School of Natural Resources

From Earth to Sky and Everything In Between

Jason Gilsdorf

School of Natural Resources Alum Takes to New Life and Challenges in Alaska’s Wilderness

by Steve Ress,
UNL Water Center

Minnesota native Jason Gilsdorf is back in the heart of some very cold weather....by choice.

Gilsdorf recently left the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with an M.S. in Natural Resource Sciences (emphasis in Wildlife Ecology, earned after earning a B.S. in wildlife from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point) for a dream job with the U.S. Department of Agricture and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services as a wildlife specialist in the Aleutian Islands, a string of Pacific Ocean atolls that form Alaska’s western tail.

I got to know Gilsdorf well when we he was workinng on his Master’s degree and later as a wildlife technician for Scott Hyngstrom, when we were all officed in Natural Resources Hall on UNL’s East Campus. Gilsdorf and I share interests in hunting, firearms and cycling, so we became friends.

As he began to look at career opportunities, he mentioned to me that there was a chance to take a temporary job in Alaska, working for the USDA and USFWS on the Aleutian Islands. I and many others in the SNR encouraged him to take the job and embark on the adventure.

I salted my support for this unique opportunity by regaling him with stories of my arrival into the world on Adak when my father was serving as the senior dental officer for the U.S. Navy detachment on Adak during the Korean War.

Though I left the island at an age too young to have memories of it, I did have plenty of old black-and-white photographs Dad took with his Kodak Brownie and stories for Jason from 25 years later, when I returned to Alaska and the Aleutian Islands on Cold War-era sea patrols during my own time in the U.S. Navy.....starring down our counterparts in the Soviet Navy from across the remoteness of the Bering Sea, near the top of the world.

No colder, more treacherous or more forbidding waters exist anywhere in the world than the Bering Sea in the middle of the winter, I told him.

The stories only seemed to peak Gilsdorf’s interest in the area.

Since taking the job, Gilsdorf has become a fairly frequent and informative emailer, detailing impressions of his new life in Alaska. He is currently involved with a fox eradication program on the Aleutian Islands and doing Avian Influenza work on the mainland.

Gilsdorf tells the rest of the story best in his own words:

(October 2006)

I sent this email out in October so it’s old but has all the pics and story to what I've been doing.

Wow, where do I begin? I can't believe its already October. The only Summer I had was for two weeks in July when I was on the mainland. It’s been a fast six months and some of the most enjoyable time I've had. I'm already half way to becoming an Alaskan resident. I think the last time I talked to everyone was in late July when I went to Sand Point, Alaska, a small fishing village on an island just south of the Alaska Peninsula. I spent two weeks there catching birds for avian influenza sampling. Oh and not to mention some incredible halibut fishing.

I met up with a coworker stationed in Sand Point. He had just purchased a small wooden skiff and had enough time to scout out the good fishing spots before I got there. So at every opportunity (basically when the wind wasn't blowing) we went fishing. At first sight of the skiff, I didn't know if I wanted to get in it, especially when he told me that the first time he put it in the water it almost instantly sank. But after patching a few holes, it kept most of the water out. Nothing a few plywood patches, silicon, and a little paint can't seal up!

She had a 7.5 HP outboard pushing her, plus an 8 HP we carried just in case it quit. The 8 horses didn't run though, it was there more for the peace-of-mind that we had two motors. At full throttle we clipped along at a whopping six mph. It wasn't the prettiest boat in the harbor, but rarely did we come back with less than 100 lbs of halibut and our limit of 6 (there was 3 of us).

We topped out at four mph on the way home with the extra weight of fish. Of course we had to name the boat, we called her the Green With Envy. Not because it was a four-tone green collaboration of paint, but because everyone was green with envy when they saw all the halibut we'd bring back every time out.
Many times people saw us go out fishing and would ask us for fish when we returned to the harbor. We gave a lot of fish away. Our fishing hole was about one mile out into a straight between two islands. I only included a couple pictures of the halibut I caught. 43, 49, and 87 lbs. were my biggest ones.

The first week of August the FWS research boat (Tiglax) came to Sand Point and picked myself and three other fox trappers that had just flown in. I'm happy to say the sea was a little friendlier for the ride to Sanak Island and I didn't get seasick this time.

My camp partner and I were dropped on the south side of the island with two and a half months of food and gear. The island had plenty of fox, and they weren't afraid of us since they've never had to worry about humans.

We basically had to step over them as we carried our gear up the beach. There was a 12 x 12-foot cabin on the island that we put our food and camp gear in. We put up tents to sleep in and store our personal gear.
The island was beautiful. We had a four-wheeler to use and we needed it to cover the area. We had many miles of coastline to trap. The fox would come right to you, I threw one of them a small fish and it took it to its cache. The day after arriving we went to work.

After two and a half months we removed a total of 218 fox from the island. My camp took 136 of those, and my personal take was 81. We know of at least 2 fox still on the island, we saw tracks, and I'm sure there are a few more. There will be another trapping effort on the island next summer to remove the few still remaining.
You may notice the sun is always out in my pictures and that it’s nice. Don't let that fool you, the few nice days we had were the days I took pictures. It was a typical Aleutian Island. Within a few weeks of arriving we got to experience the remnants of a super typhoon that hit Japan, with winds of 50-60 mph.
It rained a lot and the wind blew all the time. Our last week on the island a big storm blew in. We had sustained winds of 50-60 mph and gusts from 70-80 mpg.

I went to bed with a 50 mph wind pounding my tent, amazingly I fell asleep. Two hours later a gust of wind woke me up. I opened my eyes in time to watch my metal tent poles snap and the tent collapse on me.
I put my rain gear on and ran to our cabin (it was full of food and other gear so no room to sleep in it). I remained the rest of the night awake in the cabin as 70-80 mph winds shook the whole cabin.

The next morning we were basically flooded out, my tent was broken and my partner’s was full of water. There were lakes where there shouldn't have been. I was able to get my personal gear into the cabin at 2 a.m. when the rain stopped for an hour, the wind never let up.

That day we moved into the camp on the north side of the island. They had a large cabin with wood stove and plenty of room. The storm blew the door off their cabin that night and they had to nail it up from the inside. We were due to be picked up within a few days so it was at the end of the project.

Despite all the camp food, we ate very well. I'm happy to say that I never opened a single can of Dinty Moore or Corned beef hash. We ate salmon about 4 times a week. We had runs of Reds (Sockeye), Pinks, and Silvers (Coho) so had fresh salmon to eat the whole time. We ate our share. We even caught a couple small halibut for variety. I was also able to supplement our diet with some ptarmigan.

We had great beach combing opportunities. We found a lot of great finds, including numerous whalebones, glass buoys (collector items, used in fishing nets in the early and mid 1900s by Japanese fishing boats), sea lion skulls, a fresh dead whale, and lots more.

Shishaldin and Isanotski are the two tall volcanoes you can see in the background of some of the camp pictures, over 80 miles away to the west. My tent is the blue one with a fence of driftwood around it (to keep the cattle away, there were cattle on the island, the island was owned by a native corporation, we were the only people on the island).

It was nice to return to the mainland last weekend and get a hot shower, and have a roof over our heads. I'm once again in Palmer at our office. This past Tuesday I experienced my first substantial earthquake when we had a 4.9 shake things up for a few seconds (I felt a tiny earthquake on the island, just a bump though).
It was something I had been looking forward to experiencing, they are quite common up here, most are so small you can't feel them, but occasionally you get some that rattle the glass, and unfortunately large ones that I hope I don't every have to experience.

I'll be working through the year so that is good news that I wanted to hear. I will probably be sent out into the field (I think I'll be staying on the mainland) to catch birds for surveillance for avian influenza.
As of yet I don't have an apartment or phone. I have no need to get one if I'm going to be sent out into the field again (I stay in the upstairs portion of our office, full kitchen, bathroom, and very nice).

I'm enjoying my work and everything I get to do. I can't describe it. All is well and I haven't felt better. It is beautiful in this area at this time of year, the mountains are capped with snow and the weather is nice, highs in the 40s, lows in the low 30s. It gets light around 9 a.m. and dark by 6:30 p.m. I see moose regularly and the scenery is never-ending.

In my first summer in Alaska I have been fortunate to eat all 5 species of Pacific salmon (Chinook, Sockeye, Coho, Pink, and Chum), not to mention, halibut, caribou, and ptarmigan. I'm looking forward to few hours off so I can hike through the woods and chase spruce grouse.

(Summer 2006)

Here are a few more pictures (see below). The picture names describe what they are. Some of these go all the way back to May when I first moved up. I was out on the Aleutian Islands, the two islands I was on are called Adak and Tanaga.

Saw lots of cool stuff out there, caribou (actually their called reindeer cuz they were released on Adak, you probably saw them when you were there), harbor seals, sea otters, and killer whales.

Saw lots of volcanoes, some are still smoking. On clear days you can see other islands in the chain (the picture of Gareloi is the next island/volcano to the west of Tanaga). One day while out in a boat with a friend and coworker, we saw a pod of killer whales, they came over to check us out, two were just a few feet from the boat, and it was really neat. I caught my first halibut while out on Tanaga.

I came back to the mainland at the end of June. My parents then drove my truck up for me loaded with as much of my belongings as they could bring. While my parents were here we did the tourist thing and saw lots of Alaska. We went to Denali National Park and it was really neat.

We saw a lot of wildlife (grizzly bears, Dahl sheep, etc.) and we saw Denali (Mt. McKinley). Guess they say you have a 30% chance to see the mountain; usually it’s covered in clouds. The day we saw it, the tour leader said it was the first time the mountain has been out for a month, so we were lucky.

In the winter on clear days you can see Denali from Anchorage, over 150 miles away. While my parents were up, I caught my first salmon, a Red (Sockeye) from the Kenai River. It was delicious.

After my parents left I went on a camping/fishing trip with a coworker. The king salmon were running and it was a lot of fun catching these huge fish.

(Text from latest email. Some of this is a recap of previous emails)

From late July to October I was in Sand Point collecting samples for avian influenza (bird flu) and on Sanak Island doing fox work. Those were the pictures you saw in the previous email. From October to now I've been doing avian influenza work.

It’s a lot of fun, and we haven't found any bird flu from over 4000 samples we've collected. My latest trip was down to Kodiak Island to collect samples. We took a ferry to Kodiak, and then took a floatplane to Afognak (large island on the north side of Kodiak). We stayed in a floating cabin for 9 days collecting samples, the one picture shows the cabin with a mountain in the background.

Every day has been an incredible experience and I really like it up here. The daylight thing isn't as bad as everybody makes it sound. For me, the long days in the summer are worse than the winter. Its hard to go to bed when it’s still light out at Midnight....you want to keep fishing! In the winter, in Palmer where I am (45 miles northeast of Anchorage) sunrise is about 10 a.m. and sunset is about 3:15 p.m.

That’s still a good six hours of light in a day. And now that the days are getting longer it really changes fast. Right now it gets light around 9:30 a.m. and dark around 4:30 p.m.

Photographs from Jason

Cabin on the water