To the Kenai with a Keen Eye

I suspect that in the next couple of days, I am going to really appreciate that the grant money provided the four of us in these first two weeks was used to put us up in hotel for my first night’s sleep in Alaska. The trip here was exhausting, and it had just fallen fully dark when I got here around midnight (which was interesting by itself! It is strange to be in a plane headed north and the sky keeps getting lighter and lighter even as your body gets more and more tired). Met up with the other three girls who are here with me for the first two weeks.

Lauren and Jana in Alaska in 2007.

Lauren Ackein, a fifth-year master’s student, is in charge of our little group for this trip. This is her third trip to Alaska being in charge of the field collections the lab makes every year. My presence here is being put to good use by helping Lauren with trapping efforts.

The other two members of our party are Jana Loux-Turner and Sophie Valena. Both are junior year biology majors like me (and all of our families are from New Hampshire, too!) and are here in Alaska to continue a project Jana participated in last summer in Alaska testing the water quality of the lakes where we trap stickleback. This is Sophie’s first trip to Alaska, and she’s here to help Jana with the water quality study as well as to think about a possible future project on land cover change in the area.

The morning of the 17th was spent showering and piling on the food at the hotel’s continental breakfast bar. We packed up our Toyota Sienna minivan — oh, funny story. We have a penchant for naming things here. When Lauren and Sophie went to pick up the van from the rental desk at the Anchorage airport, Lauren wanted to know if it was a white van so we could all call it “Vanna White.” No, said the lady at the desk. It’s pewter. And “Pewter” it has become. He was the only male included on our camping trip. So, we packed up Pewter, and went to the lab’s storage unit in Wasilla which is about forty minutes away from Anchorage. It’s a beautiful drive alongside mountains and rivers and forest.

After picking up all our equipment and the canoe (which is big and red and was promptly christened the U.S.S. Clifford) for the water quality girls to use for their plankton tows, we were finally on our way to the Kenai. The long drive was made amazing via the wild views out our windows: the Prince William Sound, more mountains (with more snow), cliffs and waterfalls. We had our eyes peeled for mountain goats, which Lauren has seen in the past, but we were fresh out of mountain goat luck this year. Maybe on the next trip down.

Our beloved minivan, Pewter.

Drove into Soldotna to get food for dinner around 10:30. Set up our tents at a campsite on Hidden Lake. We were right on the shoreline, and as it finally fell dark we crawled into our sleeping bags to fend off the cold, ready for our first day of work in the morning.

- Rachel

North to Alaska!

Scene: Dulles International Airport in the early afternoon of a rainy, spring day. The terminal is crowded with people chattering on their cell phones, eating sandwiches and drinking coffee. One girl sits, notebook in lap, smoothie in hand, writing and dreaming of a land they call “the last frontier.”

Traveling to Alaska for the summer was never a dream of mine, but when I heard I had the opportunity to go there for six weeks of my junior summer and participate in a genuine field research session, I leapt at the chance. Last semester, Susan Foster, my faculty adviser and one half of the husband-wife duo doing research on the threespine stickleback at Clark University, made my college career when she suggested that I unite my two primary passions in life (biology and writing) by writing an article about the natural history and adaptive radiation of the stickleback — and that I could easily travel to Alaska with the lab group that goes every year in order to research my topic in a very hands-on way. So, here I am on my way to Anchorage using the Traina Scholarship I was awarded when I was accepted to Clark and NSF funding awarded to the lab. The feeling is mostly excitement. The new things to see and experience are almost beyond numbering; I cannot even imagine half of them. The plane ride is long and I’ll have plenty of time to contemplate the next few weeks while I glide through the clouds, but I think I’ll just use the time to sleep. It will be at least 4am when I finally touch ground in Alaska, after all!

- Rachel

Sophie anticipates the plane ride to Alaska.

Coming Attractions (or ... 4 Girls and a Van)

The Journey Begins: View from the van’s front seat on the way into Wasilla

Coming soon: The tale of what it is like to camp for seven days on the Kenai Peninsula in late May, trapping fish and taking water quality samples daily. A harrowing experience of traveling in a van packed with equipment and four girls who haven’t showered for a week (oh my!). A tale chock full of wildlife infiltrating human civilization. Of glorious views, scenic campsites, late-night dinners around crackling campfires … and the satisfying and almost surreal ability to apply everything one has learned in a classroom or lab at school to a project that will have long-lasting effects on the academic landscape. It is a tale of contributing new knowledge. A tale of getting to know one’s study system up close and personal. A tale of summer in Alaska with the threespine stickleback.

- Rachel LaBranche

Plankton Sampling in a Parking Lot...

John and Jana’s dry run for plankton sampling in Maywood parking lot at Clark University.

On May 13, the day of the group photo and celebration of Rachel Chock’s successful defense, a dry run (literally) of the plankton sampling routine for Alaskan lakes was played out in the Maywood parking lot next to the Lasry Bioscience Building. This involved the movement of a canoe from John and Susan’s lawn in Petersham, to the parking lot – not a natural home for a canoe! There John taught Jana to (well, maybe not paddle a canoe) but to suspend plankton nets and a flow meter that would tell her how far she traveled in each run. They did not catch much plankton. With luck, the catch will be better in an Alaskan lake! As Lauren, Rachel L., Jana and Sophie leave on Thursday we should hear soon…...

- Susan Foster