ocean | The Filson Journal

aerial view of snow covered ice drifts amongst rocky outcroppings

The Bering Strait Crossing

In the northernmost reaches of the world, just a few clicks south of the arctic circle, Russia and Alaska are separated at their closest point by just 55 short miles and the frigid waters of the Bering sea.
t’s believed that a land bridge once connected these two regions, and that 20,000 years ago, humans walked across that natural formation to settle in the Americas from Asia. In the centuries that followed, those land masses slowly pulled apart and became separated by the Bering Strait.
For most of modern history, traversing this passage meant braving the seas — and even then, only when the ever-shifting ice floes would allow it.
But where some saw only unforgiving waves lapping up against the shoreline, a handful of visionary engineers saw a golden opportunity — a crossing that would allow safe travel and even faster transportation between North America and Russia.

5 Min

Profiles

Anacortes Junk Co.

Marine Supply? Hardware? Antiques? Museum and gift shop? It’s a bit of all of these. Wander over wood floors that creak like the deck of a ship to find less glamorous but just as useful galvanized cleats, cubbies of hard-to-find pipe fittings, and various sizes of chain and rope. That part for your vessel you were certain only existed in your imagination—it’s somewhere here—might be a bit dusty. Think some of the stuff lying around might be junk? Perhaps, but as Steve Demopoulos heard his grandfather “Mike,” say many times, “It’s only junk until someone needs it.”

5 Min

woman in black coat holding a floater on a fishing net while standing on a boat

Profiles

The Fabric of the Sea : Artist Cristina Maria Melito

“In your work I can taste the magic of undersea. You are in touch with the beauty of the world’s wildness alive in all things and people, the endless non-linear patterns of existence. You create a tangible sense of intimacy with the vast and mysterious powers of sea and animals.”

5 Min

person swimming underwater with large flippers and a harpoon gun

Profiles

Subsea Hunter: Freedive Spearfishing with Lucas Murray

As many land hunters can attest to, part of the reason they choose to hunt is to get in touch with an instinctual, ancestral aspect of themselves. There is something primal about the pursuit of an animal that we find alluring. Breath-hold diving in the pursuit of fish is particularly addicting as it connects us to two innate and perhaps often-forgotten aspects of ourselves: the physiological dive reflex and the pursuit of prey.

5 Min

Field Notes

Rum, Sailors, & Pirates: the dark history of booze on the High Seas

The spoils of captured merchantmen vessels often yielded large cargos of rum, wine, and ale, which pirate crews put to good use. Ironically, these periods of mass intoxication would last days or even weeks, alternating with periods of going without the most basic foodstuffs and water aboard ship, until landfall or the taking of another ship could replenish supplies.

5 Min

Profiles

The Ocean’s Top Predator: Puget Sound Orcas

Black fins sliced the water and rose higher and higher, close to our boat. With a puff and a blow, the orcas surfaced: members of J pod, the southern resident whales that frequent Puget Sound. The whales blew mighty breaths. They are mammals,
like us.

4 Min