Kuril Islands Biocomplexity Journals
This was my second year working with the KBP group. So when reflecting on this summer there are a lot of comparisons that I naturally make. Last year was a summer of transformation for me - I felt that I came home from a journey of both scientific and personal discovery. This year was more transitional - no big discoveries about myself and rather the opportunity to build upon the things that I had learned the year before.
Last year, I arrived in Russia without clothes, without a single clue about Cyrillic or the Russian language, with little or no understanding of the culture, having only met the other participants once or twice, and with only a rudimentary understanding of the objectives of the project itself or the nature of working in the Islands. In general, this year I knew more...
Did I say it was a trip of 40 hours...turns out to be a little bit longer (depending on where you call "home")!
On the morning of Wednesday, August 22, Colby, Ben, Mike and I got up at our usual time of about 6:30 or 7 am. We ate up some of what remained of our food - oatmeal, some milk, dried fruit, cheese, sausage - and had some coffee or tea. Then we got to work getting ready to go. We had to finish packing and thoroughly clean the apartment. Our flight was at 4:40 pm, so we knew that we would be picked up sometime around 2 pm. We were still waiting for the paperwork, etc from Russian Customs for our 7 coolers and 4 crates of samples that we wanted to take with us back to Seattle. Each container weighed the maximum 30 kg that we could check as baggage on the airplane -...
So we had the whole day in Seoul, Korea. Colby and Ben decided that they wanted to hang around the hotel for the day, while Mike and I decided that we would find out from the concierge how to get to downtown Seoul to do some sightseeing. We found out that it was pretty easy - take the hotel shuttle bus back to Incheon airport, runs every 15 minutes; catch the 601-2 bus to downtown, it stops at door 12A and runs every 20 minutes; get off at Gyeongbokgung station downtown. The trip would cost 8000 won, or about $8, and take about an hour each way. We set out at about 8 am, armed with our map and about 90,000 won, on our adventure in Korea.
We got downtown about 9:45 and headed for the Gyeongbokgung palace, about a 5 minute walk from the bus station. It was a partly overcast day, but it...
For my last journal from Russia, I thought that I would summarize a bit of my experiences and observations of living in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk for a week at each end of the expedition.
ShoppingIn general, shopping is more tedious in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk than in the United States. One reason has to do with transportation (see below), the other with the way that stores are organized here.
First, in all of the stores, things are behind the counters and you must ask the clerk for them. This makes shopping more difficult when you don’t speak very much Russian…BUT generally the things that are available for purchase are displayed under the glass or in the window, with their price, so you can easily point to them. And at every store they have a calculator to show you the total in case you don’t...
Well, most of the work that we need to do before we head home for Seattle has been accomplished. Colby, Bre, Matt, Mike, Ben and I have spent the last three days at the Sakhalin Regional Museum counting, cataloging, organizing, sorting, checking, verifying, cleaning, photographing and making inventory lists of ceramics, wood, bone or lithic tools, faunal materials, lithic flakes, samples of carbon, sand and tephra and field equipment/gear, including tents, boots, tools, spare sample bags, life jackets, shovels, trowels and first aid supplies.
Whew!
We needed a finalized list/count of all of the lithic flakes, faunal material, carbon samples and sand/tephra samples that would be headed back to Seattle with us by Friday afternoon so that Dr. Shubin could take it to the Russian authorities...
The following Journal describing the archaeological activities at the Drobnyye excavation site on Shiashkotan Island has been generously contributed by Mike Etnier.
In addition to the main archaeological work our team conducted at Drobnyye, I was able to spend a bit of time developing, and starting to test, a range of other hypotheses related to the natural resources available to the folks who lived here over the millennia.
Some of the most conspicuous inhabitants of the Kuril Islands today are the foxes.
A red fox checks out the ¼” screen that we use to recover archaeological materials from excavated sediments. (Photo courtesy of Mike Etnier)
In addition to wreaking havoc on unsuspecting human campers, they play a major role in the terrestrial ecosystem—especially when it comes...
On August 11, at about 7 pm, we saw our last of the Kuril Islands as the Iskatel-4 lifted anchor shortly after the small field crews were returned from Rasshua at around 6:30 pm and we headed south before turning west to cross the Sea of Okhotsk on our way back to Korsakov. Compared to last year, it had been a short field season (about 20 days compared to by about 16 days), but a very productive one. We had found and mapped known and new archaeological sites and gotten good work done at three major archaeological sites and 4-5 tsunami sites, and that was just the American crew!
But while the field work was complete, our work is far from done…..
We arrived in Korsakov harbor at about 6 am on August 14, but had to wait until shortly after 8 am for the harbormaster to tell the Iskatel’s...
Misty and the team are on the Iskatel again and are heading back to the Port of Korsakov. Listen below for an update!
A Guest Journal Update by Bre MacInnes
Guest journal written by Bre MacInnes
Misty has asked me to give a little report about the tsunamists’ (Jody, Tanya, Katya, Seriosha and my) time in Dushnaya Bay. As the weather is less than ideal at the moment (windy, occasionally raining, cold…) and I am reluctant to leave the comfort of our nice group tent during a typhoon, I gladly agreed.
Our intrepid team of 5 made landfall in Dushnaya Bay on 9 July 2007. By this time we had all been waiting to get there for a long time. We were dropped off by Iskatel-4 as part of an expedition lead by IMGG and not directly related to the KBP expedition. KBP just picked us up. As part of the IMGG expedition we were able to have two days of field work before being dropped on Simushir – one...
We have just finished working at the Ushishir Group, which includes two small islands, Yankicha to the south and Ryponkicha to the north. They are what remain of the catastrophic explosion of the Ushishir volcano that occurred about 9500 years ago. Yankicha is the caldera remnant and Ryponkicha is a narrow island only separated from Yankicha by a shallow channel. Last year we spent half a day on each island, digging test pits on the north end of each.
In the test pit that I helped dig on Ryponkicha we found some bone midden (see my August 10-11, 2006 TREC Journal for more details), so Mike Etnier and I were going to return to the same location and dig a larger 1 m by 1 m excavation unit to recover a bigger, more organized sample of material, collect charcoal samples from the cultural...
We awoke to a relatively warm and sunny morning – the skies were still clear, we could see both of “The Kichas” and it wasn’t windy. After breakfast, Mike and I packed for another day of climbing, hiking and digging and awaited our zodiac ride to shore.
We landed nearer to the direct southern end of Ryponkicha this day and while the climb up was a bit less steep, it was also a bit longer. After “fox proofing” our life jackets and boots by placing them inside a large, thick plastic bag and piling beach boulders on top of it, we began our ascent.
Here is our strategy to foil the cunning foxes’ attempts to sully our boots and life jackets while we are away for the day. Mike has carefully put them inside a thick plastic bag and then piled boulders from the beach on top to either 1 -...
The following is Part 1 of Matt Walsh’s edited and abridged Personal Journal for August 2-7, 2007, recounting his surveying exploits with James Taylor and Dima Chvagian in the North Central Kuril Islands. All photos, unless otherwise note, are courtesy of Matt Walsh.
August 2, 2007
Woke this morning at 6am and got everything packed and checked in preparation for heading to shore and surveying today. I went with Mike and Shelby into the hold in the foredeck and gathered up some sample bags of various sizes and one of the expedition tents for James and me. It’s looking as though we won’t need a tent, since the plan so far sounds like we will be returning to the ship each night to eat dinner, sleep, and steam to another smaller island each day. It sounds pretty cushy, but in a way I’d...
The following is Part 2 of Matt Walsh’s edited and abridged Personal Journal for August 2-7, 2007, recounting his surveying exploits with James Taylor and Dima Chvagian in the North Central Kuril Islands. All photos, unless otherwise note, are courtesy of Matt Walsh.
August 4, 2007
Woke up this morning at 7:50am. The first thing I heard was that after breakfast the ship would steam to Ekarma Island and that in little more than an hour we would be heading to shore. James and I both grumbled as we got ready.
James does his best Norman Rockwell pose after breaking our only full-sized shovel. Afternoon, August 4th.
The day was relatively clear and bright, with mist only shrouding the volcanic tops of the island. When we got to shore we set out along the beach and...
The following is Part 3 of Matt Walsh’s edited and abridged Personal Journal for August 2-7, 2007, recounting his surveying exploits with James Taylor and Dima Chvagian in the North Central Kuril Islands. All photos, unless otherwise note, are courtesy of Matt Walsh.
August 6, 2007
This morning the storm was still with us when I woke up around 7am. The rain had become little more than a drizzle, but the wind and waves were trying their best to make up for it. After breakfast there was an impromptu meeting in the galley to formulate some sort of plan and try to decide what to do with the day. The captain suggested that we stay aboard ship, discouraging us from heading out to survey because of the nasty weather, but he conceded that it was at least physically possible to land the zodiac...
The following Journal describing the archaeological activities at the Drobnyye excavation site on Shiashkotan Island has been generously contributed by Shelby Anderson. All photos are courtesy of Shelby Anderson.
Shelby Anderson
August 2 to August 7, 2007 – Drobnyye, Shiashkotan Island
We arrived at Drobnyye, our second excavation site, mid-morning on August 2nd. The tide was out so unloading all of our gear on the kelp-covered rocky beach was a bit tricky, but also fun as we watched the harbor seals and red fox that were curiously eyeing us from both the shore and the sea. Our camp and excavation site is located on Shiashkotan Island near a freshwater stream that drains into the Okhotsk Sea. The stream made camping convenient for us and was likely one of the things that attracted...
Today, the most frequently-heard words out of Bre’s mouth were: “Holy Crap!”
We began the day with our typical breakfast of leftovers and/or muesli with milk. Then we got our gear together and hiked over to Ainu Bay, which is on the south-west side of Matua, on the Sea of Okhotsk side. Last year, at about this time, most of the geology group, including Tanya, Katya and Bre, camped here for 3-4 foggy days, measuring profiles and making excavations. We greatly hoped as we hiked that the fog would lift enough to be able to take a photograph of the beach to compare it to ones that we took last year. We thought this would be Jody and my last day on Matua and our last opportunity to see Ainu Bay. The single biggest mistake that we made was deciding NOT to take a tripod and the nivelier with...
These two days were our longest, hardest days of work as we tried to finish up the excavation work before our scheduled departure from Simushir on July 31.
A view of our commute to work at the Vodapadnaya Field Camp. Colby Phillips is climbing the path up the 42 m high terrace that leads to the excavation site. On the left you can see the waterfall that gives the site its name – Vodapadnaya means “Place with waterfall” in Russian.
The excavation site had changed quite a bit since we started nearly one week before. We began with only three excavation units – a 1 m x 2m and two-2 m x 2m. These were lined up with the eastern side of the test pit that had been dug last year and arranged so that they were between two pit houses and would cause the least amount of disturbance to...
This was our last day at the site and there was still quite a bit to do. There was still some excavating to complete and all of the final documentation of the site to do – and it takes a LOT more time than *I* had anticipated!
But before we could begin our last day of work – Ben, Mike and I headed down to the beach at 5 am, stirred up the campfire and waited for the satellite phone to have a signal so we could call in to the Webinar. We managed to get a signal around 5:15 that lasted about 13 minutes! We hope those of you that called in enjoyed the webinar and if you missed it – check out the archive!
Our departure time was “after lunch”. The day before, Shelby and I had worked to finish cataloging and tagging the last of the samples and artifacts as they came down from the site and...
It seems that I am still having trouble with the motion of the ship…I spent the evening of July 31 and the morning of August 1 in my bunk…. Bre gave me some of her Bonine though for motion sickness and that combined with smoother swell has made it so that by breakfast time, I was mostly up and around.
Today was a day of many plan changes. Originally, the plan was for us to spend one day at the Ushishir Group of Yankicha and Ryponkicha as we headed north toward Shiashkotan. Then the plan became to spend two days at Ushishir. I was slated to head to shore both days with Ben and Mike to do a larger test pit excavation at the archaeological site that Ben and I visited last year on the north end of Ryponkicha. It looked to be a wet cold day for a zodiac ride – as it was raining pretty hard...
Today I learned how to determine where recent tsunamis have been. It is kind of like a tsunami Easter egg hunt.
Tanya, Katya, Jody, Bre and I headed north along the beach to the furthest cape that we could see from camp – about 1.5 km – to try to measure the run-up and inundation, or height and distance inland, of the recent tsunamis and measure topographic profiles every 250 meters along the beach.
In November 2006 and again in January 2007, there were significant earthquakes (larger than magnitude 6.0) off the Pacific coast of the Kuril Islands in the Kuril Trench. Each of these earthquakes produced a tsunami as indicated by tide gauges on Sakhalin Island, Kamchatka Peninsula and at other locations farther away. The KBP geology group has a tremendous opportunity both to measure...
At about 3:30 am this morning, it started raining. I mean REALLY raining. Not the Seattle-winter, consistently precipitating all day, kind of rain – more like monsoon-wind driven sideways, solid sheet of water, drench you to your skin in a millisecond through your 4 layers of clothes, the outside one being supposedly impermeable, kind of rain.
Luckily for Bre and for me – our tent, surprisingly, given that we could only pound our stakes halfway into the ground due to volcanic cinders, withstood the challenge and was still standing, though being whipped to and fro as it strained against its tethers at 7:30 we decided that we better get up. We got dressed and during a well-timed brief respite, quickly made our way down from the terrace to see if the cook/work tent and Jody’s tent were...
August 6 is Bre’s 25th birthday! Everyone on the island of Matua was invited to a party to start at 7pm at the geology shore camp. (Okay, so that’s only 12 people that we know of…) The day dawned sunny and clear just as Bre had asked for … she just left out one detail – wind.
We set out “early” – 9 am – for Ainu Bay with a full plate of tasks that we wanted to accomplish - re-measure Profile 2 and take tsunami deposit samples. Yes, that IS only two tasks, but it would take us the entire day.
We hiked over to Ainu Bay to find that it was just as sunny and clear on the Sea of Okhotsk side, but it was also EXTREMELY WINDY! Not the “Ah, this is a nice brisk, refreshing wind” kind of wind, more like the “OUCH! The wind is sandblasting my face!” kind of wind. Bre uttered “Holy Crap!” on...
Misty and the team have been surveying Matua Island and are finding fascinating clues from past tsunamis! Transportation to the next field site has been stalled due to an incoming typhoon. Listen to the audio journal below to learn more.
Misty is out of satellite phone connection until approximately August 7 or 8, so stay tuned for more pictures and journals!
Misty has sent us another audio journal describing the past week's geology research and tsunami exploration on Matua Island. Tomorrow Misty and the team will get back on the ship to head south and she will be uploading journals and photos from the last week to the PolarTREC website.
Communication from the Kuril Islands is still challenging. As you will hear, this particular audio journal was composed of three different satellite phone calls, where she was cut off and had to phone back in. The sound quality and volume also varies due to the changing quality of the satellite connections.
Guest journal written by Nick Shankle:
So here is the story so far. James and I landed on the 23rd and set up a camp on Simushir at Nakatomari. That night a typhoon hit the island and by four in the morning James’ tent along with the kitchen tent and one of the Russian volcanologist’s tents fell apart. We were able to save all James’ stuff but the tent was completely broken. Thereupon the front of my tent split a seam. We then stood in a gully for about a half an hour, before we made our way to the kitchen tent. We were able to salvage some of the tent and took refuge there. Around two a.m. the typhoon ended and once we were able to get our gear out of the rain, we spent the rest of the day scouting for archaeological sites. When we got back to camp our Russian counterparts had...
Hours of hard work went into finishing up the excavation at the Vodapadnaya site this week. Misty and the team got back on the Iskatel and are moving on to some new locations! Learn more by checking out the photos and audio journal below!
James Taylor and Matt Walsh work on drawing a stratigraphic profile map of the eastern wall of Unit 1 at the Vodapadnaya excavation site, while Bre MacInnes looks on and provides geologic clarification of the tephra layers.
Ben Fitzhugh and Valery Shubin take photographs of the cleaned walls at the Vodapadnaya excavation site before it is filled back in with dirt.
Dani Plante, Matt Walsh and Ben Fitzhugh work to line the walls and floor of the Vodapadnaya excavation with a large piece of fish net that was scavenged from the beach. This...
Today was my turn to be the cook’s helper. Anastasia is our cook and makes three meals a day for us. Each of us takes a turn helping her prepare the meal and then we wash all of the dishes.
Anastasia doesn’t speak very much English and my Russian vocabulary is limited to about 25 words that are useful in the context of food preparation, like potato, carrot, onion, chicken, cheese, water, knife, spoon, sausage, butter, bread, tea, coffee, sugar, salt, soy sauce, and tomato. I also know the Russian numbers up to 19. Unfortunately, I don’t know very many verbs…..good thing that we can pantomime actions!
Anastasia, our camp cook, working in her main cooking area just outside the dining tent.
We have a kerosene stove outside and a “fancy” stove inside the tent.
The inside...
Today was a very, very wet and windy day. The work was wet, cold and muddy which made it seem like a much longer day. BUT! There is one very nice, bright spot:
Bre is here!
At about 10:30 this morning, Bre MacInnes, who has been working with the geology/tsunami group at Dushnaya Bay, arrived via the Iskatel and the zodiac. She will be staying and working with us for the rest of our time here.
It started raining sometime last night and was still going this morning. So the first thing that we did was build a rain tent shelter out of our tarp that we place over the excavation each night, so that the excavation site didn’t become a soggy, muddy mess while we worked today.
Working to build the frame for the tarp tent shelter so that we can work out of the wind and rain....
Listen to Misty Nikula, Ben Fitzhugh, and Mike Etnier by clicking the Audio links below. Calls from Ben and Mike are cut short due to poor satellite phone communications. Learn more about how a satellite phone works here.
First is a 2:50 minute description of the most recent archaeological findings from the Kuril Islands by teacher, Misty Nikula.
Next is a 1:15 minute description of the Kuril Island Biocomplexity Project research goals by Dr. Ben Fitzhugh of the University of Washington.
Finally listen to a :37 second recording from Dr. Mike Etnier of the University of Washington, about why they decided to revisit this region of the Kurils.
Visit again for more updates from the Kuril Islands!
Our weather is still holding out. Periods of heavy drifting fog and some filtered sun today – but only a light wind and no rain.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words…so here are three pictures to tell you what I did today:
Misty Nikula digging Unit 2
Here I am finishing up Unit 2, Level 2 of the Vodapadnaya excavation. I am nearly to the bottom of the level, which I have been trying to find ALL day! Since this unit is in the middle of the other two, and I don’t want to walk on other excavations while scraping away my dirt, I am hanging over the edge and reaching down about 50-70 cm to scrape and lift out the remaining dirt. (Photo courtesy of Mike Etnier)
Vodapadnaya Excavation, Unit 2, Level 2 complete
This is the bottom of Unit 2, Level 2. It has taken...
So far, so good – the weather appears to be holding out well! We have had no sign of the stormy weather indicated by the Iskatel…
Today we spent our first full day working at the site. Right after breakfast, we got packed our day packs with whatever gear we thought that we might need – rain pants and jackets, extra layers, bug spray, sunscreen, warm hats and gloves …. Oh yeah! And the archaeological equipment, too! We needed to bring lots of sample bags, our trowels and the screens.
As we excavate, we look for “obvious” artifacts by scraping away small amounts of dirt with a trowel. Each type of artifact is collected in separate bags by level and unit – faunal material (bones and shells), lithics (flakes of stone that are created when tools are made or the actual tools) and...
So last night, after I called in my journal and emailed in my pictures, I got into my sleeping bag and tried to go to sleep. It was quite challenging, because the wind was howling so bad that I could still hear it even with my ear plugs. The worst part, however, was when the wind would blow so hard that the corner pole of my tent would become concave and *whap* me on the head! It was, needless to say, not a very good night’s sleep.
This morning, it was still incredibly windy when we got up for breakfast. Breakfast in camp is served at 8 am, lunch at 1 pm and dinner at 6 pm. Anastasia, our cook, is doing a *tremendous* job of cooking wonderful meals for us. She is even taking the time and trouble to make “onion-free” versions of the soup and main meal for me! YEAH!
During our breakfast...
Follow along with Misty by clicking the Audio link at the bottom of this page to associate Misty's expedition with the photos below:
Image 1 - Our Gear On Shore
Taku Osaka and Dani Plante with the gear for the archaeology field camp on the shore near the Vodapadnaya site on Simushir.
Image 2 - Cleared Field Camp
A large area of tall plants was cleared in preparation for the archaeology field camp near the Vodapadnaya site.
Image 3 - Building Screens
Taku Osaka, Matt Walsh, Shelby Anderson, Misty Nikula, Mike Etnier and Dani Plante spend part of the afternoon assembling the sifting screens that Mike had pre-constructed back in Washington. (Photo taken by Ben Fitzhugh)
Image 4 - Archaeology Field Camp
The archaeology field camp near the Vodapadnaya site is complete. This picture...
Misty and her research team have had some difficulty sending journal entries via satellite phone so she phoned the PolarTREC office to leave an audio journal instead:
Misty's audio journal can be accessed via the player below, or you can click on the link to download an mp3 file.
Yesterday, the satellite phone came on board on the third trip of the zodiac, so I stayed on the ship and worked on sending my journals and pictures. The satellite phone is very “persnickety” so it took me about an hour and a half to send 14 emails (8 with images) and to receive 6. Of course, that was only 22 minutes of actual satellite time…
All of the other Americans, many of the Russians and three of the Japanese scientists all went ashore to help finish up the excavation that Valery Shubin and several other archaeologists from the Sakhalin Regional Museum, and Matt Walsh, an archaeology undergraduate student from our group had been working on for nearly three weeks. The excavation site was large – 4 meters by 6 meters and as deep as 1 meter in some places.
Ainu Creek Excavation Site...
It took 42 hours to get from Bellingham to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. We spent 113 hours in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. And now we have completed a 62 hour total journey from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to our first destination in the Kuril Islands. We left Korsakov at about 5:20 pm on July 18 and last night at 11:30 pm on July 20 we anchored off the southwestern shore of Urup Island, near a site called Ainu Creek.
It was a fairly uneventful crossing – at least from MY perspective….which has primarily been a view of the underside of the upper bunk and the inside of my cabin!
The crossing wasn’t *tremendously* rough – we didn’t have the 9 meter swells that they were rumored to have the first time, but it hasn’t really been easy either. We had 1-2 meter swells at various times and nearly every one of us has had to...
We got up at our usual time – about 6 am – ate breakfast and got the rest of the gear packed up. Then we set to cleaning the apartment. By about 8:30 we had the major tasks accomplished and decided to wait until about 9:30 or so to move our gear downstairs and sweep out the rest of the living areas, since we were expecting to be picked up at about 10 am. We were only mildly surprised when the bus arrived for us early at 9:00 – that is how “schedules” often go with field work!
After loading our gear on the bus, we stopped by the Institute to pick up two Russian scientists, Dmitry Frolov, from the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, and Nikolai Vasilenko, who works at the Institute in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and then by the hostel to pick up the Japanese scientists, Mitsuhiro...
8 AM: Today is probably our last day of complete free time. Tomorrow morning we will pack up all of our gear and clean the apartment, so that we are ready to be picked up to go to the ship in Korsakov by 10 am. Since we are all typically up by 6:30 am, this will not be a problem to do in the morning. That makes today a day of our own choosing. Most likely we will spend our time playing more games (Blockus, Set, Golf, and … hmm, apparently we might need to either buy some more games or break out the cribbage board), reorganizing the coolers that are holding the gear and … biding our time.
So while we have this “lull in the activity” I will take the opportunity to tell you about some of the discussions that Ben and I have had concerning the archaeology questions that the group will be...
A little after noon on our last day in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Mike Etnier and I took some salvaged pieces of wood from window frames that we found near the dumpster out to the playground area between the apartment buildings. We are going to use the pieces of wood to make legs and braces for the screens.
Back in Washington, Mike had cut and pre-constructed the pieces for two more frames screens to go with the one that we have from last year. The pieces have not yet been put together, but were brought to Russia dismantled, along with the hardware to reconstruct them.
The screens are made from a wooden frame rectangle that is about 2 foot by 3 foot in dimension and about 4 inches high. Then a piece of hardware cloth “mesh” with either ¼ inch or 1/8 inch squares is stretched across the bottom...
Today was a day of running errands. At 10 am, all of us except for Mike (who stayed behind with the key), met Alexander Rybin at his office at the Institute of Marine Geology. From there we decided to split into two groups – Ben, James, Colby and I went with Dr. Rybin to run our errands and Shelby, Dani and Nick headed in to town on the bus to do their own set of errands at the bazaar and other shops.
Our first stop was at the satellite communications business, called “Poseidon”. We needed to have the correct software and drivers installed so that Ben’s and my computers could use the satellite phone to send and receive emails. We also added more money to the satellite phone account to cover our use for this summer.
The technician at “Poseidon”, the satellite communications company,...
Well, we have spent the past two days hanging out in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk - biding time until we need to start getting ready to move to the ship. On Tuesday or Wednesday, we will move all of our stuff to Korsakov, about 40 km south, where the Iskatel is now waiting for us. We haven't had any particular pressing tasks, except for Ben Fitzhugh, the project PI, who is busily trying to finish a journal article before we head out, so we've been amusing ourselves as best we can.
Misty Nikula, Shelby Anderson and Dani Plante killing time at the apartment near Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Yesterday, we headed into town on the bus. Shelby, Dani, Nick, James and Colby went in first, since with only one key to the apartment, we either need to all go together somewhere or someone needs to stay at the...
One of the things that we did today was that Ben and I went to the satellite communications company "Poseidon" to put more money on the satellite phones and to have our computers set up to use the Globalstar phones as modems. I need to use the satellite phone to upload my pictures, journals and question responses when we are in the Kurils, later.
We got the phone-modems set up, but we also learned that the Globarstar satellite system is quite unpredictable. In fact, it is unclear if we will be able to have consistent communications by satellite phone at all.
We will know more when we get there, but as we head out - if you don't hear from us for awhile - you'll at least know why!
Das Vidanya!
Misty
Today is the one year anniversary of my first arrival in Russia. One year ago to the day, after over 36 hours of traveling, I landed in the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk airport and discovered that only one of my bags had made it to Russia with me. Was it a happy anniversary? Read on!We got up at 6 this morning at the Seoul Royal Hotel, met for breakfast at 6:30 and caught the bus back to the airport at 7. We took the same bus as yesterday, complete with frilly curtains on the windows.
Nick Shankle, riding the shuttle bus to the Seoul Airport. Note the frilly purple curtains behind him.
We got to the airport at about 8, checked in for our flight and then passed through security and immigration control. Our flight was supposed to leave at 10 am, but we took off about half an hour late....
Well, I am typing this journal entry from a hotel room in downtown Seoul, Korea. About thirty-six hours ago, I was at home desperately trying to finish packing.....let me tell you how I got here.
On Tuesday, July 10 I spent about five hours staging gear, inventorying gear, arranging and organizing gear and finally stuffing gear into the bags. It was an agonizing process occasionally interrupted by feelings of being overwhelmed by the shear enormity of the task and by my sudden irrational thoughts of "But what if THIS bag doesn't make it to Russia!?" (Last year, my bag with all of my clothes and toiletries was ‘lost in transit'. I wanted to avoid such problems by at least splitting my things between all of my bags. I found it difficult to decide which things were most ‘...
So today I had my logistics call. This is where the ARCUS folks, Katie Breen and Kristin Fischer, Ben Fitzhugh, the project Principal Investigator, Jason Buenning, from VECO, and I had a conference call to discuss the details of my itinerary to and from Russia and the gear that I would need.
ARCUS and the NSF help teachers by loaning some of the more expensive equipment to them for their expedition.
There weren’t any big surprises on the call. We talked about:
The dates of my expedition, which have finally been nailed down. I will fly out of Seattle to Seoul on July 11. (eek! One month from today!) Then we will spend the night in Seoul before we continue on to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin Island. Then I will return from Russia on August 22, again flying through Seoul, and spending...
Kuril Biocomplexity Project – American Participants
“The Archys”
Ben Fitzhugh is a Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Originally from the “other” Washington, Ben’s research focuses on maritime/coastal hunter-gatherers in the North Pacific and addresses questions of cultural evolution and human-environmental dynamics. When asked what he is looking forward to Ben replied “Finding intact archaeological layers with good faunal material, diagnostic ceramics, excellent samples of lithics, good stratigraphic evidence to link the human history with the geological history... and maybe a time capsule with a DVD movie showing what life was like "back in the day," oh some 2000 and 1000 years ago...
Kuril Biocomplexity Project – American Participants
“The Archys”
Ben Fitzhugh is a Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Originally from the “other” Washington, Ben’s research focuses on maritime/coastal hunter-gatherers in the North Pacific and addresses questions of cultural evolution and human-environmental dynamics. When asked what he is looking forward to Ben replied “Finding intact archaeological layers with good faunal material, diagnostic ceramics, excellent samples of lithics, good stratigraphic evidence to link the human history with the geological history... and maybe a time capsule with a DVD movie showing what life was like "back in the day," oh some 2000 and 1000 years ago...
Kuril Biocomplexity Project – American Participants
“The Archys”
Ben Fitzhugh is a Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Originally from the “other” Washington, Ben’s research focuses on maritime/coastal hunter-gatherers in the North Pacific and addresses questions of cultural evolution and human-environmental dynamics. When asked what he is looking forward to Ben replied “Finding intact archaeological layers with good faunal material, diagnostic ceramics, excellent samples of lithics, good stratigraphic evidence to link the human history with the geological history... and maybe a time capsule with a DVD movie showing what life was like "back in the day," oh some 2000 and 1000 years ago...
Kuril Biocomplexity Project – American Participants
“The Archys”
Ben Fitzhugh is a Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Originally from the “other” Washington, Ben’s research focuses on maritime/coastal hunter-gatherers in the North Pacific and addresses questions of cultural evolution and human-environmental dynamics. When asked what he is looking forward to Ben replied “Finding intact archaeological layers with good faunal material, diagnostic ceramics, excellent samples of lithics, good stratigraphic evidence to link the human history with the geological history... and maybe a time capsule with a DVD movie showing what life was like "back in the day," oh some 2000 and 1000 years ago...
Kuril Biocomplexity Project – American Participants
“The Archys”
Ben Fitzhugh is a Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Originally from the “other” Washington, Ben’s research focuses on maritime/coastal hunter-gatherers in the North Pacific and addresses questions of cultural evolution and human-environmental dynamics. When asked what he is looking forward to Ben replied “Finding intact archaeological layers with good faunal material, diagnostic ceramics, excellent samples of lithics, good stratigraphic evidence to link the human history with the geological history... and maybe a time capsule with a DVD movie showing what life was like "back in the day," oh some 2000 and 1000 years ago...
Kuril Biocomplexity Project – American Participants
“The Archys”
Ben Fitzhugh is a Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Originally from the “other” Washington, Ben’s research focuses on maritime/coastal hunter-gatherers in the North Pacific and addresses questions of cultural evolution and human-environmental dynamics. When asked what he is looking forward to Ben replied “Finding intact archaeological layers with good faunal material, diagnostic ceramics, excellent samples of lithics, good stratigraphic evidence to link the human history with the geological history... and maybe a time capsule with a DVD movie showing what life was like "back in the day," oh some 2000 and 1000 years ago...
Today I spent a day of my Spring Break commuting down to the University of Washington in Seattle so that I could meet with Ben Fitzhugh and Jody Bourgeois to discuss plans for the summer and to attend the weekly Kuril Biocomplexity Project (KBP) Seminar. Hans Nesse and Eli Gurarie, graduate students in the Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management program at UW, gave this week’s Seminar to report on their progress modeling the populations of Stellar Sea Lions in the Kuril Islands. More on that later.
Summer Plans
To get to Seattle today, I drove to Mount Vernon, parked my car at the Skagit Transfer Center, took the bus to Everett, got on a commuter train to the King Street Station south of downtown Seattle and took a bus to the University District. It may have taken me 3.5 hours, but...
So here I am in Fairbanks, Alaska, at the PolarTREC Orientation with 15 other teachers that will be traveling to the Arctic or the Antarctic over the next year, beginning my preparations to return to Russia with the Kuril Biocomplexity Project. Last summer I worked with scientists from the University of Washington and Russia on this project as a TREC teacher.
Link to 2006 Journal
I know that I am INCREDIBLY fortunate to have this opportunity. While I feel that last year was very successful, I am definitely looking forward to building on that experience both this summer in the field and within my classroom and community afterwards by starting “further ahead” this year. As I talk with the other PolarTREC teachers, some of whom only found out last week that they will be traveling to Alaska...