ocean

Aerial image of a mid-size boat in the middle of a dark green ocean surrounded by bull kelp.
Profiles

Bringing the Ocean’s Bounty to Market in Southeast Alaska

Barnacle, by producing food products that require large amounts of kelp, and purchasing that kelp from the communities who are farming it, is helping to build not only a business, but an eco-friendly, sustainable, and renewable industry and future for Alaskans. “The march that we would like to lead with Barnacle is to do as much good as we can for our oceans and our communities,” says Heifetz, “and to keep the value from our edible resources here in Alaska with the people who have the skills and knowledge to best steward the coastline, and have been doing so for millennia.”

Read more

3 Min
aerial view of snow covered ice drifts amongst rocky outcroppings
Profiles

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.

Read more

5 Min
a large collection of old nautical
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.”

Read more

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.

Read more

5 Min