Final Helicopter Survey of Season

 

Kodiak has turned green and 'tis the season of summer chaos - things will not slow down again until next October.  This morning I was looking through the photos on my desktop, and realized I had a bunch from before my sister's visit that I had not posted on the blog.  These ones are from a helicopter survey of outer Kiliuda Bay.  In the photos everything is brown, and it already seems like ages and ages ago that I spent a few hours hovering around with Keller and looking for sites.  But it was only a week and a half ago.  Wow!

The Kiliuda helicopter survey was the final bit of the earlier kayak survey (click here).  We needed the helicopter to check on the sites on the outer coast that were too sketchy to survey by kayak.  We ended up finding 3 new sites and documenting another 3 already known sites.  Most of the villages we documented were on the top of high cliffs and were probably occupied by Alutiiq whalers.  In support of this, all of the sites had exposed whalebone on the surface.

All in all it was a very productive day, and it is always fun to flit around in a helicopter.  At the bottom of the post is a video from the helicopter of nesting kittiwakes flying around a sheer cliff.  It gives a good sense of the vertiginous feeling one gets flying in a helicopter near cliffs.

Patrick

An old house depression filled with whalebone

Clifftop village - probably a whaling village