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Tani: Have you seen any Orcas underwater?

Art: No I haven’t, other than them coming by my boat before or after a dive, or in route. Diving, I have never encountered them.

Tani: How about Steller Sea Lions, I have heard they are quite gregarious?

Art: I encounter the sea lions quite a lot up here. I enjoy diving with sea lions because they are a large creature, are amazing underwater but on land are clumsy, making allot of noise, and they have a very strong odor to them but once they get in the water they are like ballerinas. They are very beautiful, bigger creatures; you rarely get to experience a creature of that magnitude in the wild as often in other areas, so it’s quite unique to Alaska. We have the Steller sea lions which are the largest sea lions in their class. The bulls can get upwards of 1200 pounds, so it’s like dealing with a brown bear underwater.

Tani: I’ve heard they have big teeth?

Art: There teeth and skull structure are not unlike that of a brown bear, their eye sockets are a little different, that’s all. In my experience I’ve found if you don’t act aggressively or threaten them they will generally see that you are no threat. Occasionally they will come up to you, roar underwater, chatter their teeth, make numerous false charges at very high speeds. Your first experience with them can be a nerve racking experience but as you get used to it, you feel a little more at home with them, know what to do and what not to do. We’ve spent a lot of time at the rookeries near Benjamin Island and the cows and juveniles can be very playful, they will test you out by toothing you by taking one of your extremities and wrapping their jaws around you which at first can be a little intimidating but they are just seeing what you are made of.

Tani: Do they actually bite you, break skin?

Art: No, it’s basically just a gentle test. You can feel their canines, but they never bite very hard or break skin. If they wanted to inflict damage they could but they are just checking you our. Their mouth is their main sensory organ so that is what they use to check you out.

Tani: So everybody wants to know where the King Crab are. I think that all the people in the lower 48 think that they are everywhere. Tell me a little about King Crab and your experiences? Do they actually bite you, break skin?

Art: We usually encounter King Crab at the end of November/December to April. It varies as to how long the season is open for harvesting King Crab. Lately it’s been closed for the better months of diving. We are seeing a little increase of water temperature so they are not coming up to the shallows as early as normal, I would attribute that to global warming.

Tani: Are they hard to catch?

Art: They are easy to catch; the hardest part is getting them into your bug bag because the average legal king crab would have 3 1/2 to four foot leg span. I accomplish this is by folding their legs over and them putting them into the bag. That’s about the hardest part about catching a King Crab underwater.

Tani: Are they fast?

Art: Generally not as fast as other crab species as the Dungeness, which are the fastest. Occasionally you will get a King Crab that is all fired up, and with 3-4 foot leg span they can cover some ground.

I’ve seen some divers with some of the more feisty King Crabs grab the divers regulator line or console line and your battling them a bit but for the most part they are the mellower crab when you compare them to a Dungeness Crab, which as soon as you approach then they fire up their two pincher claws and try to inflict pain.

Tani: So do you harvest much here in Southeast Alaskan waters and what would they be?

Art: My main focus is photography but it a little hard to pass up a large King Crab from time to time. The main species we harvest would be King Crab, Dungeness, Tanner Crab, sea cucumbers and sea urchins. Occasionally we will do some spear fishing, this past summer we went down to a stream that had Sockeye and Pink Salmon that we were able to spearfish.

Tani: And that’s legal?

Art: Yes that’s legal; we verified it with Fish & Game. You need to obtain a subsistence license permit for the stream you are going to spearfish in. I also took allot of pictures, this was my first encounter with them.

Tani: Well Art, you are quite an accomplished photographer; you’ve been in Alaska Magazine, Alaskan Southeastern Magazine, several newspapers, Anchorage Daily News. I’ve seen your images in both of the magazines and your images were amazing, as it is very difficult to shoot good photographs underwater in Alaska most the time.

I have one more question; can you dive in Alaska all year round?

Art: Yes you can dive all year round. I would say preferably the winter months are the best because the glacial streams will be frozen so there is not so much glacial interference as far as visibility, also our plankton blooms are far less in the winter.

Tani: What is the average temperature that you will dive in the winter?

Art: Well the coldest dive I ever did was on a wall and at depth it was 30 degrees.

Tani: How do you deal with the cold?

Art: We wear dry suits and usually do only one dive where as in the summer or warmer temperatures we would do two dives.

Tani: Thank you for speaking with me today and all the great information!

I highly suggest checking out Art’s web site at www.divealaska.com to see his magnificent underwater work!