Life on the Outer Coast

April 19th
Annual AK naturalist trip to Pt. Brown, Kruzof island

24 people met at 5:45am at Crescent Harbor, miraculously everyone made it there on time. It was cold, sunny with light northwest winds. The winds were much less intense than they were on Friday. For me, the temperature meant wearing long underwear. Optimistic person that I am, I also brought my shorts. I probably could have exchanged the long pants for short ones in the afternoon, but I wouldn’t have been quite as comfortable.
Unfortunately, I was in charge of the field trip. I’d much rather be the person who periodically during the day leads the exploration instead of feeling like I needed to constantly encourage people to notice what is around them. For the most part, it was okay, but I was a little surprised that people grew tired of sitting, basking and minor independent exploratory forays in the muskeg.

The herring spawn continued to cover the intertidal algae, so the search for intertidal creatures was a bit tougher than during years without spawn. Probably because we lacked a dedicated intertidal person, people were much less interested in exploring the intertidal.
We did the usual walk from the drop off point to the caves then back around and up to the muskeg.

Around 50 Greater Yellowlegs and 4 Black-bellied plovers were on the beach when we arrived. Also saw mallards, Buffleheads, Barrow’s Goldeneyes, Northern Shovelers, and Green winged teal right off shore. Many Brant and 2 Canada geese flew over when we were on the beach and in the muskeg.

Found a variety of tracks this year, probably because I was paying more attention (thanks to Jonathan being around for the class). There were bear tracks along the tide line, as well as otter, mink, deer and mouse. The mouse tracks were found in the sand, under the Sitka alder by the forest. The tracking group found a dead Sea otter on the beach south of Pt. Kamenoi. Niphotrichum canescens var canescens was collected from the sand just below the alders on the beach.

A very simplified synopsis of what Cathy Connor shared with us was that the greywacke is a mixture of volcanic sandstone and mud from an older sea that has lithified. The next oldest rock that she mentioned is the flow of volcanic rock about 600, 000 years ago. The rock on the beach that is brown, white, black freckled (best I can do) is from this oldest volcanic flow. The cave material is from underwater volcanic eruptions that covered the greywacke. The softer material was weathered away by water etc and left the arch formation. The diorite that we find on the beach is probably from the Magoun island area. I asked about the possibility of small rocks being explosively moved with the ash eruptions to other areas (eg. Crow island). She said unlikely, but that the entire basin around Kruzof was probably "leaky" in terms of igneous rock and that small cracks were a more likely source of stray volcanic rocks. Some day perhaps I'll get a clue about geological processes that is more than superficial.

The muskeg vegetation was still mostly in winter mode, most of the sedges were still brown and dry. There were Carex livida starting up and some Empetrum nigrum blooming. I only remember seeing male flowers.

It took awhile, but we found Caddis flies in the reed-like tubes and dragonfly larvae in the ponds. We didn’t find Caddis flies in the ponds with Dragon fly larvae, but it wasn’t an exhaustive search.
Collected a few bryophytes in the muskeg including a small liverwort that on brief inspection looks like a tiny Mylia, but I haven’t confirmed the identification yet.
Racomitrium languinosum from a snag in the muskeg. Collected Riccardia latifrons from the undercut bank of a muskeg pond.
Also collected what seems to be Nitella from a pond. It is smaller and smooth to the touch which distinguished it from Chara. It also lacked the bad smell that stonewort is supposed to have. I haven't found a species key as yet to identify it further.