Saint Paul island

The island of Saint Paul is in the middle of the Bering Sea, and it's probably the most remote place that I've ever been to. It's got one of the highest zip codes in the USA!



The permanent population is less than 500 people, mostly fishermen.






It's got interesting demographics, a relic of of how it was exploited throughout history. The majority of the population is Native American - Aleutian, to be exact - but the main religion is Christian Orthodox. This is because the Aleuts were first brought there by Russian fur traders in 1788. After Alaska was sold to the USA, the Russians left, but they left the Aleuts and their religion behind.






And this is our restaurant. Its entrance is up the staircase in the middle:


Actually, it was a cafeteria of the seafood processing plant - the only industry on the island. (If you watched "Deadliest Catch", this is where the captains took all their crabs to be processed.) It doesn't look like much, but the food was delicious, and the seafood was absolutely fresh!


I've been to jungles of Asia, Central America, and Manhattan, but only in Saint Paul I truly understood the law of the jungle:


The one and only gas station on the island:


Crab traps fill the space near the main road:




Believe it or not, they are also birding hotspots. They make perfect hiding places. Some of the birds found there in the past included things like Asian owls. (We didn't find anything on our visit, though...)






The placard of our hotel...


... which also serves as the island's airport:


The island is services by Ravn airline, with flights every two days.




Space on the plane is limited... especially since one row is taken by the life rafts.

Homer, AK wildlife

The first you notice in the waters around Homer is multitudes of sea otters - sometimes a few at a time, sometimes rafts of a dozen or more:







Also in the bay around homer is Common Murres, in flocks of hundreds or thousands:






A little further into the bay, there is an island called Gull Island. It is very appropriately named - you definitely notice them as you approach:


Strictly speaking, the birds nesting there are not gulls but kittawakes - Black-legged Kittawakes to be exact. (There are also endangered Red-legged Kittawakes - more about them in my later posts.)


The name "kittawake" derives from the call these birds make. And with thousands of them nesting on the island, they are definitely noisy!




Sometimes, when they sense danger, the whole colony takes off at once:








Kittawakes are not the only animals on the island - some seals come to relax as well:


Another island in Kachemak Bay does't have a lot of animals, but it's got really interesting rock formations:


As you come close, you can see that the cliffs are made of some very intensely layered rock:






You can imagine the force that was required to compress and bend these rocks:


Parting shot:

The Halibut Fishing Capital of the World

Homer, Alaska is known as the Halibut Capital of the World. It wasn't the halibut season when we were there, but the harbor (at the end of a 4-mile "Homer Spit" jutting out half way into the bay) was still very crowded.



Note how deep the harbor is? And how long the poles are? Kachemak Bay has some of the highest tides in the world. Check out the pole below - see how high up the wet section with the mussel growth reaches? That's how high the tides got that day. The highest tides reach 28 feet!


The signs below were surely born of painful experience... The seagulls (actually kittawakes) breed right in the harbor.


My Guardian friends will get a kick out of this:


At the end of the Homer Spit, the scenery was absolutely stunning.




Kodiak Ferry coming in:


While waiting for birds, I watched a Coast Guard plane practice take-offs and landings multiple times:






The mornings in Homer can be very serene.




But the calm never lasts two longs. Cloud so thick that you can almost touch them can descent in a minute.


In Homer, keeping old buses is a thing. We saw them in more than one location. (Those who read "Into the Wild" will recall that the story took place not too far from Homer - and also in an old bus.)




Some other cool sights around Homer: