While wandering middle Alaska this summer, I noticed orange spruce trees along the entire length of the Denali Highway, from Paxson to Cantwell. In what looked like a dendrological case of frostbite, tips of every branch were afflicted with something. The real show happened when the wind blew: An entire valley glowed apricot. After […]
Early in his career, on a wet, windy, foggy night, Guy Tytgat checked into the loneliest hotel in the Aleutians. His room was four feet wide and five feet tall, made of fiberglass, and perched on the lip of a volcanic crater. Tytgat did not enjoy the evening he shared with 420 pounds of […]
Research aims for baseline information on whale behavior and biology in absence of vessels. This is a collaborative effort with the University of Alaska Southeast, University of Alaska Fairbanks, NOAA Fisheries Alaska Regional Office and Alaska Fisheries Science Center/Auke Bay Laboratories and the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. It’s an unusual year out on […]
People in an 80-foot charter boat out of Petersburg recently saw what a biologist described as a “less-than-once-in-a-lifetime” event: a white killer whale swimming through the sea. UAF graduate student Stephanie Hayes was on the Northern Song, operated by Captain Dennis Rogers, on August 7, 2020, just offshore of the village of Kake. Hayes, […]