In the summer of 1999, Mary studied the behavior of high-level predators in the presence of algal toxins under Dr. Rikk Kvitek of CSU Monterey Bay. In our last issue, Mary outlined the background of their research; here she takes us through her experiences during the summer of 1999 in southeast Alaska.

Alaska is big, first and foremost.

I realized that as I looked out the window of our airplane during our approach to Juneau International Airport. There, fleetingly viewed between fluffy gray clouds, lay Mendenhall Glacier, a vast, impressive ice field snaking its way slowly through the valley.

It was huge! When I'd seen the glacier some years before, I had stood at its terminus, gazing up at an unimpressive hill of ice and snow spattered with rock and dirt, and down at the raw brown earth damp with puddles. The glacier's majestic enormity wasn't at all evident from that close-up view - it was like examining an eagle's feather under a microscope before ever seeing an eagle!

Much of southeast Alaska is like that, I found - amazing in its magnitude, and best viewed from a distance before examining its many engaging microcosms.

One microcosm that has fascinated zoologist Rikk Kvitek for years is the world of the Alaskan sea otter. That summer, I was on my way to participate in a scientific research cruise headed by Dr. Kvitek, whose current interests lie in determining whether paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxin in otter prey items affects otter population dynamics.

Sea otters (Enhydra lutris) are voracious predators of bivalves such as butter clams (Saxidomus giganteus). These clams can retain PSP toxins in their siphon areas from harmful algae blooms for up to two years. Southeast Alaskan sea otters, only recently reintroduced to the area, were observed discarding butter clam siphons a handful of times during last year's cruise. Was this a regular behavior? When otters discovered toxic clams, did they eventually abandon those feeding sites? Did they switch to different prey? Did high PSP toxin levels effectively deter sea otter predation on butter clams? Windfall clues to the answers we sought would present themselves in bizarre and unexpected ways during the cruise.

We made our way to the research vessel Alpha Helix from the airport in an odd consortium of taxis, transport vans and a pickup truck. All hands pulled together on arrival to repack our equipment and gear into harbor-supplied wheelbarrows for their final ride down the dock ramp to the R/V Alpha Helix.

The big blue research vessel, run by the University of Alaska for the National Science Foundation, has hosted oceanic research for more than thirty years. Her decks are open and easy to convert to a variety of scientific uses, and her crew is professional and personable - and full of stories about their scientific adventures!

One such adventure happened not long before we boarded, and the crew was still agog over it, eager to tell the tale. The Alpha Helix had been following a hunting pod of orcas, they told us. After the pod had killed, fed on, and abandoned the remains of a small whale, the crew of the Helix winched up the carcass for examination by scientists. While the whale carcass was hanging in the air, the orcas returned to finish feeding. A large male leaped up and grabbed the carcass in his teeth, and the Alpha Helix, a 133' motor vessel, found itself in a losing tug-o-war with a male orca. That's right, a losing tug-o-war. The orca won, according to the crew of the Helix!

After unloading our gear, we settled into our rooms. I bunked with three other researchers, each of us claiming one drawer and one closet, and sharing a sink. The Alpha Helix was also equipped with showers on lower and upper decks, a laundry room and a well-provisioned galley, which made the trip comfortable.

Dr. Kvitek outlined our duties before we turned in that first night. They were divided into three basic tasks: scouting for otters, observing otters, and diving for otter prey items (both whole and discarded). I would participate in all three.

We got under way that night and awoke the next morning in Icy Passage, with our bow pointed toward Gustavus and the Porpoise Islands off our stern. We would spend about a week at this anchorage, then travel south to Sea Otter Sound, the Barrier Islands, Boca de Quadra in Misty Fjords National Park, and finally to Ketchikan.

On our first research day, I donned scuba gear and jumped into Alaskan waters for the first time under the watchful eye of Dr. Kvitek.

The waters of Alaska's inside passage are very different from those off the California coast, though surprisingly not much colder. Compared to Monterey Bay, whose waters have a kind of green glow, the waters of Icy Passage had a sort of blue-white glow, perhaps attributable to glacial runoff, and were much clearer than I expected - I could see for a distance of twenty to thirty feet. This may have been due to the water's extreme cleanliness. Unlike Monterey Bay, there is very little pollution running off into the sea such as fertilizers from farms or golf courses (though that may change - on our ride through Juneau we saw a "hole-in-one" contest in progress).

The sea floor was composed of compacted sediment and gravel, dotted with rocks and small boulders. Laminaria dominated plant life (along with tall, graceful Nereocystis) and there were myriad large and small invertebrates.

First, we collected a ‘shell record' of the site. Dr. Kvitek showed me which shells had recently been emptied by otters, which were species we wanted to collect, and what butter clam siphon holes looked like in the sediment. Then, we proceeded to excavate a site which we marked off using a weighted, plastic quadrat.

My job was to hold the square quadrat in place, grabbing as many clams as possible from it and stuffing them into mesh ‘goodie bags' while Dr. Kvitek excavated the site with a blower; but I soon found that I was weighted too lightly for the job. I had achieved wonderfully neutral buoyancy during our short shell record tour, but neutral buoyancy was a definite detriment while excavating quadrats. When I pushed the plastic quadrat to the sea floor, I pushed myself towards the surface (every action has an equal and opposite reaction!); I had to kick downward constantly to keep the quadrat in place. I was quick to put additional lead in my weight belt for future dives when we returned to the Alpha Helix!

Every time we ventured from the Alpha Helix in our small inflatable boats - whether to dive, tend divers, scout for otters or observe otters - we saw more of the wonders of southeast Alaska. While observing feeding otters at Whale Island, south of Icy Passage in Sea Otter Sound, Canadian biologist Kathleen Conlan and I were treated to a show of humpback whale blows and flukes just offshore. Whales were everywhere. Humpbacks breached off the bow and blew adjacent to our dive sites. A pod of orcas even led us down Icy Passage one morning, past a black bear scavenging on the beach.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating otter observations occurred off Entrance Island, overlooking a channel leading to Edna Bay in Sea Otter Sound. Fellow student Kate Thomas and I watched as a feeding otter brought up a few small crabs and a huge, angry red octopus, which was spread out over the entire length of the otter.

This otter was evidently a hunter of some prowess. He nonchalantly popped the little crabs into his mouth (I dubbed them ‘popcorn crabs', because the otters ate them like popcorn) while thwarting the octopus' desperate attempts to slither back into the depths. Several times the octopus actually slipped from the otter's grasp, but the otter would casually dive down and come back up with the octopus, playing a sort of cat-and-mouse game. The otter ripped off a tentacle here, another chunk there, taking over half an hour to eat the octopus, while fending off other otters trying to steal his catch.

It was in Sea Otter Sound that we made a most astonishing discovery. Almost a year ago, in this same area, Dr. Kvitek's researchers had seen sea otters discarding toxic clam siphons, and there was more than a little anticipation among the group that they might see similar, confirming behaviors on this trip. There was no way that anyone could have imagined what they actually found, though!

I was dive-tending for Dr. Kvitek and Dr. Conlan off Green Island when we received a radio call from another dive party situated at Fake Pass. Dr. Kvitek was diving, so I told the Fake Pass crew I'd have him call as soon as he surfaced. Some twenty minutes later, numb-lipped and slow-speaking from spending over an hour in the 45-degree water, Dr. Kvitek called Fake Pass. Nothing - not even numb lips - could stop him from cheering over the news they had for him!

The team had arrived at Fake Pass on that clear and sunny day during a low tide. Looking down into the shallow water, they had been amazed to see discarded siphons scattered all over the bottom, some still connected to otter-opened butter clam shells! Dive gear was largely unnecessary, and even the dive tenders jumped into the fordable water in their knee-boots to help collect the siphons swept there by tide and current.

It was a fantastic stroke of luck. Were these ‘discards' toxic? Wouldn't it be even more fascinating if they were not? After testing several months later, we learned that these siphons were indeed very toxic, suggesting that, among other things, otters are not deterred by toxic prey items, (they simply rip off the toxic parts) and that within certain parameters, butter clam toxicity does not deter predation.*

Later that day, I drove Dr. Kvitek and Dr. Conlan back to the area near Entrance Island where Kate and I had observed otters feeding the day before. Kate thought that she had seen otters ripping off and discarding siphons there, and the two scientists wanted to try and recover some of these discards. Unfortunately, our luck wasn't as good as the Fake Pass crew's, and we returned to the Alpha Helix empty handed.

With our scuba tanks refilled, the three of us returned to the site that afternoon for a little more investigation. Dr. Kvitek wanted to gather two more quadrats' worth of clams there, and this time I dove to try and find Kate's discarded tissue.

I decided to criss-cross the channel, which ranged from 20' deep at the edge of the kelp forest to 43' mid-channel. I submerged to find Dr. Kvitek already hard at work excavating quadrats, so I followed my compass bearing west across the channel. The bottom was covered by a foot or two of leafy laminaria, making the sea floor difficult to see. Fronds overlapped fronds which overlapped fronds, in addition to the towering macrocystis forest that bordered the channel. It reminded me of the great grasslands of the African plains - the actual 'earth' beneath the plants was obscured, which made looking for discarded tissue no easy matter.

Towards the center of the channel, at greater depths, the laminaria thinned and expanses of coarse, sand and shell "hash" bottom opened up. Here it was easier to spot discarded shells, but I didn't see any discarded tissue.

In the middle of the channel, west of where Dr. Kvitek was blowing out a quadrat, I found a mysterious, rusting metal box in a clearing. It was eaten away in places, corroded throughout, and home to many creatures, both on its surface and swimming through the holes eaten away by salt water. The box seemed to have two layers; both layers appeared to be rusted metal. I couldn't tell what its exact purpose in its previous life had been. I was exceedingly curious, but decided to curb my curiosity and leave the box unmolested, as I was diving alone and didn't want to get into trouble 30 feet down in 45-degree water!

The visibility was perhaps 15 to 20 feet (just a bit cloudy), and the life present incredible in its diversity, color and number. Among the animals I saw were Cribrhinopsis fernaldi, a large beautiful stalked anemone; Aeolidia papillosa, a nudibranch resembling a tiny white feather boa; and a huge variety of (unfortunately) cleaned-out shells, including Prototheca staminea, Humilaria kennerleyi, Saxidomus giganteus, Mya truncata and Clinocardium nuttallii.

There were wonderful tube worms (genus Crucigera) covering many of the rocks. Their spiralled feeding cirri were banded red-and-white and other colors; these were quickly withdrawn as I approached. Delightful!

Two shrimp (genus Pandalus) held their under-rock territory as I tried to get them to come into the open. Small crabs of all sorts scuttled about, and sunflower sea stars (Pycnopodia helianthoides) preyed upon clams. I found a Humilaria clam next to a Pycnopodia in a pit. Dr. Kvitek told me later that the Pycnopodia will dig up that species of clam only to spit them out, because they cannot open them. I saw a star that could, though; the Orthasterias koehleri, spiny sea star, emits an acid which dissolves the shell enough for the star to invade the clam.

I made my way back across the channel, breaking the surface without any discarded tissue in hand - but it was a great dive!

After we returned, everyone shared the task of working up prey item samples in the Alpha Helix's wet lab. Impromptu semicircles of researchers, seated on Igloo coolers and overturned 5-gallon buckets, gathered around piles of bivalve remnants, shouting our metric measurements to recorders furiously scribbling away in black data books.

Other researchers, standing along the scarred white lab tables, sorted the clams excavated by divers. Different species of clams were measured and shucked, and their contents weighed, labeled and prepared for shipment to testing facilities. Once the day's labors were complete, we could all relax and enjoy the ten o'clock northern summer sunsets.

Throughout our weeks of field work, the wide Alaskan wilderness surrounded us with stunning natural beauty. Under a blazing, blue-white sky, we breathed in the open expanses of Icy Strait as we steamed to Hoonah for refueling. Yet, we had only to look down from the bow to see salmon skittering a few meters beneath the water's surface, startled by our ship's passage. Spruce, pines and other trees blanketed faraway mountainsides in shifting patterns of green. On landing, we found even more layers of minute plants and fungi growing beneath the tree boughs, in a world unimpeded by the aesthetic sensibilities of humans - a place naturally pleasing.

Perhaps the best view of southeast Alaska included both the broad and the microcosmic viewpoints: the Strait and the salmon, the forest and the fungi, the otters and their southeast Alaskan home. There is wisdom to be had in seeing, understanding and integrating the broad and the narrow views, especially as scientific discoveries and innovations are made almost faster than we can account for them. From the vantage of an comprehensive viewpoint, researchers and scientists stand a better chance of building accurate, workable explanations of how our world functions.

* Dr. Kvitek and his research team plan to publish their findings in the year 2001.

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