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> July 21 – Ketoy and Urup Islands (part 2), or We finally see the Kuril Islands – well, sort of.
Misty_Nikula_Ohlsen
post Jul 27 2006, 10:06 PM
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July 21 – Ketoy and Urup Islands
or We finally see the Kuril Islands – well, sort of.

Friday, 21 July – Aboard the Gipanis, Offshore of Urup Island

Today, we made it to Urup Island, which is south of Ketoy and the northernmost of the three large southern islands. We spent the morning in anticipation. Mike, Bre and I went up to the top deck and exercised a bit. Some pushups, pull-ups, squats, sit-ups, tricep dips, jump rope and a little bit of yoga stretching (I hope you are reading this, Skip!). Afterwards, I went to take a shower, not realizing that lunch was early so that the group heading ashore to Urup could eat before they left. I almost missed lunch! With the 8 hours that there are between lunch and dinner that would have been a tragic occurrence!

The ship was anchored about a mile off the shore of Urup, of which we could only see the shoreline – the upper parts of the island being hidden by the thick fog.

Going ashore about halfway down the Sea of Okhotsk side of Urup Island where some small streams reach the sea, were the palynologist group, including Pat Anderson, a professor of Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington, the three scientists from the Northeast Complex Scientific Research Institute in Magadan, Anatoly Lozhkin, Pavel Miniuk, and Alexander Pakhamov, Paul Hezel, a graduate student in Atmospheric Sciences from our group, who will work with them, and Tanya Pinegina and Katya Kravchunovskaya from the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology in Kamchatka. Tanya and Katya will do some geology work on the shore of the island, while the palynologists will head up the stream to some small lakes on the island to do their coring of the lake sediments. The lake sediments can then be analyzed for pollen layers, which will help us understand the climate history of the islands (when it was warmer, colder, wetter, or drier). They will camp and work there for about 10 days until the ship comes back from stops at the other more southerly islands.

We are hurriedly trying to make our way past Urup and toward the village of Kuril’sk on the Sea of Okhotsk side of Iturup in order to take a crew member who has an abscessed tooth to the doctor/hospital there. We have two groups to put on shore on Urup so my understanding is that we are quickly doing this on our way south. In order to efficiently transfer people and gear ashore, the Russians decided to use one of our lifeboats in addition to the zodiac. These are the large, orange, enclosed lifeboats that can be lowered from the top deck to the water. They lowered the portside lifeboat partway, loaded it with gear and then after putting it the rest of the way into the water, drove it around to the starboard side where the rest of the passengers where loaded. Then off they went! The engine was extremely smoky and smelly. It is hard to imagine that an operation like using a lifeboat to transfer gear and people would be used on an American boat. But this is Russia!

IPB Image
The image on the left is the Tanya and Katya waving good-bye through the lifeboat’s smoky haze as they head off to Urup. On the right is the lifeboat heading to fog enshrouded Urup Island.

It seems that we have a fog curse, because within about 20 minutes of the group landing on the shore, the fog began to settle in again and by the time the lifeboat and zodiac headed back, we were unable to see the shoreline. This time they didn’t have much difficulty getting back to the ship, however and by 1:30 pm we had weighed anchor, gave our blast good-bye and were headed toward the south end of Urup.

Once we reached the south end of Urup at about 4 pm, we put a group of archaeologists ashore at a place called Ainu Creek. This included several Russians from Sakhalin Museum, Kenji Ito, a wildlife photographer, Tetsuya Amano, an archaeologist and Kaoru Tezuka, an ethnographer, both from Hokkaido, and Colby Philips, an archaeology graduate student from our group. Our fog curse remained in effect and by the time the second trip of the zodiac was made, the ship was completely fogged in again. But this zodiac has a compass and GPS and had no trouble locating the ship.

At about 6 pm we started cruising south to Iturup Island. Ben has said that we won’t go all of the way to Kuril’sk, because we will avoid going around a volcano that is on the northwest peninsula of Iturup and put in off of Reydovo on the north coast. Then the crew member will be taken by car to Kuril’sk. This will also mean a slightly shorter trip.

Just before dinner, I met in the hold with James, Matt, Dena, Mike and Ben and we prepared some of our archaeology field gear for later. I got my very own clipboard, bag of sample bags, pens, field notebook, hand lens, carabineer and TROWEL! I feel very cool. tongue.gif

IPB Image
On the left, Colby Philips, an archaeology graduate student from the UW, heads ashore at Ainu Creek on Urup Island. On the right is my archaeology field gear, including my very own trowel! biggrin.gif

Since we are headed to Iturup tomorrow, we may not be working in the field until tomorrow evening or even Sunday. We are all feeling very anxious about getting to start working and feeling very punchy from being stuck on the small confines of the boat for so long.

More in a couple of days!
Mrs. N-O
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