Beach Combing for Glass Balls

 

May 2021

I love beach combing for glass balls.  Glass balls are blown glass net floats used mostly by Japanese fishermen to float their nets and fishing gear.  They stopped making them around 50 years ago and so have become quite rare.  

Growing up on the East coast glass balls had a sort of mythical hold on me.  My dad had a few on display in his office that he had found in Puget Sound in the early 1960s.  I desperately wanted to find one too.

When I started to work in Alaska in the 1980s I began my search for glass balls.  But I did not find any until the early 1990s.  And then I got good at it.  The trick is that you almost never find them at the high tide line.  You got to search the weeds and berms behind the high tide line.  Glass balls even get blown by the wind across fields behind beaches.  So you got to look where they will get caught and come to rest.

They are also old trash - so you got to look where similarly aged trash is located.  You look for what was once the high tide line and beach berm 50 years ago.  I know I am in a good spot when I start finding glass Suntori and Crown Royal Whiskey bottles.  This is what fishermen used to drink.  Behind modern berms you find plastic water bottles that are preferred by today's mariners..

Another thing to consider is that in the past glass balls got buried in blown beach sand.  So you want to look for places where the sand has eroded away and freed the glass balls.  Once freed they roll back behind the beach berm and hopefully get caught in a low area or against a backstop.

Finally - everybody likes to find glass balls, and these days everybody has a pretty good idea of where to look for them.  So you generally have to go to a pretty remote beach to find them.  Places that have not been picked over by other beach combers.  On my last survey we hiked some extremely remote coastlines.  Places where the beaches are reef bound and difficult to reach even by boat or plane.  And that's where we found glass balls!

Patrick

May 1994

This is the kind of beach where you find glass balls - I found one at the edge of the salmonberries behind the bear

Pretty Places

 

While on my recent survey I got to visit some beautiful places - a wide variety of beautiful places. 

Deadmans Bay is a very long bay that extends far into Kodiak's interior.  As we paddled up the bay (and then, later back out) the scenery slowly changed from the exposed outer bay to the protected inner bay.  Near the head of the bay there were even cottonwood trees and tall, snow-capped mountains all around.

The east Aliulik Peninsula is all outer coast.  No trees or even brush, and long stretches of exposed shoreline.  Huge cliffs interspersed with long sandy beaches.  We also hiked around Russian Harbor which is a tidal lagoon that seems more like a lake than the ocean.  It even had a long tidal 'river' connecting it to the sea.  It was here that we found the worst hiking.  It was all tussocks and hummocks - very uneven and difficult hiking. 

Patrick

Bode Climbs Pyramid

 

Deep snow and steep slopes is not kind to doggy knees.  Hence, I am careful of when I take the doggies up Pyramid to ski - I want it to be firm enough that they do not punch in deep and hurt their ACLs.  I also believe it is best to wait until doggies are mature before I take them skiing.  

For these reasons, Bode had never been up Pyramid until a couple of days ago.  Now he has been up twice.  The first day was a glorious perfect day with amazing snow conditions while yesterday was a total whiteout.  He seemed to enjoy both days.

On the way up Brewster and Bode chase each other all around and then on the way down they chase me.  And then back in the car they immediately go to sleep and are mellow for the rest of the evening.  Mission accomplished.  Patrick

Tanner Crab Mass Molt

 

One of the coolest things we saw while on survey was a mass tanner crab molt.  A little more than midway up the east side of Deadmans Bay we encountered a bathtub ring of complete tanner crab shells.  Thousands and thousands of shed shells.  Philip told me that the crabs have evolved to all shed at once because that way the hard shell crabs don't cannibalize the soft shell molts.  A mass molt reduces cannibalism.

At low tide we found dead soft shell crabs that had died during the process.  We even saw a few live ones in the process of shedding their shells.  But I think most had been caught by the falling tide and simply died.  In any case it was amazing to see how they first bust out of the back of their carapace and then pull everything out - even the tiny little legs.  Once the process was complete the soft shell tanner was a bright red color.

Back in town Philip reported the event to the local crab biologists.  They told him that it is not a yearly event.  The last time they knew of it happening in Deadmans Bay was back in 2011.  And back then it occurred 2 weeks later in mid May.

And no we did not eat one - I wish we had!

Patrick

South End Survey(s)

 

Documenting a clifftop village site

Earlier this week I got back from back-to-back archaeological surveys.  The first one was a survey by kayak of Deadmans Bay while the second was a foot survey of the East Aliulik Peninsula.  Basically, we covered 60K of coastline by kayak and then an additional 50K on foot. At the end of the Deadmans Bay survey a floatplane arrived with supplies and new gear and flew us to the start of our second survey.  The plane also took the heavy kayak gear back to Kodiak.

The purpose of the surveys was to find new archaeological sites and to assess the conditions at the already known sites.  Such information helps the landowner - the United States Fish and Wildlife Service better manage their land and protect the archaeological sites in their care. Prior to the surveys no archaeologist had ever examined either area.  If you looked at a map of Kodiak showing the locations of archaeological sites there was a big blank area in this part of the island.  And most of the few already known sites had been reported by me based on hearsay.

I am happy to say that after our  surveys these areas are now nicely filled in with dots on the map.  We found 49 new sites and reported on another 9 prior but poorly known sites.  Most of the sites were habitation sites.  For a later post on the archaeology I think I just might add up how many house pits we found.  But we also found a lot of processing sites and even a big fox farm and early 20th century bear hunting camp.  A lot of history in these 2 areas!  

During our survey we witnessed a mass tanner crab molt, a herring spawn, bears eating sand fleas, found glass balls, and experienced hiking on tundra with no trail and lots, lots more.  In the next couple of days I will fill in more about the various other aspects of our surveys - so stay tuned!

Kayaking along the shores of Deadman Bay

This must be some sort of wind cloud because it presaged some horrific wind blasts

Herring eggs on kelp - these were tasty raw

That's me in the distance hiking the east Aliulik coastline

Lots of bears on the Aliulik Peninsula

149a

 

Well I am back from my archaeological survey (post to follow) and it seemed like so long ago since I had gone skiing.  I found these photos on my desktop of Stuey and I going skiing the day before I left on survey.  It was my 149th consecutive day skiing, and I had promised to attach them to my last post. 

Yesterday I went for my first ski in almost 2 weeks (see bottom pictures).  Needless to say but we have lost snow down by the road.  And the mountain did look pretty dismal from afar as we drove up to the pass.  But just a short ways up the mountain there was new snow, and on high there was even powder.  And skiing down I almost skied to the road!

Patrick

This is from Yesterday - lots of new snow!