon after a crack of dawn breakfast wolfed down before striding off the high front bow gate! We dived self-defined profiles within our abilities with the crew always available for a quick consult or an assist.  The mystique of this way of diving persists with me to this day.

I recall one particular night dive on Wycoff Ledge on San Miguel Island in May of 1991 with my friend, Brandon Cole.  Only he and I wanted to do a night dive; everyone else wanted to enjoy the after dinner warmth and camaraderie of the salon.   The crew accommodated us without question or complaint.  The picture of taken of Brandon and I that evening by the late Dennis Divins, the Diving Safety Officer at UCSB, is one of my most cherished possessions.  We call it our “big friend, little friend” photo.

My last trip aboard the Conception took place about a decade ago.  Brandon and I travelled to San Clemente Island to collaborate on a story for Alert Diver on diving the southern Channel Islands.  I recall the trip went off with the usual attention to detail and understated efficiency and exceptional attention that distinguished Truth Aquatics boats from all others.  Even for the first time diver, these boats offered a comfortable familiarity. Did you need to gain experience diving?  Truth Aquatics offered a mid-week, one-day trip designed to introduce new divers to the wonders of the Channel Islands.

Yesterday, I saw a picture of two vessels and realized that the third would never return.  Never again would I see Conception bookended by the Vision and Truth.  Memorials have sprung up at the harbor.  

Many people are hurting, hearts are heavy, spirits devastated.  My thoughts are with you.  I only hope that when you have time to reflect that memories will comfort you.  I am grateful for the friends that I made along the way and all the adventures we made.  Conception is part of those memories. They are the finest kind of memories and they sustain me as do the words 

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:4

Musings of a Citizen Scientist--Time and Tide Wait for No Man or Beluga

This entry is part of a series that describes my participation in the Cook Inlet Beluga Monitoring Citizen Science Project

Sunday September 1, 2019.  Anchorage Small Boat Launch.

The trio of tugs sortie from the float adjacent to the small boat ramp toward the Anchorage wharves as I arrive to begin my two-hour shift scanning the waters of the Cook Inlet for beluga whales.  I surmise the vessels will assist the impending departure of the blue Tote Maritime Lines cargo ship.  Today’s session is one of many over the next three month in the citizen science project to catalog the presence and behavior of beluga under the auspices of the Beluga Whale Alliance and the Alaska Beluga Whale Monitoring Program. The observation period begins in a few minutes at 5:00 p.m. This is my fourth session in eight days at this location and I have yet to spy anyone of the critters.  Harbor seals have been viewed regularly, but thus far no beluga.  Maybe today will be the day! 

Scanning the coastline reveals the physical environment in which today’s monitoring occurs.  Launching anything from the boat ramp would be impossible given the gap between the base of the ramp and water’s edge. The tugs move slowly into the industrial port immediately to the north.  A bit closer, the deep furrow through the grey mud that marks the mouth of Ship Creek lies well above the waterline. The adjacent tidal flats appear littered with fallen tree trunks and root balls—the water-worked remains of once living trees deposited by the eroding shoreline or washed down waterways that enter into the Inlet.  In the next two hours, the incoming tide will fill the boat ramp, inundate the creek channel and cover most of the surrounding tidelands, which when exposed is a mud slurry best described as “part water, part glacial till, punctuated by exposed channels and dead trees.” 

In Cook Inlet, the tide does not so much “rise” as it does “flow” or “flood” On this day, as shown by the graph from the Tides4Fishing website, the second of the two low tides that day was three-quarters of an hour earlier at -4.0 feet.  The next high tide will be at 9:44 p.m. at 33.0 feet, a change of 37 feet in 5 ½ hours--a lot of water movement.  These levels are not quite the maximum low tide for Anchorage of -5.6 feet and a maximum high of 34.4 feet, but pretty close.  The tidal coefficient in red at the top of the chart indicates the likelihood of major currents and fish movements upstream on the incoming tide—two features which factor into beluga behavior.

The  United States Coast Pilot 9 for the vicinity of Anchorage helps put into context what I am seeing:

“Close off the town, the current floods northeast at a velocity of 1.5 knots and ebbs southwest at a velocity of 2.5 knots. One mile off the town, the current averages 2.9 knots. Strong currents that attain velocities of 4 knots or more, at times, in midchannel, and swirls in the area make navigation difficult. It is reported that the flood following the higher of the low waters is unpredictable, especially during the last 3 hours, in the vicinity of the Port of Anchorage wharves.”

The energy of moving this water volume is evident as the dead trees lift with the rising tide and entrain in the tidal rips moving quickly past out observation point.  Each draws our attention, as any out of the ordinary movement on the water is likely to do when scanning for beluga.  Binoculars on the target confirm it is a submerged log; one of many we see that day.  It seems a collision between a boat and the log would leave the boat much worse off from the encounter.  In some cases, when the log may float near vertical, it would appear that the cryptid Loch Ness monster resides in the Inlet as well as the beluga.

These conditions are conducive to observing beluga.  According to NOAA’s 2016 Cook Inlet Beluga Recovery plan “habitat use in the summer months consists of semi-predictable movements of groups of belugas between river mouths and shallow tidal flats in the upper Inlet. These movements are largely cued to physical conditions, especially tide…. Traditional ecological knowledge indicates that daily movements are determined by the ebb and flow of the tide and the related movements and size of fish runs,...”

Soon, we spot three beluga—an adult, juvenile, and calf travelling to the north past the port.  It would seem that ingredients for a sighting were present, just add beluga and the observers to record their transit.  Shortly after the belugas pass, the tugs escort the cargo vessel out of the port and into Knik Arm where it heads southbound for its next destination.  These movements as well as other factors are duly recorded.