A Volcano, a Fishing Boat, and a Narrow Escape
On the evening of August 6, 2008, on a remote island in Alaska’s Aleutian chain, the side of a volcano began crumbling into the turquoise waters of its crater lake. Gulls fled from the falling rock. The wind whistled around Chris Ford as he peered over the lip of the crater. “It’s starting to get tumbling down pretty good,” he shouted into his radio.
Ford had climbed up the volcano’s steep slope to get a bird’s-eye view of the small island he and Ray Buchheit were stationed on as seasonal field technicians with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He needed to find a patch of earth big enough to land the Coast Guard helicopter he believed was on its way to evacuate them.
For more than a decade, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had been sending teams of researchers to Kasatochi, a volcanic island located almost 400 miles west of the Aleutians’ largest city, Unalaska (population nearly 5,000). Kasatochi swelled with life. Leach’s and fork-tailed storm petrels flitted around the island’s crags. Pigeon guillemots and tufted puffins trawled coastal waters in search of fish. Click beetles burrowed underneath patches of grass. Kelp beds flourished.
Fish and Wildlife’s primary Aleutian research vessel, the R/V Tiglax, had dropped Buchheit and Ford off that May with
