Zugunruhe Birding Tours - Attu 2010 trip report

(trip report is 8 pages long, including species list)

BACKGROUND

Our trip to Attu began on May 18, but its story really begins years ago. In 2000 after 22 years in operation, Attour, Inc. ran its last tour. Since then there have been a number of efforts to get back to Attu. A few cruise ships have stopped there for a short time in the summer months and Victor Emmanuel Nature Tours notably ran a fall trip in 2006. (They used a large boat and had about 100 participants and 10 guides.) But there have been no springtime visits by birding groups in the past 10 years.

Finding an appropriate boat has always been the biggest logistical hurdle. Large cruise ships are difficult to fill, and there are few smaller boats in Alaska suitable for tourism. The home ports of all these boats are far from the Aleutians -- most of the smaller boats are in southeast Alaska, for example -- which adds to the expense of chartering them.

For years, literally, Denny Hodsdon had been encouraging me (or perhaps more accurately, bugging me) to organize a trip to Attu. At first I was resistant because I thought it would be necessary to have a large number of birders like Attour, Inc. did to adequately bird the island. But then it dawned on me that the small teams of researchers, often no more than two, sent to the island by the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) were finding a number of good birds, so a group of about ten birders would be able to as well. I began to research the logistics of such a trip, but like others, I ran into the problem of finding a boat.

For several years, I kept the idea on the backburner, occasionally doing internet searches for boats but never finding anything that would work. In May 2009, I was visiting Adak so I could go out one last time with Al Giddings on his boat Homeward Bound to see Whiskered Auklets before he moved off the island. Serendipitously while I was there, I found out about a new charter boat in Homer, the M/V Puk-Uk (also click here for an article about the boat). Homer is closer than any of the home ports of other boats I had looked at, which meant the cost of getting the Puk-Uk to Adak, a good starting point for a cruise to Attu, would be lower. I contacted the boat's owner and captain, Bill Choate, and found that the charter rate was reasonable and he was interested in the idea of going to Attu. Planning quickly began.

After developing the itinerary and budget, the search for participants began in August. It was slow going. Denny was the first, as I had been keeping him abreast of developments. Over the next several months, the manifest slowly grew. Most had been on other tours with me -- maybe they were the only ones who thought I wasn't completely insane for thinking it was possible. By December, I had enough to confirm the trip. Over the next few months, I bought the necessary equipment: radios, bicycles, and related items.

To part 2>