2100 August sixth.
Grand Aleutian Hotel
Dutch Harbor, Alaska

Arriving in Dutch Harbor this evening was an interesting experience for me. I left Seattle at 1300 and was on the ground in PADU by 2040. In Anchorage, I left the giant 737-900 behind and boarded a Saab 340, a small turboprop commuter. With a slight headwind and a full airplane, we had to make two fuel stops to get to PADU. The first was at King Salmon, the second Sand Point. Landing in King Salmon, your eyes are immediatly drawn to an ominous tan hangar with eight hangar doors across the front labeled 1 through 8. The Airport Facility Directory sums it all up with a small note, "Caution, air defense alert aircraft may scramble at any time." Sand Point offers slightly less entertainment, and is best known for a large population of drunks using the VHF emergency channel to settle family disputes and cuss out neighbors.
Not one to be left out, the PADU airport offers its share of excitement in the form of a road running directly across the approach end of the runway. When aircraft are on approach, a PenAir employee closes the gates across the road to prevent trucks and airplanes meeting at high speed. In 2009, something was lost in translation at the gates and a semi was allowed to drive through right as a plane was landing. Surprised at the last second, the pilot had no time to react and the semi caught and sheared the landing gear off of the Grumman Goose, scattering the rest of the aircraft across the runway. Although the classic amphibian was a complete loss, all onboard survived. Thankfully we had an uneventful landing, if maybe a bit rough. With the legendary Alaskan weather, pilots prefer to hammer their aircraft on to the first few feet of runway rather than risk a go-around in the mountains. Back in the day, they used to fly the 737-200 into Dutch, but after one landed so hard that fue
l was pouring out of cracks in the wings, they banned large jets and decided to stick to the fleet of turboprops.
After I got settled in the hotel, I walked to Safeway to grab some food. On the walk down, I was mildly surprised by a persistant thought that stayed with me for a half hour or so before I realized what I was thinking. "Welcome home buddy!" I kept walking, trying to persuade myself that one side of my brain was joking with the other and the feeling would soon pass. After all, I am Tanner, the guy who got his Airmans certificate at 17, is going to study aerospace engineering at a well known aviation school and always told people he would be working forty thousand feet above the planet. So why am I walking down a hardly paved Dutch Harbor road, thinking this is home? I have only been in Dutch four times, and it is probably the last Alaskan city I'd call home. But is it the location? Or rather my mission? I am here to meet up with my parents and the rest of the crew aboard the R/V Aquila. But what about Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the Cessna 182E waiting for me in Seattle
, and the helicopter flight school waiting for me in Oregon? Perhaps the Aquila is not my destiny, but rather a means to an end, a springboard of sorts waiting to launch me to a career I haven't even considered yet.
I have lived an amazing 18 years and have experienced more in those 18 years than 95 percent of people twice my age. With the amazing opportunities my parents have given me, perhaps it is only fitting that I can't even imagine what my future may hold! As I reach the Safeway parking lot, I take a look around and realize that as screwed up as Dutch Harbor may be, the rugged Alaskan terrain holds a serene beauty found nowhere else.
Like the rest of Northwestern Alaska, they gave up on road maintanence long ago and the potholes in the parking lot reflect this. Many are deep enough to bring even a high clearance truck to its knees, let alone a mortal car. For some reason there aren't very many Priuses up here!
I awoke early the next morning and met up with some of the NOAA team to get a plan together and figure out when we would be meeting the boat. Communication with the boat was maddening, as I had only a useless cell phone, an aircraft band VHF, and my Ipad. After the hotel refused to let us call the boat with their marine VHF, I had to resort to email from my Ipad. With the slow internet connection at the hotel and only sattelite internet on the boat, the process was frustrating to say the least. We finally met up with the boat at 1300 ADT, and just like that my vacation came to a screeching halt. After the team got all their bags aboard, we went to work on the deck, unsecuring and rearranging most of the equipment on the aft deck. We knocked off by 2130 with most of the deck resecured, and the equipment arranged such that we would have enough work area to assemble and launch the instrumentation moorings.

0500 August 8th
R/V Aquila, Loading Pier at "The Spit"
Dutch Harbor, Alaska

"BEEP BEEP BEEP!" The jarring ring of my alarm snaps me back to conciousness and I awake with a start. Shaking off the last tentacles of a dream, I roll out of my bunk and head for the galley and the electric kettle waiting to heat water for my hot chocolate. Around me, the rest of the deck department stirs to life with a chorus of grunts and curses that remind me I how happy I am to have a young healthy body. I shake my head wishing I could've finished my dream and slept longer, but it is 0-five-hundred and we will be under way in just under an hour. First on the list is a last minute run through the boat collecting all garbage before we leave. While underway, we must burn or store all plastic garbage so it is vital we offload all garbage while we can. With the dumpster run finished, we crane Mom's KLR back aboard, followed by our gangway. Looking good for an oh-six departure, I toss the lines from the dock, do the Tarzan leap from dock to deck, and Dad edges us away from the pier.
By the time the science crew begins to stir, we are doing ten knots out the channel, headed for Akutan pass.
A few short hours later, we approach our first mooring site. The mooring system consists of an anchor, acoustic release, instrumentation package, and a steel float. The entire system is about 30 feet tall, extending from the seafloor to 30 feet above the floor. In the bearing sea, we are looking at water depths in the 70 meter range so that keeps the whole package well below any surface traffic. During transit, we are also looking for Northern Right Whales, of which there are less than 50 less in west coast waters. With so few whales left, the best way to find them is by listening to their calls under water, which can be heard hundreds of miles off. For this we utilize the Navy's AN/SSQ Type 53 Passive Sonobouy. The sonobouy is basically a super sensitive underwater microphone, with some fancy gadgetry that allows it to be assigned a specific depth to float at. There is also a radio link that sends the recordings from the hydrophone back to the ship along with information about
where the sound came from. We are deploying a sonobouy every fifteen miles, and more when we get close to the whales.

1100
R/V Aquila
Bering Sea, Alaska

Each day brings us a few degrees further North, and a few degrees colder each morning. This morning was 34 degrees (about 1 degree for those that use metric!). To think, it is the peak of SUMMER here! After our 1100 mooring replacement, we did a trial run of another cool toy we brought. Affectionately called "The Pooper-Scooper" by the Aquila crew, the scooper is a stainless steel sled six feet high and wide. A fine mesh net is run across the middle to trap its prey, the tiny krill the whales thrive on. So why is it called the pooper scooper? At some point in the loading process, someone explained to our crew that the sled was to be towed behind us when we found a whale, hopefully trapping pieces of whale poop that could then be analyzed to tell the sex (gender...) and health of said whale. Well we all bought it, hook, line, and erm, sled. Somewhere, someone is having a whale of a time knowing they had an entire professional merchant marine crew fooled! What the sled is REALLY used f
or is a slightly less disgusting topic, studying the whale food.
The last gadget we have yet to use is a CTD platform that tells all one could ever want to know about the chemistry of the water. The CTD is lowered over the side on the same winch as the scooper, only we will be stopped and holding position during deployment, as opposed to the towed scooper sled.
Thus far the trip has been quite smooth, with average seas in the six foot range. Between mooring sites we are just driving A to B, giving us plenty of time for daily maintanence and construction projects.