Tag Archives: Kodiak

Happy New Year 2019

Happy New Year! Time flies, doesn’t it? I feel as if I just wrote my 2018 New Year’s post. Since I post my resolutions on my blog, I can’t pretend at the end of the year to forget what resolutions I made in January. A quick look back at last year’s post reminded me I did not finish as many writing projects as I’d planned.

I work hard to be a successful author, but as an author, I must wear many hats. On my best days, I’m able to sit down and work on my novel, and on my worst days, I spend my time promoting my books, my website, or my mystery newsletters. I couldn’t have known a year ago how much time I would spend in the coming year working on promotion and on building my author platform, and the more time I spend on promotion, the less time I have available to write. It’s a trade-off, and usually, I choose writing, but during the last few months, I decided to get serious about my author business.

Although my next novel, Karluk Bones, is not yet ready to send to my publisher, I finished the rough draft this past week. I resolve to send Karluk Bones to my publisher by late spring and have it in the hands of readers by late summer or early fall. I know how long it takes to edit and publish a novel, so this seems like a reasonable resolution.

My second resolution is a promise to myself to finish editing my wildlife book and get it published and to market by the end of the year. I made this same resolution last year and didn’t accomplish it, but I hope 2019 will be different. My wildlife book requires extra time and energy in every facet of the writing and editing process. I know the book will never be perfect, but I want to do the best job I can on it, and I hope it will be worth the wait.

Karluk Bones and The Wildlife of Kodiak Island will be my two be my two main writing projects for 2019, but I hope to begin my next novel sometime this coming spring or summer. I already have a rough idea for the plot, and I would love to start writing it now. My next planned non-fiction book will be a compilation of my true stories of murder from Alaska. These are the tales I write every month for my Mystery Newsletter, and I have more than enough compiled for a book.

I’d better stop before I promise too much. I plan to remain active in The Reader’s and Writer’s Book Club, and I hope to write more articles for True Crime: Case Files and Medium. I also want to leave enough time in my schedule to explore other opportunities I discover.

I haven’t written a wildlife post in several weeks, but I’m returning to fish and will write about rockfish over the next few weeks.  Thank you for reading my posts this past year, and I hope you will stay with me through 2019.

Happy New Year, I wish you health, happiness, and prosperity!


Robin Barefield is the author of three Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter. To download a free copy of one of her novels, watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska.

Mystery Newsletter

Sign Up for my free, monthly Mystery Newsletter about true crime in Alaska.



Look Around You

Look at the cloud-draped mountains, the small buck prancing through our backyard, or the eagle standing watch in the tree. Did you see the brightly colored puffin, or the sea otter lounging on her back, her baby nestled on her stomach? Did you notice the seals hauled out on the beach, two of them bloody from fighting, or did you stay up late one night to watch a beautiful Alaska sunset?

As many of you know, my husband and I own a small wilderness lodge on Kodiak Island, Alaska. In the summer, we take guests wildlife viewing and sportfishing, with an emphasis on watching Kodiak bears in their natural habitat. One thing I have noticed over the years is the guests who have the best time at our lodge are those who see everything. They are the ones who show me their photos at the end of the day and are embarrassed by all the images of rock formations they snapped. They are also the ones who admit they didn’t take any pictures of the whales because they just wanted to look, listen, smell, and feel the experience instead of watching it all through their camera’s viewfinder.

The guest who sheds a few tears when she talks about a bear splashing in the water twenty feet from her and the guest who was thrilled by watching through binoculars from a distance as a sow interacted with her three cubs are the guests we will see again. They will return in a year or two or ten because they won’t be able to get the sights, the sounds, or the smells of this beautiful place out of their heads.

Nearly 75% of our guests this summer were returnees, and many of them have been to our lodge multiple times. They’ve been here when the bear viewing was spectacular, and when bears were scarce. They’ve been here during great fishing years and years when the fish were slow to bite, and some years they’ve seen whales, while other years they haven’t. They’ve braved storms and basked in the sun. They’ve seen it all, but they keep returning because they have never focused on just one thing and lost sight of the big picture.

One guest this summer who has been here multiple times told me she and her husband have never had a rainy day here. I’m sure she must be either extremely lucky or mistaken, but I love that she and her husband only remember the sunshine!

No matter where you travel or what adventure you seek, if you narrow your focus too much, you will miss what is right in front of you. Instead, look around, and you might be surprised by what you see. The things that please you most and makes you fall in love with a destination could be something entirely different from what you were expecting.

_________________________________________________________________________

Robin Barefield is the author of three Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter. To download a free copy of one of her novels, watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. If you like audiobooks, check out her audiobook version of Murder Over Kodiak. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska.

Mystery Newsletter

Sign Up for my free, monthly Mystery Newsletter about true crime in Alaska.

How Large is a Kodiak Bear’s Home Range?

 

Brown bears are not considered territorial, but they do have home ranges. A home range is a geographical area a bear inhabits over the course of a year. The ranges of separate bears overlap and vary in size depending on several factors. The ranges tend to be smaller in regions with abundant food and where the food supply is near denning habitat. Kodiak bears have smaller home ranges than most other brown bear populations in North America because of the abundant food supply on the island. Males tend to have larger home ranges than females, and home ranges may increase in the fall when there is less food available, and bears are attempting to build their fat reserves for the winter. Home ranges of females on Kodiak average 50 sq. mi. (130 km²), while the ranges of males average 97 sq. mi. (250 km²).

Several scientific studies have been conducted on Kodiak to understand home ranges and the movements of bears relative to salmon runs and food sources. Studies near Karluk Lake show bears move extensively between different drainages and often time their arrival at a particular stream to exactly coincide with the arrival of the salmon run for the stream. This would not be so exceptional if the salmon returned at the same time every year, but the runs often vary by several weeks from year to year.

 

Recent research by Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge biologist William Leacock and his team provided detailed information on the daily movements of radio-collared bears in the Karluk drainage. During 2010 and 2011, this team fitted eight female bears with GPS collars that broadcasted information at one-hour intervals. This information allowed the researchers to track not only the seasonal movement but the daily and even hourly movements of these bears and to coordinate their travels in response to food sources and bedding areas. Some surprising results emerged from this study, and what struck me was how much the movement patterns, home ranges, and bedding habits varied from sow to sow. This study, as well as any, points out that bears, like humans, are individuals and one bear may have a very different behavior pattern from another bear.

___________________________________________________________________________

As always, I welcome your comments on this or any other post. I love to hear what you think.

Be sure to watch my webinar about how I became a published author and why I write Alaska wilderness mysteries. I think you will enjoy the beautiful photos taken by my husband Mike and my friend Ryan Augustine. Stay until the end, and you will receive a coupon for a free e-book of one of my novels. The link is: http://bit.ly/2pcCOo6  

Mystery Newsletter

Sign Up for my free, monthly Mystery Newsletter about true crime in Alaska.

Getaway!

Our suitcases are packed, and we are headed off on our winter getaway! Part of our trip is business-related, but the rest is a pleasure trip. Our first stop will be Las Vegas, where we will have a booth at the annual SCI Convention. It is a culture shock to leave remote Amook Pass and travel straight to Las Vegas. Here, the only sounds we have heard for the last few months have been the blowing wind and the occasional scream of an eagle or raven, and the only person we have seen is our mail plane pilot on his weekly stop. Las Vegas is sensory overload with constant noise and thousands of people. We always have a great time at this convention, though, because we spend time with friends and talk to past guests. I eat too much and sleep too little the entire time we are there, and when we arrive at the airport for the next leg of our trip, I breathe a sigh of relief because I know we are headed someplace less crazy than Vegas.

For the second part of our winter getaway, we are renting a sailboat with friends and sailing around the British Virgin Islands for a week. I know nothing about sailing, but everyone else in the group knows what they are doing. It will be a fun, relaxing week. After that adventure, Mike and I will spend another week in that area of the world, and we plan to snorkel, dive, relax, read, and I plan to write!

Next, it’s back to Anchorage and back to work. We will shop for lumber and other supplies to finish our new cabin and warehouse, and we will shop for everything else we will need from the city for the next year. We charter a barge once a year in the spring to bring fuel, building supplies, furniture, and any other large items from Kodiak to our lodge in Uyak Bay, so while we are in Anchorage, we will purchase these items and arrange for them to be shipped from Anchorage to Kodiak.

Also while we are in Anchorage, we will take a recertification course for our Wilderness First Responder credentials. We are required to recertify every three years. This course is important to us because it prepares us to take care of our guests when we are hiking in the Kodiak Wilderness.

By March 15th, we will be ready to fly home. We’ll be tired of eating in restaurants and sleeping in strange beds, but most of all, we will miss the peace and quiet of the wilderness. It is always nice to get away from Alaska in the middle of the dark, cold winter, but it is much better to return. By March, the days will be longer and brighter, and while it will still be winter, spring will soon be here.

I will post while on the road, and I already have several posts planned. My friend, Marcia Messier, has again promised a guest post while I’m away, and her posts are very popular. I also hope to keep up with my monthly Mystery Newsletters, and Steven Levi, a well-known author from Anchorage, will write the March edition of the newsletter. You will not want to miss that newsletter because Steve is an expert on crime and criminals throughout the history of Alaska, and I am thrilled he has agreed to take time out of his busy schedule to share his knowledge with us. If you haven’t yet signed up for my Mystery Newsletter, follow the link and do it now, so you don’t miss Steve’s newsletter.

I’ll let you know how the trip goes!

Reindeer/Caribou (Rangifer tarandus)

The U.S. State Department introduced thirty-two Siberian reindeer to the south end of Kodiak Island in 1921 when they were granted to the native peoples to herd and raise.

Reindeer and caribou belong to the same genus and species (Rangifer tarandus). Both wild and domesticated animals in this species are referred to as reindeer in Europe and Asia, but in North America, the term reindeer is reserved for semi-domesticated animals, while their wild cousins are called caribou. There are many subspecies of both reindeer and caribou in Alaska.

Reindeer and caribou are members of the deer family, and they are the only species in the deer family in which both males and females grow antlers. The antlers of female reindeer are larger than those of female caribou. This difference, as well as many of the other differences between caribou and reindeer, are probably the result of domestication and breeding. Caribou have longer legs, while reindeer are shorter and rounder. Reindeer bulls are smaller than caribou bulls, but reindeer and caribou cows are about the same size. Reindeer have thicker fur than caribou, and they breed two to four weeks earlier than caribou.

Biologists believe reindeer were one of the first domesticated animals. A 9th-century letter from King Ottar, the king of Norway, to Alfred the Great mentions his herd of over 600 reindeer. Reindeer herding began in Alaska more than a century ago when 1300 reindeer were imported from Siberia. By the 1930s, 600,000 domestic reindeer lived in Alaska, but much of the reindeer industry in the state collapsed during the Great Depression.

After reindeer were introduced to Kodiak in 1921, The Alitak Native Reindeer Corporation was formed, and residents of the village of Ahkiok managed the herd. The herd grew throughout the 1940s and reached approximately 3000 animals by 1950. A wildfire in the early 1950s wiped out much of the reindeer range, and approximately 1200 reindeer escaped into the wild. Active management of the herd ended in 1961, and federal grazing leases expired in 1964. The State of Alaska declared the reindeer to be feral and soon established an open hunting season with no bag limit on reindeer. In 2010, the State of Alaska restricted the reindeer hunting season on Kodiak to six months and limited the annual take to one reindeer per hunter. The state also reclassified reindeer on Kodiak as “caribou.”

A reindeer has a thick coat that is brown in the summer and gray during the winter. Its chest and belly are pale, and it has a white rump and tail. A male’s antlers are larger and more complex than those of a female. A male usually sheds his antlers in the fall after the mating season, while a female keeps her antlers until spring. A reindeer has hooves that adapt to the season and environment. In the summer, its footpads are spongy, providing it with extra traction on the soft, wet tundra. In the winter, the foot pads shrink and tighten, exposing the rim of the hoof which cuts into the ice and snow and prevents the reindeer from slipping and falling.

Reindeer can run as fast as 50 mph (80 km/hr) and are excellent swimmers. They feed on herbs sedges, mosses, and lichens in the summer but mainly feed on lichens in the winter, often digging through the snow with their hooves to expose the lichens.

Reindeer breed in October, and after a gestation of 210 to 240 days, females give birth to a single calf weighing 6.6 to 26.5 lbs. (3-12 kgs). One hour after it is born, a calf can follow its mother, and at one-day old, it can run at fast speeds. Calves are weaned when they are one-month old, and reindeer reach sexual maturity when they are one to three years old.

The caribou population on Kodiak has remained stable over the past several years, and biologists estimate there are 250 to 300 caribou on the island.

Bear Hibernation (Part Two)

DSC_0096

Last week I posted about the mechanics of bear hibernation, but how does a large mammal manage to curl up in a ball in a cave and sleep for five months? Humans and other mammals would die if they tried to hibernate. During hibernation, bears do not eat, urinate or defecate. What physiological adaptations allow them to do this?

While in hibernation, a brown bear’s breathing drops from 6 to 10 breaths per minute to one breath every 45 seconds. His heart rate drops from forty to fifty beats per minute to nineteen beats per minute, but his body temperature decreases only a few degrees and does not drop below 88° F (31°C), which is within 12°F (6°C) of his normal body temperature. Some scientists consider bears to be “super hibernators.” Because they have thick fur and also a lower surface area to mass ratio than do smaller hibernators such as rodents, bears lose body heat slowly, which allows them to cut their metabolic rate by 50-60%. Physiologist Øivind Tøien at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has discovered that while a black bear’s body temperature only drops an average of 9.9° F (5.5° C), the bear’s metabolism plunges to 25% of the average summer rate. Furthermore, his studies indicate that when a black bear comes out of hibernation in the spring, it takes several weeks for the bear’s metabolism to return to normal.

The amazing physiological adaptations of bears during hibernation are of much interest to human medical researchers. If a human must endure prolonged bed rest due to paralysis or illness, if a broken limb is immobilized, or if an astronaut spends several months in space; the human body faces such risks as blood clots, heart failure, significant loss of muscle mass, a breakdown of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, as well as life-threatening bedsores. A hibernating bear has none of these risks, including no loss of muscle function. Scientists are interested in determining what specific changes in metabolites, proteins, and hormones allow bears these physiological adaptations during several months of inactivity. Humans, as well as all other mammals who maintain non-weight-bearing positions for an extended period, suffer from osteoporosis, but bears do not lose bone mass during hibernation. When the secret to how bears accomplish this feat is discovered, it may help people with weak bones, patients who become bedridden for a prolonged period, people who suffer paralysis, and astronauts on long space missions.

While bears are hibernating and metabolizing body fat, their cholesterol levels are twice as high as respective cholesterol levels in humans. Bears, however, do not suffer from arteriosclerosis or gallstones, conditions which plague humans with high cholesterol. Furthermore, a bear’s liver secretes a substance that dissolves gallstones in humans. Insight into how bears recycle urea during hibernation could lead to advances in treatments for kidney failure and dialysis in humans. Also, bears gain a great deal of weight in the fall before going into hibernation, but unlike many obese humans, they remain insulin-sensitive. Conversely, they become insulin-resistant once they are in hibernation, so their fat does not break down too quickly, but when they wake in the spring, they once again respond to insulin. In other words, bears can put themselves into a diabetic state while in hibernation and then reverse out of it in the spring. Understanding what allows bears to do this could lead to breakthrough medical advances in the treatment of diabetes and obesity in humans.

There’s so much more going on with hibernation than simply curling up for a long winter’s nap. I look forward to reading new scientific studies on bear hibernation.

Sign up for my Mystery Newsletter if you haven’t already done so. Next month I plan to cover some Kodiak murders.

 

Trip To Kodiak

DSCF0909

This past week I took a rare trip to the town of Kodiak. I’ve been posting about springtime behaviors of various Kodiak animals, so now I’ll tell you about one of my springtime behaviors. Mike and I usually fly to the town of Kodiak in late May to run errands, go to the doctor, pick up supplies, and most importantly for me, visit the local greenhouse to buy flower and vegetable starts for my planters and garden.

This may not seem like an earth-shattering topic to write about, but a trip to town is a big deal for me. First of all, it’s expensive. We must charter a plane each way, rent a car, and stay in a hotel. Secondly, it can be an ordeal, because late-May weather is often foggy, especially around town, so our trip easily can be delayed for a day or two due to bad (not flyable) weather, and worse still, we could get stuck in town for a few days waiting for the weather to clear.

On this trip, the weather was marginal for flying. The first part of our flight to town was windy and bumpy, and as we neared town, the pilot expertly dodged pea-soup fog. It was also foggy when we departed Kodiak for our return flight, but as we neared Uyak Bay, the ceiling lifted, and the pilot was able to climb and fly through the mountain passes.

In late May, the town of Kodiak bustles with activity, as commercial fishermen begin preparing for the summer salmon season. This past weekend especially was busy in Kodiak, because it was King Crab Festival weekend.

DSCF0930

The King Crab Festival is Kodiak’s version of the county fair but with some uniquely “Kodiak” twists. Since it is difficult and expensive to bring carnival rides to the island, most of the “rides” are of the inflatable variety, but the kids are no-less enthusiastic about them. Many of the food booths are operated by local vendors, and you can dine on salmon, halibut, cod, and of course King Crab, among other things. There is no tractor pull at the King Crab Festival, but the Coast Guard demonstrates simulated rescues, a Russian Orthodox priest blesses the fishing fleet, and most popular of all, festival-goers line the boat ramp near the harbor and cheer on the participants in the survival-suit race. For this activity, teams of four race down a ramp, pull on and zip up bulky survival suits, then jump into the water and swim to a life raft. Once all four team members are in the raft, the clock stops and their time is recorded. The team with the fastest time wins. Participants include everyone from families to fishing vessel crew members to Coast Guard rescue swimmers. The rescue swimmers usually win, but no one complains about that. We want those guys to be fast!

DSCF0941

Between running errands, visiting the King Crab Festival, and eating at as many restaurants as I could in four days, I was exhausted and full by the time we flew home. I smiled at my new plants as I carried them up to the house, happy to be home and eager to start planting. I don’t plan another trip to town until late January, and for the time being anyway, that’s fine with me!