Apres Swim
Holy Sculpin, Batman!
Swimming in the Arctic Ocean

Well, August rolled in a few days ago with a bright, sunny, windy day. This, unbelievably, resulted in us downgrading to silk long underwear and taking OFF our bug jackets (GASP!). On August 1st, we had an incredible day on the Arctic Ocean, sampling, looking at the amazing views, and catching all sorts of crazy critters in our gill nets. We caught sea stars, urchins, crabs, the biggest and most beautiful sculpin in the history of the world, and cod. Maril and I were like two kids pulling in the nets and dredges.

Heidi: "What the HECK is that??"
Maril: "That's a baby sea cucumber. I think. At least, it looks sort of cucumber-ish, don't you think? Do we need cucumbers?"
Heidi: "No, but let's try to catch more."

Well, after netting in a hurricaine for the better part of the afternoon and catching NO charr but having lots of fun, we decided that the adventure rating for such a beautiful day was not quite high enough. Which brings me to a side note. Because the operation up here is about to become a mine, there are a LOT of safety guys around. Safety guys seem to take a bit of an exception to us, and really do not like the fact that we are in boats, that we use gill nets, that we take guns into the field...etc etc etc. So, the rule is that if you hear an unknown helichopper, sit down in the boat until the pilots give you some sort of code over the radio. This could consist of, "F-ZAR off of Windy bound Roberts Bay with 5 safety guys." That means, "Yo, fish chicks, get out your invisibility cloaks." We also have code names....the air traffic guy here (affectionately known as Wolverine) refers to us as Dr. Evil and Pinky. In any case, we've been working quite far from camp lately and have not had any run-ins with the safety dudes. So, things can get quite boring, even when you are catching crazy critters.

Marilynn: "Heidi, do you think it would be: a) a good idea; or, b) a bad idea, to go skinny dipping in the ocean today? If we time it right, we'll only be cold for about 10 minutes before the helicopter comes."

Heidi: "A. Good idea. This is the most excellent plan I have heard all day. But the timing could be tricky. It's going to be tough to jump into our super suits at high speed when we're wet. Let's DO it."

And so, we had our 30 second dip. Followed by a mad rush back into the super suits and some missing articles of clothing......socks didn't quite make it on and I'm pretty sure I had most of the beach in my head. Uncontrollable giggles ensued the whole ride back to camp.

And today the ceiling was to the ground and we waited for 2 hours for a helicopter while mosquitos ate our eyeballs. Such is life.