A week later I was on a flight to Alaska
On my 30th birthday i slept in and groggily reached for my phone to reflex check the social world inside my facebook app. The first post I saw was from a former shipmate I worked with in Louisiana mentioning crew openings for some fishing boats in Alaska. I responded asking for details and a week later my life was in a storage unit and I was on a flight from Aspen Colorado to Petersburg Alaska.
I have been fortunate to travel to a lot of places and Alaska was one of the ones that will stick out forever. Colorado gets a lot of that “Wild West” credit but Alaska was truly the final frontier. It was the mountains of Colorado rising straight out of clear blue water. it was a place and experience of extremes. Backbreaking work in one of the most pristinely beautiful places I’ve known.
I think that back story is the part of this photo that is missing. After a month at sea with no days off it was a nice change to just get out and start walking. After a couple miles I came across some wild flowers growing with the mountains and water in the background. The bee, wanting me to have the best possible picture, was nice enough to buzz over and get in the shot.
The wildflowers and berries rely on these pollinators to reproduce each season and if you ever have the chance to pick a bag of Alaskan berries for a pie or a handful on the go you’ll thank these little guys for their hard work!
The wildflowers and betties rely on bumblebees
Ben Acker on a tank in Alaska
Bumblebees practice "buzz pollination"
Bumblebees practice “buzz pollination”. They land on the flower and rapidly buzz their wings to release the pollen. Each year the mated queen will burrow underground or into anything that she can ride out the winter in. The worker bees having served their purpose will die off at the onset of cold weather. in the spring the queen will reestablish her colony and start the cycle over.
Similarly, salmon are born in freshwater rivers and journey out to sea until they are mature enough to carry their eggs back to the place of their birth and complete their life cycle. These fish stop eating upon their approach and completely exhaust themselves swimming against the current with a singular thought in mind, make it up stream to release their eggs before they die of exhaustion in order to repopulate their species. This process is highly predictable and the ability to monitor the eggs and various salmon populations make it one of the more sustainable fisheries out there.
There seems to be a common theme between these bees, annual turnover of fishermen on boats, and even the fish that help sustain the livelihood of so many alaskan fishermen. The delicate balance of extremes in Alaska, and nature in general, is one of my biggest takeaways from my time there and hopefully no matter where you find yourself out in the wild you will appreciate the natural beauty of the world and leave it better than you found it.
There seems to be a common theme between bumblebees, fishermen, and salmon
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