One thing that most amazes me about the ten years since we brought our kayaks to the Bering Sea is the incredible technological advances all around. Then we photographed all on film, a sizable task for Barry Tessman in a cold, windswept place. The video we shot was standard definition tape and the cameras we brought (I checked both – a pocket-sized Sony S-10 and Sony 150 – out of the equipment library at National Geographic, which I’ll bet no longer exists) were even then antiquated. I did very fun dispatches from the Islands of Four Mountains, but the only technology I had for communicating with National Geographic’s then-rudimentary website was by satellite phone. Over the course of five weeks I probably called in ten times and my spoken-word dispatches were transcribed and put up as audio. We had no capacity for sending photos from the field.
Running waters on Kagamil, photo by Barry Tessman
By comparison, when we went to Antarctica with kayaks last year, all of our photographic images were digital, as was the video (two, big high definition cameras on that job … and since last year we’ve moved completely to shooting on digital cards, no more videotape …). Our ability to communicate with the web is now at a high level from anywhere on the world, using a combination of small digital cameras, computers, PDAs and our own satellite communication device (BGAN).
Despite that those first dispatches from the field were less-than-sophisticated … they were and are still fun. I went back and listened to them last night.
During the past decade I’ve been to Dutch Harbor on the island of Unalaska – one of America’s last frontiers, potentially the planet’s next Singapore, home base for the loved-and-hated “Deadliest Catch” – seven times. Much has changed during the years, for me and for the place.
I first came this far west with close friends (Barry Tessman, Sean Farrell and Scott McGuire), three years later with French filmmakers (led by French television and political star Nicolas Hulot) and most recently as a visiting lecturer. I’ve arrived by ferry, small fishing boat, big fishing boat, small plane, helicopter and cruise ship; I’ve also kayaked along Unalaska’s rugged shores and climbed a handful of its volcanic peaks.
Dutch Harbor is annually the nation’s number one or two fishing port (trading off with Gloucester and followed closely by Kodiak). When I first came there was barely a bridge in town; today the town’s center has gravitated to a couple strip centers across from the airport. Its most famous bar and brawling center – the Elbow Room – is long closed. Yet its future looks oddly bright, and not because of the success of the Discovery Channel show, but because of the Arctic Ocean’s disappearing ice. As the Arctic’s ice lessens each year – some suggest it will be gone for good in another ten years – it makes the Northwest passage a much more commercially viable shipping route from Europe, Africa and the U.S. cutting thousands of miles off each trip, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and gallons of diesel. The main port west of Canada? Dutch Harbor. There are many who believe the towns biggest boom is on the horizon.
When I arrived in 1999 it was on the strength of a first grant from the National Geographic Expeditions Council; six grants since have helped take my teams and me around the world. That first trip took Barry, Sean, Scott and I further west, to the Islands of Four Mountains, by kayak. Since then I’ve traveled literally around the world by kayak. Then my biggest corporate sponsor was Mountain Hardwear and my favorite jacket was its Windstopper Tech fleece (black/black). Today my biggest corporate sponsor is Mountain Hardwear and my favorite jacket is its (brand new) Windstopper Tech fleece (black/black).
From all the adventures I’ve had during the past decade some from that first expedition are still among my favorites. We arrived in Dutch by ferry from Homer, having slept on its deck for four wet, cold nights. And we still needed to get another 150 miles to the west before we could start kayaking. Unfortunately when we arrived we discovered that the guy we’d arranged to carry us the last leg (Scott Kerr) didn’t actually have a boat. I’d spent an anxious half-day walking the fishing docks before finally convincing Don Graves and his Miss Pepper to carry us another fifteen hours, in exchange for a sizable wad of cash. The night that followed was one of the hairiest we’d experienced then or since:
(From BIRTHPLACE OF THE WINDS, my book about that 1999 adventure …) “We had convinced Scott Kerr to meet us off Nikolski and accompany us aboard the Miss Pepper out to Kagamil, where we would be dropped off. (Don) Graves had no idea where he could safely drop anchor and unload us. We had leaned on Kerr to make the crossing, point us to the best drop-off point, then return to Nikolski with Graves.
“He’d agreed, in return for us bringing him $88 worth of groceries, Purina dog food and Red Man chewing tobacco. Just after midnight Graves calls out to me, saying we were nearing Nikolski … I grab the VHF radio and try to raise Kerr. No response. I try again. ‘Miss Pepper to Scott Kerr. Come in, Scott Kerr.’ After several tries he finally picks up. Groggily, he asks, ‘What’s your intention?’ as if we hadn’t explained it to him a dozen times.
“I shout over the roar of the boat and the sea that we are near Nikolski and that we’ll be offshore within a half hour. Then we lose communication. I can only assume he is on his way. (He later admits that when he heard the radio, he was very tempted to ignore it, roll over, pull Agrafina closer to him, and go back to sleep.)
“At 1 a.m. we pull into a wave-socked bay; a half-dozen lights a mile towards shore indicated Nikolski. Because Graves doesn’t know the entry through the rocky bay, it is too dangerous at night to get any closer. Soon we spot a giant, single headlight coming at us through the sea – Kerr in an 18-foot metal skiff. He pulls alongside, trying desperately not to bang into the Miss Pepper in the heavy seas. He is not alone. As he headed down to his boat, he’d knocked on the door of a sleeping neighbor – introduced as Rex – saying he needed help. Rex was barely awake; he thought he was coming out on a grocery run.
“Once they are aboard, it takes several passes to safely tie the skiff off the back of the boat. Empty .410 shells rattle around on its floor, making me wonder, what had these boys been hunting? We would be pulling the skiff behind, through the heavy seas, and Kerr is concerned that it not end up upside down, being dragged. Though he made the rendezvous, he doesn’t appear happy to be here. When he pulls back the hood of his forest green sweatshirt, wild, long, unkempt hair billows from beneath his ball cap. Around his waist he wears a rope belt loaded with knives and a heavy flashlight. He smells of wood smoke and tobacco.
“After brief introductions, he returns to his earlier question: ‘What are your intentions?’ Apparently Kerr has still not gotten the message. He thought we were bringing him his groceries and then crashing on his floor. Unrolling our maps, I focused on getting as much information out of him as possible in the limited hours we have together; first we tackle the question of the initial landing. Graves’ navigational system says we were 43 miles away from a sand beach on the north end of Kagamil, where Kerr says we’ll have no problem getting ashore. It will take us another three to four hours. In the dim light of the boat’s interior we study the maps together, us asking questions, him giving back little more than grunts.
“The final few hours of the fifteen-hour, 150-mile trip are spent trying to stay seated and picking up maps, coffee makers, donuts and rain gear as they fly around the cabin. The metal skiff tied to the back of the boat kept banging dangerously in the rough seas.
“I try to sleep sitting up. Scott Kerr admits to feeling slightly seasick and lies down on a bench. So much for our expert guide.
“Rex, dressed lightly considering the conditions, in blue jeans, hooded cotton sweatshirt and a Carhart vest, complains it is too hot in the cabin. For the bulk of the ride he stands on the back deck. I stand with him for a while and ask what it is that motivates him to live way out here. ‘Oooh, I been in some sit-eee-ations, that’s for sure, some real sit-eee-ations,’ was all he would say. Turning away he mutters, ‘It’s hot out here, ain’t it? Just like Florida.’ “
Within a couple hours everything had gone awry; we’d lost the hatch cover to one of our big kayaks, Kerr’s metal boat was swamped and filled with sand and seawater on the beach at Kagamil and Rex was nearly hypothermic, smoking what might have been his last cigarette ….
Just around the corner from Petropavlovsk, ten miles by land or sea, located across Avachinskaya Bay on a small peninsula called Krasheninnikova sits Russia’s largest nuclear submarine base. It is off limits to outsiders and a shell of what it was during the Soviet Union’s heyday. Today – judging by a simple Google map search – there are just a half-dozen active nuclear subs sitting at its docks. Worrying to those who pay attention to such things are the shadows on the far edge of the docks on the same map, indicating somewhere between a dozen and twenty subs piled up next to each other. They are said to be at varying degrees of decommissioning.
For decades the submarine station and a couple nearby support bases provided good jobs for locals and drew many Russians and Ukrainians to live in this easternmost outpost. They are also the reason that until the end of the Cold War Kamchatka was off-limits to the rest of the world. Even today, twenty years later, Russia continues to maintain a heavy military presence here.
The operation of nuclear-powered submarines generates considerable amounts of nuclear waste. Liquid and solid radioactive wastes need to be removed from submarines and stored. In addition, periodically the submarine needs to be refueled, thus spent fuel needs to be removed from the submarine and also stored. Decommissioning a nuclear submarine generates these streams of waste and in addition, the refueled reactor compartment must be dealt with.
It is a little worrying to me, an outsider that the region’s two biggest industries overlap: Nuclear sub decommissioning and fishing. If the same worries locals, I can’t get it out of them during my day wandering the streets of Petropavlovsk. Most likely they are concerned too but are not the first thing they are going to share with a stranger.
Occasional testing of local air and water for radiation is done and recent tests suggest levels of both near the Rybachiy base had “slightly-elevated_ levels. How much radioactivity is too much? One expert told me a story of some small time crooks who broke into the subs waiting to be decommissioned to steal gold used in their construction; stashing the goods under their beds was apparently not a very wise thing to do, given their radioactivity, which extracted the ultimate payback.
There are other concerns. In recent years there have been a handful of accidents involving Russian subs, fires, mostly and a couple very publicized sinkings. The Russian Northern Fleet’s main storage for nuclear waste at Kola Peninsula is reportedly leaking radioactivity. During 1997 all spent nuclear fuel, which was sent to Andreeva Bay, was stored in the open, without protection. At other big submarine bases, including the big one at Murmansk, there have been reports of nuclear subs being scuttled – sunk to the bottom of the ocean – without proper clean-up of the nuclear reactors aboard. Russians have previously admitted to dumping nuclear waste at sea, off the coast of Japan. The future of Ribachiy remains a big question.
This from a U.S. State Department report: “In Russia every step of the process is facing problems. The support complex which was already in poor shape and accident-prone during Soviet times has been particularly burdened in the last few years. Shore-side waste sites are full of low-level radioactive waste and spent fuel. Shipments of the spent fuel for reprocessing have been delayed due to lack of funds and equipment. The service ships, which unload the spent fuel from submarines, are also full and in poor shape (and some have suffered accidents). The shipyards where the work is done are facing financial shortages, power blackouts and strikes. There are no final land-based storage sites for decommissioned reactor compartments removed from submarines, so they are being stored afloat in bays near naval bases. Finally, contamination is widespread at waste storage sites in the North and Far East due to accidents. Lower-level contamination is thought to plague virtually every support facility for the fleet. In addition, accidents on submarines have lead to contamination of the surrounding area.
“The massive retirement of nuclear powered submarines has further aggravated this problem. The number of nuclear-powered submarines has declined substantially since the end of the Cold War as many first and second-generation nuclear powered submarines have been decommissioned. Also, due to lack of financing and arms control treaties, even third generation submarines are being removed from service. The Soviet Union/Russia constructed some 248 submarines by 1996 and some 150-170 have been removed from service. Only some third of these have had their spent fuel removed. Of the fifty or so submarines that have had their fuel removed only some 20-25 have been partially scrapped and their reactor compartments removed, sealed up, stored afloat. A particular problem is that at least one submarine in the Northern Fleet and three submarines in the Pacific Fleet were retired due to nuclear accidents. They have damaged spent fuel on board and the Russian Navy is uncertain about how to decommission them.
“Another concern with decommissioned submarines which still have their spent fuel onboard is accidents. Naval officers fear another major accident could occur, like what transpired on 10 August 1985 when an Echo II nuclear-powered submarine reactor exploded during a refueling at the Chazhma Bay shipyard. Another worry is that a decommissioned nuclear submarine could sink at dockside. On 29-30th May 1997, this happened when a decommissioned submarine sank at the submarine facilities in Kamchatka. Reportedly a vessel collided with the moored submarine, and it sank. The Russian Navy claimed all fuel had been offloaded from the submarine, and it posed no environmental hazard. However, such reports are not reassuring.
“The most acute problem today is that of the decommissioned submarines and the shore-side support facilities and maintenance ships. Little thought or planning had gone into what to do with retired submarines prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since 1991, a lot of thought has been devoted to this problem, but the absence of finances has meant serious environmental problems continue, and will probably continue for a decade or more to come. The Russian Navy and surrounding countries remain concerned that a major accident could ensue.
“In March 1993, after several years of revelations about the dumping of radioactive waste at sea, the Russian government released a White Paper describing some 30 years of the dumping of radioactive waste at sea. The so-called Yablokov report detailed how 18 damaged naval nuclear reactors and two internal reactor screen assemblies were dumped in the seas around the Soviet Union. Sixteen reactors were dumped in the Kara Sea and 2 in the Sea of Japan. One reactor screen assembly was dumped in the Kara Sea and one off Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the northern Pacific Ocean.
“Several scientific expeditions to the dump areas in the Arctic found local contamination from dumped materials. But there is no evidence of migration so far. However, all dump sites were not found and fully investigated.”
After reading various high-level reports, and looking out over what would appear to be a beautiful northern Pacific seascape from the hills above Petropavlovsk … I don’t think I’ll be buying second-home property here.
This land of volcanoes and earthquakes — the western frontier of the literary “Ring of Fire” — is still a month away from true spring. Dirty, crusted snow lies beneath the leafless trees and in the gutters along Petropavlovsk’s main streets, which already look pretty grim, lined as they are by Soviet-era buildings. The only hints of color in town are the red-and-yellow hot dog-beer-and-coffee stands across from Lenin Square and the colorfully painted walls of a local gym. Otherwise, from the bottle-strewn banks of the fishing harbor to the top of the hills looking out over Avachinskaya Bay, the operative description of this city at the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula is … grey.
Long a place shrouded in secrecy, Kamchatka was until recently known to Westerners only as a closed military region or as a name on the Risk board. We are at the very edge of the Russian Far East, a region known locally as “the back of the beyond.” The seven hundred and fifty mile long peninsula is lined by a pair of mountain ranges – the Sredenny (Central) and Vostochny (Eastern) – and from the air looks like a big fish. The Kamchatka River fills the trough between the two ranges. Encircling the city are snow-capped volcanoes, nearly 300 dot the peninsula, a tenth still active. When I ask the first people I meet — two young journalism students, Victoria and Ivan – if they remember the last eruption they smile, wracking their memories.
“I think it was like two weeks ago,” says Victoria. “But they happen so often, it’s hard to be sure. And earthquakes, too. But we are used to them. Why do you think the buildings are so … solid.”
Three-quarters of the peninsula’s 400,000 people live in Petropavlovsk, the capital city founded by Russian explorer Vitus Bering and named after his two ships, the St. Peter and St. Paul. The Russians and Ukrainians came to work at its once-booming navy station; ten miles across the bay sits Russia’s second largest nuclear submarine base. The indigenous Itelmen and Koryaks are still mostly nomadic reindeer herders. Judging by the attire of the locals waiting in long lines at bus stops, the biggest imports are patent leather jackets and boots with spiked heels (for women) and camouflage (for men).
The peninsula is known for an amazing diversity and abundance of wildlife: Sable, ermine, Siberian bighorn (or snow) sheep, the Kamchatka brown bear, crab and, of course, salmon in large quantities. Today it’s said that Kamchatka’s industries can be divided into two categories: fishing and those that support fishing, though like so many parts of the world it is at risk of being over-fished. At the dock I eat thick slabs of brown bread slathered with red caviar.
As I munch on the dock I watch big fishing boats being readied to head back out to sea. When I ask what they fish, the answer is simple: “Whales.”
“But isn’t whaling illegal?”
“Listen,” says a fisherman in blue rubber bibs hosing down the back ramp of one of the gunmetal grey boats. “I know in Alaska it is illegal to shoot even a bird. But here, this is Russia. Nothing is illegal.”
Fish are ninety-three percent of Kamchatka’s exports, particularly salmon and king crab (though after walking the city for a day, I have to say it was very, very difficult to find either … or even a restaurant to ask for them. “Eating out is not popular,” admits the only guidebook reference to food I could find). Kamchatka’s biggest import is fuel, which in the recent past led to some trouble. I ask why there appear to be so many burned-out homes along the main street. “About ten years ago we did not receive enough coal,” says a man drinking coffee across from Lenin Square. “So people were using open fires to heat inside. Obviously there were some … problems.”
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1990 opened the region to the outside world and there is something of a tourist industry here, though small A land still being born thanks to the near-constant volcanic activity, Kamchatka can be a place of breathtaking beauty and unique wildlife; this afternoon when the sun pops out and the sky clears a perimeter lined with snow-capped mountains is revealed across the wind-swept bay.
It is a strange place. There is a saying here which loosely translates as, “In the winter it’s not too cold, but in the summer it’s not very warm!” Pharmacologists are on record that a cup of fresh Kamchatka water drunk in the morning heals the liver and stomach, cleans the blood vessels and prohibits bacteria. Other scientific studies detail increased levels of radioactivity in both air and water, thanks to the decommissioning of nuclear subs taking place just across the bay. Which makes me somewhat reluctant to drink from its taps or, if I could find one, eat one of those giant king crabs.
The only Russian phrase I pick up during a day of wandering PK? “Kamchatka, ehto strannoe mesto” (It’s a strange place).
On a sunny, windy day we hire a taxi in the heart of Kushiro, Japan – still on the big island of Hokkaido – heading for its outskirts, to see first-hand the setting of one of wildlife’s great recovery stories.
In the 1920s there were thought to be only ten to twenty red-crowned Japanese cranes (tancho) in the world. Today, on a pair of reserves near here, there are more than 1,200. Another 1,500 live on the borders of China and Russia. Though the birds are still highly endangered and among the rarest of birds on the planet, that they are here at all is a remarkable story of luck and preservation.
They are elegant, more than four feet tall, with bright red crowns. You have probably seen video of them dancing in pairs in the snow, signified by their slender long legs, giant feet and distinctive red heads. They are simultaneously mesmerizing and intimidating, gliding just off the ground, appearing truly to dance in front of you as they tease each other. Simultaneously, you would not want one of the big guys chasing you down, by foot or on wing.
At the perfectly named Japanese Crane Reserve we find nineteen of them, plus two chicks. They walk, stalk, hop and fly, stopping to feed on small bugs pulled from the grass or skinny fish pulled from the slowly running waters that criss cross the swampy marshes.
The red crowned cranes have long been a favorite in Japanese myths and legends and you see the evidence in illustrations all over the country, used as symbols of longevity, immortality and nobility. In art and literature immortals are often depicted riding on cranes. The man showing me around the reserve reminds me that a common theme in Chinese art is the reclusive scholar who cultivates bamboo and keeps cranes. While I’m more familiar with big sea creatures, sitting on a bench under a warm spring sun watching the big birds prowl and occasionally lift off and fly is hypnotizing, rewarding.
For the past couple nights I’ve dreamed about being attacked by giant calamari; not the fried variety, but the long, gelatinous type, which invariably wrap me up in big squid rings, locking my arms to my side and push me into the sea. Which I’m sure has everything to do with spending the day in Hakodate, on the big island of Hokkaido, Japan’s squid capital.
The streets leading to the morning market are heavy with restaurants, each featuring an illustration of a squid on its awning, billboard or even in neon. At open-air shops tanks of still swimming squid are surrounded by trays of squid on ice, squid wrapped tight in plastic, dried squid, hammered squid, all cut, sliced and diced. Souvenir shops feature plastic squids, squid pens, even drinking cups made from … squid. You won’t be surprised that squid have been a staple here for thousands of years.
(The biggest squid ever caught? Twenty-four feet long. The largest invertebrate on the planet, they are thought to grow to as long as sixty feet but because they live at such great depths have never been studied in the wild.)
My question for these shopkeepers and restaurant owners, of course, is: Are they at risk of taking too many squid from the sea? Long thought beyond risk of being over fished – they don’t live long anyway, are a very prolific species and fluctuate naturally – the reason they seem to be safe will surprise you.
Normally at home along the coast from Mexico to Chile they are deep-sea creatures, living at depths of 3,000 to 5,000 feet they’re increasingly being found in the colder waters off California, Canada and Alaska. Jumbo squid, six to eight feet long, are booming in areas where they have not previously boomed. The reason for the boom takes us back to Japan, especially the big market at Tuskiji in Tokyo where we were a few days before. Guess what is the main predator of squid? Blue fin tuna. Which are now being badly over fished and sold by the thousands a day in Japan’s markets.
Lots of fingers point to Japan as the greatest threat to the depletion of fish around the world. The Japanese are the world’s biggest consumer of fish; Tuskiji is like an extraordinary mortuary for global sea life. Not only do the Japanese pose a problem for other countries’ fish stocks, but also threaten the world’s fish stocks as a whole. Each day, tens of thousands of tons of marine life, clawed from rocks and scooped from oceans by factory ships working 24 hours a day, are auctioned in the early hours. Japan’s taste for seafood only appears limited by price and availability. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates Japan devours 30 percent of the world’s fresh fish, close to 170 pounds a year for each man, woman and child. Australians, by comparison, manage just 40 pounds.
Some conservationists and marine scientists are increasingly raising questions about how long Japan’s appetite can be accepted as an unquestioned cultural imperative. The constant plundering of the ocean is devastating fish stocks and destroying ecosystems. While we ponder that, there remains one good thing in the sea: There are plenty of squid … so get out the calamari recipes.
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