Pascal Girard submitted this shot, taken on The Malbaie River, to Rapid’s Daily Photo.
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Daily Photo: Surf Sesh
This photo was taken by Flickr user s.schmitz and lisenced through Creative Commons. Want to see your photo here? Send your whitewater shots to [email protected].
Crazy Whale Encounter
In this amazing footage from the Discovery network show, North America, two sea kayakers in Alaska are nearly mistaken for a delicious krill dinner by a pod of feeding humpback whales.
Learn more about humpback whales and their feeding habits at the NOAA’s National Marine Mammal Laboratory website.
Ikkatsu Project Returns from Alaska
Washington paddlers Steve Weileman and Ken Campbell started the Ikkatsu Project in January 2012 with the simple idea of taking a sea kayak trip along the roadless coast of the Olympic Peninsula, looking for debris from the tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011.
Months later, the film Weileman and Campbell shot on the trip almost as an afterthought, blossomed into a full-fledged, award-winning documentary (watch the full film below). Moreover, the pair began working with scientists to research marine debris in general, conducting beach surveys that could be used to coordinate future clean-up efforts. As Cambell explains, “The project progressed from being a one-time vacation idea to a full-time vocation.”
In 2013, the Ikkatsu team began working with Oikonos, a non-profit that researches plastic ingestion by sea birds. They also started doing presentations in schools to help students understand the connections between ocean currents, marine debris and the environment. In July, Weileman and Campbell headed to Alaska to conduct surveys on the remote beaches of Cook Inlet in south-central Alaska. Once again, the pair filmed their journey and are currently putting the finishing touches on a new documentary, slated for release in spring 2014, called Ikkatsu: The Secrets of Augustine.
According to Cambell, the volcanic island of Augustine has never been visited by modern day paddlers. But even on these remote beaches, marine debris was everywhere. “It’s a sobering thought, that every piece of plastic that has ever been made is still in existence,” says Cambell. “It’s even more sobering to see so much of it in such a wild and primal place.”
Kayaking the Great Bear
For his very first sea kayaking trip, Paul Manning-Hunter wanted more than just a personal adventure. He wanted his trip to mattter. Nine days after entering British Columbia’s sprawling Great Bear Rainforest, he returned with the makings of a film that shared his concern and wonder for this threatened wilderness.
My kayak was full of water. We were over a mile from shore when I made this unsettling observation. Already overloaded with two hundred pounds of food, gear and camera equipment, I hadn’t noticed my shrinking freeboard until now. Through my dry suit, I felt something float into my thigh. With the waves continuously crashing over my deck, I called to Spencer and Daniel to raft up next to me. Pumping furiously, we bailed the frigid North Pacific only slightly faster than it poured in.
Reaching one of Douglas Channel’s scarce beaches, I carefully pulled my boat up on the slippery rocks to drain the flooded front hatch and cockpit, noticing the foam bulkhead between the two was not properly sealed. Still, I was thankful the worst was over. Then the bag containing our satellite phone and tide charts washed out, full of seawater.
With our primary means of communication destroyed (we carried an emergency transmitter for back-up) and our charts ruined, we had a difficult decision to make: return to the small Haisla community of Kitamaat Village where we had begun our trip just hours before, or continue as planned eight days into the remote coastal wilderness of the Great Bear Rainforest….
Check out the Summer/Fall 2013 edition of Adventure Kayak to continue reading their inspiring story. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here for free.
Click HERE to watch the film, Kayaking the Great Bear: A Search for Wilderness
Daily Photo: She’s a Butte-y
Adventure Kayak reader Kay shared this image of man’s best friend enjoying a paddle on Butte Lake in Lassen National Park, California. Stay tuned for more doggone great Daily Photos.
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Daily Photo: Three’s a Crowd
Adventure Kayak reader Rick Boisdeau snapped this shot while enjoying a paddle in Marina Del Rey, California, with pups Lincoln and Logan. Stay tuned for more doggone great Daily Photos.
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Daily Photo: Pampered Pooch
Adventure Kayak reader Claire Zimmerman sent us this pet portrait from a recent kayaking adventure with her hound. Stay tuned for mor in our series of doggone great Daily Photos.
Want to see your photo here? Send to [email protected] with subject line Daily Photo.
Daily Photo: Happy Howl-e’en
Adventure Kayak readers love paddling with their pooches. We asked you to submit your favorite dog paddling photos and were delighted to see how many of you take Fido along on your adventures. Here’s the first in a series of doggone great Daily Photos.
“Our border collie, Suile, loves to go paddling with us,” writes Daniel Stiegler.
Want to see your photo here? Send to [email protected] with subject line Daily Photo.
Daily Photo: Second Swim
This photo was submitted to Rapid Media by Jóhann Geir Hjartarson, who confessed in his email that the photo was taken during his second swim of the day on one of his favorite rivers in Iceland. That’s his yellow Magnum you see bobbing below the drop.
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