Here’s another breaching whale to pique your curiosity — and to hint at more to come. But this one is special, because it’s the very last breaching whale shot I captured on a Sound Eco Adventures trip, on August 28, 2013. The boat and business were sold the following April.
I had been especially looking forward to this wildlife photography trip, which had been booked the prior January by two couples from Sweden. Continue reading
Genesis 1:21 (NIV)
So God created the great creatures of the sea . . . And God saw that it was good.
I see whales as gifts from their Creator from a couple different perspectives. First is the fact that they exist — they are alive on earth. Similar, but on a deeper level, is the capacity of some people to appreciate them for the magnificent creatures that they are. Just seeing whales in the wild can inspire peoples’ feelings of happiness, excitement, thankfulness, and even awe. An up-close encounter with a creature half again as long as the 30-foot boat one is watching from is an unforgettable experience, likely to turn many people into instant whale fans and conservationists. Continue reading
Foreword Note:
Words for this piece first started coming to mind in 2005, when I lived in Whittier, Alaska, in a water-side apartment on the 12th floor of Begich Towers. As often happened when gazing out over Passage Canal and the mountains beyond, my mind sometimes wandered to memories of other areas and happenings from the Sound. That’s what first inspired this, and there have been lots of re-writes ever since. I intend to eventually overlay this piece into a Ken Burns-style video that will show with photos what I try and describe with words.
Ode To Creator God
Oh Lord my God, how I adore you.
Oh Lord my God, how great You are.
For when I see Your great creation,
Your mountains, Your waters,
my heart inclines to You, oh Lord my God,
for You have made them all.
Oh Lord my God, for these I praise Your name. Continue reading
The boat I first started Sound Water Taxi with (original business name) was a 21-foot, fiberglass Lavro Sea Dory. I picked the name Sound Runner because I liked its double-meaning — the boat was to run people around the Sound, and do it in a sound manner. Continue reading
In my 24 years running a water taxi and nature tour boat in Prince William Sound, my favorite wildlife experiences were, without a doubt, with whales — especially humpbacks. We often saw orcas too, occasionally minkes, and rarely, grays and fin whales. But humpbacks were the stars because they were the most dependable. Continue reading
Below is the early working version of an invited “Stakeholder Essay” in a collection of studies that summarize the affects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on Prince William Sound’s communities and resources. Several years in the making, the collection was recently published as a 355-page hardcover book, Sustaining Wildlands: Integrating Science and Community in Prince William Sound, Aaron Poe and Randy Gimblett (Eds.). 2017, The University of Arizona Press
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Is it possible to love a place so much that what you do there imperils the very values that brought you there in the first place? What if there are so many like-minded people using the same place, that together you do just that, even if unawares? These are questions I pondered for many years, as a working biologist, as a parent exploring the Sound by inflatable in the 1980s with my three young sons, and most recently, as a nature tour guide in Prince William Sound.
After moving to Alaska in 1975 to begin my job as a seabird biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), my summer field work included running Zodiac inflatable skiffs with a field partner to get around to various study sites along the coast from our shore camp or chartered live-aboard support boat. The first of these was along Kodiak Island’s east coast during my first three summers in Alaska (1976, ‘77, ‘78), then again at Kodiak during a study of puffin food habits in 1986, and finally on a beached-bird Exxon Valdez oil spill survey cruise, fall 1989. Before I began the water taxi business in 1987, and during the “break” in the business 1990-1992, I resumed work as a USFWS biologist on Exxon Valdez oil spill studies in Prince William Sound. Those included temporary stints during the month of March in 1991 and 1993 helping with winter seabird boat surveys, and then full time again from 1992-1994.
