Akutan Bay

John Christopher

I made a resent trip out to Akutan and did some diving with Fish & Wildlife Service.  The city of Akutan is about 30 miles east of Dutch Harbor on the Aleutian Chain.  The population is about 150 people in the village but during fishing season the Trident Seafood processing plant employs about 300 people mostly from out of village.  There are only two places to eat the Trident Seafood cafeteria and a small café, which is open at weird hours.  There is a small grocery store, church and school.  So needless to say you need to bring your own stuff including your compressor.  The villagers are friendly, outgoing and helpful.  While there we heard about how bad the weather could be.  They said if it wasn't blowing then it was foggy.  These are also my memories about Dutch harbor when I was a child.  The week we spent there was far from this, the weather was bright and a sunny 65 degrees.  Brian Anderson our surface support diver even received sunburn.  There were three divers.  Brian Anderson did the surface support packed gear filled tanks it was almost like a vacation with him around.   Mark Schroader was the lead diver he cataloged the plant and animal life we found.  I was the videographer and did the filming.  The reason for the dives was to find out the plant and animal life around areas where Trident Seafood is proposing to build a harbor.  We did a total of eight dives in three days.  At night we would figure out all the things we had seen or found during the day.  The first thing we did before the dive took place was Brian along with the boat captain would lie out a 100-meter tape from shore to depth.  Mark and I would then swim out along the tape collecting information and video taping every 10 meters.  Most of the dives were long and shallow.  On one dive we swam to the end of the tape then out another 100 meters and still ended the dive in 13 feet of water.  Most of the dives were in the 40-foot range but we did go down to 95 feet on one dive.  I have never seen so many rock soles and sculpin in all my life.  At one point I was videotaping a rock sole it swam off and there was another sculpin underneath it and it swam off only to be followed by a third.  I had a sculpin attack one of the video lights while trying to film it.  I was able to see lots of horse crabs and a couple of tanner crabs.  One of the critters that I was able to film was a pair of clown shrimp on an anenome.  These are very hard to find sense they only live on that one kind of anenome. The visibility was in the 30 foot range most of the time but there was a plankton bloom the month before so at the 20-30 foot level where it had settled to the visibility was only 6 feet at best.  Water temperature was about 45 degrees.  While there I talked to some of the local diver they all said the diving was much better outside the bay.  If any of you get the chance to dive in the Aleutians do it.  I had a fantastic time.

(From AWDCI 8/00 Newsletter)