42 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



had long wanted to visit because of my interest in shrimps and crabs 

 and all that pertains to them, claims to produce more shrimps than any 

 port in the world. Here I made the acquaintance of Earl Ohmer, 

 shrimp king of Alaska, and his packing plant foreman, Fred Porter. 

 Ohmer befriended the Hancocks, with whom I have made several 

 trips to the Galapagos Islands, when they were shipwrecked in 

 Wrangell Narrows in 1928. Fred Porter was an old friend of the 

 Museum who 5 years earlier, in 1923, had presented the Institution 

 with a large treelike alcyonarian or fleshy coral, the largest in the 

 National Museum's collections, where it is now on exhibit. 



Off Perryville, the village established by our Government for the 

 survivors of the destructive eruptions of Mount Katmai in 191 2 — 

 Katmai of the "Valley of 10,000 Smokes" — we anchored in order to 

 make a few needed repairs to our main engine. With a sizable party 

 of natives, Leslie Melvin, the local Indian-school teacher, put out 

 through the surf to welcome us ashore. On the way in the native 

 boatmen apparently were so much interested in us strangers, or in 

 what we had to say, that they paid no heed to the surf. Just as we 

 were about to land we were overtaken by a huge breaker. Boots were 

 filled with water and we were thoroughly soaked waist high. Too late 

 to escape, we saw the comber breaking over the stern and rose to 

 our feet to meet the rush of water. This alone saved our cameras ; 

 otherwise our pictorial record of the cruise would have ended at 

 Perryville before the first crab had been caught. I asked Leslie later, 

 "Was that an accident, or did the natives want to see if we newcomers 

 on the Alaskan scene could take it?" He hastened to assure me that 

 it was not intentional ; but those natives certainly had the laugh of 

 their lives. 



The evening of September 12 saw us safely anchored at our head- 

 quarters for the next 5 weeks — Canoe Bay, off the northwest corner 

 at Pavlof Bay. Our first task was the installation of the "water- 

 works." In a suitable steep stream, preferably under a small water- 

 fall, a barrel was installed high enough on the mountainside to pro- 

 vide sufficient pressure to carry the water through a series of pipes or 

 a hose. This pipe line was carried out some little distance into the 

 water, where it was secured to a line and marker buoy so that the 

 end of the hose might be lifted into the large lifeboat which was used 

 to ferry the fresh water back to the ship. 



The Dorothy, on her arrival some days after the Tondeleyo, went 

 actively to work with her omniverous otter trawl. This had an 

 effective fishing opening approximately 85 feet wide by some 10 or 

 12 feet high. As many as 500 king crabs were caught in a single day 



