Thursday, June 24, 2010

Resurrection Bay was named by the Russian fur trader Alexander Baranov when he stayed in this harbor to survive a bad storm. His ship was protected and it happened to be Resurrection Sunday(Easter) in the Russian Orthodox Church so he named it Resurrection Bay in 1792 and the name has survived.
The Russians first settled here and started a very successful ship building tradition, with the "Phoenix" being one of the most known. Then it became a goldrush camp for almost a century. The historic Iditarod Trail begins here in Seward which followed the old mail route of the gold rush in Hope and Sunrise and later the big bonanza at Iditarod. The city is named for Lincoln's Secretary of State, Willian Seward, who engineered the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. William Seward was wounded the same time Lincoln was assassinated. The city was laid out in grid form of wide streets by a group of railroad men so it resembles many other railroad towns across America. When it was a frontier town it acquired street names from the gold diggers: Millionaires Row and Home Brew Alley. This railroad led to the development of interior Alaska and the making of this an important trade port city. Seward was important during WWII because it was the northern-most-ice-free port and was the southernmost point on the Alaska Railroad. At Caines Head State Recreation Area is the abandoned Fort McGlivray that housed soldiers from 1941 to 1943 and was protection for the port and a strategic command center. A lawyer from San Francisco moved here to Seward after the gold rush and did a lot for the town. He assisted in all of its civic events, built a park here on Resurrection Bay with a fountain, moved lawns, many, many flowers and goats and sheep for children to enjoy. The park is still here, but no goats or sheep.
We went to the Alaska SeaLife Center on Railroad Avenue on Resurrection Bay. This facility has underwater viewing tanks to see all 5 kinds of salmon, halibut fry, several kinds of rock fish, sea nettles, pipe fish, sea lions, sea otters, harbor seals, spotted seals, and various other sea creatures. They are for non-profit and are known for taking in stranded animals to help rehabilitate them. They have been very successful with most of them.
Alaska has 474 species of fish, 29 species of marine animals and hundreds of sea plants. Alaska supplies the US with over half of its fish and shellfish. The Bering Sea is enormous and well supplied with sea animals. The natives still use "umiaqs" made of walrus skins as their boat of choice to go sealing. These boats are of the same design their ancestors used centuries ago. Many of these natives live off of the land and sea; growing their own vegetables and cattle, and fishing and hunting for their seafood and wild game. The government of Alaska keeps a close watch and count on the commercial fishermen and sport fishermen to be sure there is plenty for the Natives who do Subsistence Fishing.
The Alaskan Salmon is Alaska's primary industry and they supervise it very carefully. The eggs are deposited by the female salmon in the gravel on the fresh water bed and the male salmon fertilizes it. When they hatch the following year they are called Alevins are live off of the yolk sac for a while. When they become larger they are called Fry and they are at this stage for a month. Then they become Parr. Then Alaska SeaLife Center takes some of the Parr at this stage and subject them to variations in water temperature which develops marks on their earbones. This mark is easy to distinguish when they are older and then they can tell how old they are when they catch them as an adult fish. At this stage the Parr develop vertical camouflage marks on their sides to be able to blend in with their surroundings. The next stage is Smolt. Here they leave the gravel beds and fresh water for the estuary that has brackish water for several months. The last stage is the adult fish and they head out to the salt water ocean for up to 6 years where they are constantly growing. When it is time to spawn all of the salmon return to exactly the same river in which they were born. Scientist are still trying to figure out how they know where this river is; by smell or what. But it is quite difficult to try to follow a salmon through its life. The ocean is too large and they all look alike. By the time the salmon is ready to spawn it is also ready to die. Once they spawn they die and decompose on the river floor adding nutrients back into the sea. As they swim up these rivers which are now fresh water, they start turning darker colors and their bodies start decomposing. They don't eat anymore after they leave the ocean; and the trip upstream is very exhausting. They go back just to lay their eggs one time and fertilize them and then they die. After they have laid their eggs they are not very tasty for people to eat; but the bald eagles, bears and sea lions just love them.
The Alutiq Native Peoples catch these salmon, dry them and smoke them to live off of them til this time next year. This is a very large part of their Subsistence Living.
In 2003 the Alaska SeaLife Center adopted a 3 day old sea otter who had lost his mother. The scientist had to keep his body temperature regulated or he would die. They had to feed him a bottle with milk(half and half), vitamins and sea squid all chopped up fine in a blender. He needed to have at least 16 pounds of nutrition in 1 day; so that involved a lot of work. This they did for 3 months until he could start eating food. Then they gave him tiny pieces of sea squid which he would eat while laying on his back in the water.
They had to bathe and comb him everyday because that is what his mother would do. This took hours; but they had to be his surrogate mother. Their fur on the outside is a guard fur that is oily and waterproof and protects his inner fur from becoming wet. He has no layer of fat or blubber to keep him warm in these frigid waters; so he needs this special fur. This was very successful and he lived at this facility for 6 years and then they transferred him to an aquarium in Portland, Oregon where they say he is doing fine. He still plays with baby toys and gets along well with the other sea otters. If they hadn't adopted him, he would have died because he needs his mother to teach him so many things for survival that he couldn't learn on his own. One of the older sea otters at the aquarium has taken him as one of her own and has helped him learn survival skills. So this experiment proved to be very successful.
Tonight we went to the Salmon Bake to eat supper. It was delicious. Daddy ordered grilled halibut and I ordered grilled salmon. This place advertises as "the place with cheap beer and lousy food". You'd think they wouldn't get any customers with that slogan. And by the way the food was not lousy; but the beer is cheap!
Tomorrow morning Daddy goes out on an all day fishing charter for salmon, rock fish, halibut, lincod. I'll be going horseback riding at the beach, over a river and into the ruins of old Seward where the earthquake destroyed it.