Dear Tony,

Thanks to those members who contributed photos and materials. After enjoying a SISKA event or paddle, please consider sending a short (100-150 words) summary article; for more information, contact one of us. If you would like to start a regular column, please let us know!

Alan Campbell (SISKA president) and Tony Playfair (editor)

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PS: You can find SISKA on Facebook at this link.

PPS: SISKA has a Meetup site for "impromptu" and other paddles organized by club members. For more details, go to https://www.meetup.com/SISKA-Meetup/. To join this, you have to be a club member.

PPPS: You can find the SISKA newsletter archive here: http://goo.gl/VUkafR

 

Our Annual General Meeting (AGM), followed by our April Monthly Meeting will be held Wed Apr 28 @ 7pm.

All members are invited to attend to approve the minutes of the last AGM, approve the annual financial report, receive additional reports of Club activities, conduct any business arising, and elect/re-elect members to serve on SISKA’s Board of Directors.

Materials for the AGM will be distributed separately and posted on the SISKA website 2 weeks in advance.

Once the AGM has been concluded, we will begin our April Monthly Meeting including a presentation by Mary Morris (see below).

SISKA AGM and Monthly Zoom Meeting
Wed Apr 28, 2021 at 7:00 PM

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89175623876?pwd=TWFPTlZpYUJRbWU2cGY2Z0gvcVcrdz09

Meeting ID: 891 7562 3876
Passcode: 291277
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Monthly Meeting Program -

SIVUQAQ: Alive on the edge of the Bering Sea: Shoreline habitats on Saint Lawrence Island, AK by Mary Morris

During the summer of 2013, an aerial survey of the shoreline of Saint Lawrence Island was flown as part of the Alaska Shore Zone coastal inventory. Thousands of still images and about 12 hours of video imagery were collected, covering almost 1000 km of the Island's shoreline. Sivuqaq is the Yupik language name for St. Lawrence Island and for Gambell. It has also been called Chibuchack and Sevuokok. St. Lawrence Island has been inhabited sporadically for the past 2,000 years by both Alaskan Yup'ik and Siberian Yupik people.

The island is home to nearly 2,000 Siberian Yupik people, living in two small villages. Over 100 km offshore, southwest of Nome, the Island is closer to Russia than it is to mainland Alaska. Many of the old Yupik settlements can be seen along the treeless coastal tundra, and most are still used as camps today. The island has miles of long sandy beaches with cuspate recurve spits, fresh-looking volcanic cinder cones in the middle of the island and millions of seabirds nesting in huge colonies.

Mary Morris was part of the survey crew that was welcomed by the people in the village of Savoonga, where they were based for a week in July. The crew was the town novelty as they came with their own little helicopter (a very rare sight on the island). Mary Morris currently working as a costal marine ecologist with Archipelago Marine Research, Ocean Experts - Archipelago Marine Research Ltd in Victoria. Much of her work since the 1990s has been with the Shore Zone coastal habitat mapping system, which classifies shoreline imagery, collected during aerial surveys at low tide. This work has taken her to amazing coastlines from the Bering Sea coast of Alaska, across nearly all of the BC coast and much of Washington and Oregon as well.