3 Days Camping, Hunting & Fishing on Remote Island in Alaska - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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Luke here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel, and welcome to Middleton Island, Alaska.
For the next three days, me and my boys are going to be traveling to this remote island in the Gulf of Alaska to explore abandoned military bases, catch and cook feral rabbits, surf fish from the beach, explore World War II shipwrecks, and tag along with biologists studying birds.
?Wish that I could stay, wish for this moment to never go away? ?But it's all in my mind, and though I know that there is nothing to find? ?You're a beautiful sight in the summer night? ?And you can't put up a fight in the misty light?
Welcome to Middleton Island!
Should we go explore and find a campsite?
Yeah!
Oh, hi!
This is my son Tommy and Nathan, and I'm Luke, by the way.
Are you full-time? Are you grad students?
Only a few people ever come to Middleton Island.
The FAA has a weather station here, so once a month a crew comes to do maintenance.
And there's a team of biologists studying birds out here.
And those two ladies on the four-wheeler are biologists, and they offered to give us a tour of their research facility.
See some rabbit poo?
Rumor has it this island is infested with feral rabbits, so Tommy brought a little air rifle.
Oh, look at this.
Oh, look at that. It's a jaw.
Oh, we got so lucky on the weather.
The Gulf of Alaska is not known for being gentle.
There.
Look at this. It's an old shipwreck.
Yeah, it's an old landing craft.
Do you guys know how this boat got all the way up here?
In 1964, there was a massive earthquake, the second biggest ever recorded in the history of man.
And during that earthquake, Middleton Island rose 12 feet out of the ground.
All the shoreline below these bluffs didn't exist before 1964.
Oh.
I just saw a rabbit.
Oh, you just saw a rabbit?
There's wood here. There's rabbits to hunt.
The water's right there, so we can go fishing.
I think this might be a good spot to camp.
Yeah, you think maybe over here?
Yeah.
I'm going to get all the rocks off.
All right.
Oh, we got it.
So, you've got a couple options.
This is a sliced ham wrap, or we can do hot dog.
Mmm, that's good.
We got lunch in us. I think it's time to explore the island.
So, this right here is part of the FAA facility here on Middleton Island.
It's mostly a weather station, and pretty much all the commercial flights that go from Asia and North America come up through the Gulf of Alaska.
So, this weather station keeps an eye on all the weather within a 250-mile radius.
Helps keep a lot of people safe.
Oh, just saw another rabbit.
So, another thing interesting about Middleton Island is there's an abandoned military base on this island.
And you can see the birds have taken over.
Oh, look at all this equipment. It's just sitting in here.
Look at this old water fountain.
Oh, and a dead bird.
This is a very strong smell of seafood and bird poo.
Well, here's the bathrooms.
Oh, I'm starting to worry about you guys stepping on a nail in here.
Oh, here's the bathrooms.
All the power boxes.
Gotta be so careful. I don't want to step on a nail or something out here.
Oh, my goodness. That building is full of gold.
Right there.
Hold on. Hold on.
Oh, I just saw one hop over there, Tom.
Oh, no. It's just a tiny baby.
Oh, there's one right there. See him?
Tom, look at Nate. Oh, he's so close. He was so close.
See him? Oh, there's a bunch right in here.
This is my favorite type of hunting. Lots of shooting and no gutting.
Hey, you got that?
Hold on to the pole.
He's in between those two generators in the end.
These rabbits we're hunting are not wild rabbits. They're actually feral.
They were released here on the island and they have no natural predators.
There's no other mammals here on this island.
So there's just tons and tons of these rabbits.
And the rabbits do compete with some of the birds for den locations.
I'll let you guys in.
Come up here.
See it? Can you see it right here?
That other one's just sitting right there.
See him? Do you see him?
Get him.
Just wait. He'll stop. He'll stop.
He'll stop. Get him out. Get him out. See him?
Rabbits always stop to see if you're chasing them.
Hey, Tom. Tom, you ready?
Oh, man.
You should check that out.
Okay.
Oh, there he is. He was under there.
There he is. I can see him.
Look at that.
That's an eagle feather right there.
You got him, Tom.
Okay, now go real slow.
Oh, my goodness. I got him.
You don't want him to bite you.
Holy crap.
Well, there you go, Tommy.
Is it that fuzzy?
You gotta hold him.
Okay, Nathan, your turn.
There you go, Tom. High five.
Oh, now I gotta grab it.
Make sure he doesn't got any fleas or something.
He looks pretty clean. He's a young one. He'll be tasty.
Look at that. That's a bit of a porta potty. That's a four-wheeler.
There's a snow machine in there.
I think people have just been using that as a garbage heap.
All these buildings are part of the old Air Force Base.
It used to be here on Middleton.
Tom's pretty excited to show his rabbit off to some of the biologists.
Isn't it done in one go?
Yeah.
There you go.
All righty.
You want to see his rabbit?
Oh, where are you from?
I'm from Japan.
I didn't think I was going to get to practice my Japanese today.
I'll see you around.
There's another one!
I see three rabbits running across the road.
Oh, there's another one!
Six! Seven!
Yeah, sure.
It's going good. We wanted to show you our trophy here.
I got it right by the military base.
Oh my goodness!
Look at all these little girl helmets.
So all of these helmets washed up.
So this is where all the FAA guys live.
Hey, how are you?
All right, you guys take care.
Those guys just sitting in there at their Starlink watching the NBA Finals.
Normally there's only two FAA guys, but they've got a little bit of a project going on.
They've got extra crew in here.
Oh, see him right there? See the buddy?
There's two of them.
Oh, there's one right there. I see him right there.
Do you see how many there are?
It's getting closer to sunset.
Oh, there's one. I see him. I see him.
He's right there.
There's a big one. Go get him.
I think you hit him, buddy.
Oh, that's a big one.
Look at the size of that guy.
Way bigger than Tommy's.
You got it?
She is heavy.
That is a chunky rabbit.
All right, I think that is a fat rabbit there.
This backpack is heavy.
There's a whole lot of rabbit in here.
Not a very big island.
It's only about 5 miles long.
But all in all, we did probably close to 10 miles today.
Not bad for two little boys.
We need to find a cutting board.
That is a fat rabbit.
If you do, you've got to take your knife.
You've got to scrape all this junk off.
See?
That's how you get it on a spit right there.
I vacuum sealed some delicious steaks with a little bit of butter and rosemary.
We're going to put those in here.
Nathan's rabbit is so fat, it's taking forever to cook over the fire.
I think we're going to go stew it.
Five minutes.
All right.
Plate and share with Nathan.
See that?
You guys pretty full?
Let's get ready for bed.
We'll do some dessert in bed, okay?
Took the dishes down to the ocean and managed to get my shoes pretty wet.
Hopefully my shoes will dry overnight.
Nathan, where'd you go?
I can't see you.
You're camouflaged.
No farting in my good sleeping bags.
You guys are probably too tired for dessert.
No.
Then we'll pull out the chocolate caramel ganache brownies.
How about that?
Oh my goodness.
Ganache is basically decadent fudge.
What do you think? You like ganache?
I love it.
We're going to see you guys in the morning.
We've got a lot of exploring to do.
All right.
Good morning, Tom.
Good morning, Nathan.
I'm going to get up and make breakfast.
It's eight in the morning and I already need sunscreen.
The sun isn't as intense up here in Alaska, but it's up for so long that you can get burned really easy.
We're going to have some biscuits and gravy.
I got some homemade sausage gravy that I vacuum sealed and froze.
I'm just going to go ahead and put it in some hot water and get it all piping hot.
Who's ready?
Me.
Thank you, Dad.
Is biscuits and gravy one of your favorite camping meals?
It's such an easy meal.
One thing I like about this cooking method is that because the food doesn't touch the water you can use salt water and I'm also doing my dishes with it.
It can get all nasty and it doesn't matter because it ain't going to touch my food.
I got all this.
You guys ready?
Let's go explore the island some more.
Up the hill?
You can see these bluffs that go the length of both sides of the island.
That's where the shore was before the earthquake.
In a period of five minutes during an earthquake all of that land came up out of the ocean and this island doubled in size.
I can't believe how amazing that would have been to watch.
Both my parents were in Alaska during that earthquake and they've got some crazy stories.
Let's go stop over here.
There's a shipwreck on the island so we're going to ask some of the biologists if they can get us directions on how to get to it.
That looks like a sombrero.
I got some cherries.
I'm assuming fresh fruit is...
Just make sure to share as best you can.
I'll see you guys at 2 and thank you very much.
Have a great time.
I think I heard most of these researchers have been out here since May so by this point they're probably craving fruit and vegetables.
We've probably seen 15 bunnies already.
They're just everywhere.
They're a different species of animal than the native snowshoe hare which we see on the mainland of Alaska.
You guys tired?
Yes.
You tired?
You guys really that tired?
You just sit here for a second.
Who wants to watch a show and eat some chocolates?
Come over here.
Take a seat in the rabbit booth.
Here, have a chocolate covered almond.
The boys are pretty tired.
I think they might be a little sore from yesterday so we're going to take it easy.
Have a little siesta.
This is an old FAA air traffic control navigation site.
It's used to help planes navigate over the Gulf of Alaska.
There's a bald eagle up there.
There's a ton of them on the island.
You guys feeling better?
Alright, you guys ready?
Oh, look at this.
Look at that shipwreck.
That thing is huge.
We've got to get down this cliff and through those marshes though.
I'm tall.
I just took one.
This shipwreck is from World War II.
It was a cargo ship that was being hunted by a Japanese submarine.
The captain ran the ship aground to avoid being torpedoed.
This shipwreck has been here for about 80 years and now it's turned into a giant bird rookery.
Look at those giant anchors.
The chances of us not getting pooped on are low.
Oh yeah, there's a bald eagle nest way up to the top.
Plenty for him to feed on down here.
Oh man, look at the hole in that side.
You can just hear the seagull poop raining around us.
If one of us had french fries we'd be dead.
There's so much poop landing around us.
Take cover!
A tree!
I kind of want to go in here and explore but birds tend to have fleas and lice and there's just tons of crap on the ground. I'm so afraid if I go in there I'm going to end up with fleas in my pants.
I don't want that so badly.
What did you eat?
That was huge!
You know my dad was attacked by seagulls once?
They broke his fishing rod.
They are so bobbing us.
There's the drive shaft right there.
I bet the propeller is over here.
That is a big ship.
If you guys are going to look up in the sky, keep your mouth closed.
There's a nest.
There's the propeller.
Listen guys, are you getting hungry?
Yeah.
Let's go find some driftwood and make a fire.
We're going to cook some lunch.
What are those?
What are those?
I feel like Huckleberry.
Like all the characters.
I think you know what it is.
Let my feet dry out a little bit.
Oh, there it is.
Look at that.
See all these little clam holes?
Yeah.
Little clam holes all over here.
We never get tired of eating rabbits.
We got clams.
Look at all the grass growing on top of the ship.
It's like a whole forest on the roof.
We need to keep that for mom, don't we?
Yes.
That's a sea urchin skeleton.
It's a big one too.
My wife loves collecting these.
Here's another one.
Another one.
You just can't get better weather than we've had on this trip.
There's a lot of bird research that goes on here in Middleton Island and I'm excited to get a little bit of a tour.
You want to sit here and play with rocks?
Okay.
Don't look down if you don't like heights.
We're in the top of this tower and these birds have nested all along the outside and they've built these little glass windows and doors so they can access the nests without disturbing the birds too much.
Is this a kiddie wake?
Every morning we write down every bird on the tower.
So if anyone doesn't come home, you know about it.
Is that an egg hatch or is it just broken?
It's a new broken egg.
We should write that down.
So Tom saw an egg that rolled out of the nest and was broken.
That's getting written down.
That's data. They're filing a CPS report.
You probably noticed all the eggs are colored red or blue.
The red ones are the first ones that were laid.
The blue ones are the second.
Oh, so that's your doing there.
Yeah, and the dates are on the tape.
So if you're a kiddie wake, the government is watching you.
You want to see a baby kiddie wake?
See, look at him. He's just down right in there.
Isn't he cute?
The very first chick of the year.
Just right down in there.
Let's see what colors you see.
His full combo is blue, black, silver.
Ow, my head.
What do you think, Tom?
That was pretty cool, wasn't it?
Yeah, it was.
So this is the myrrh house?
That's a bird, right?
Alright.
Okay, I see it. The ones up there look like flying penguins.
I wonder what those are.
So they're just doing a little bird survey.
Counting all the nesting birds.
Look at the little plover.
She's faking being hurt to lure us away from her nest.
Oh, my goodness.
I would have never seen it.
See, look at it. It's right there.
So look at how she looks like she's wounded.
She's not wounded.
She's trying to get you to go away from her nest.
A lot of birds that nest on the ground will do that, like ptarmigan and other birds will try to lure you away from their nest if you get close.
See, look at how she just keeps flying in front of us.
Trying to get us to follow her.
That's a huge salmonberry thicket.
Oh, those holes are bird burrows?
Oh, that's crazy.
So that's a rhinoceros occlet burrow?
Yes. As they land here, this is like their runway.
Oh, I gotcha.
Oh, yeah, you can see them.
The tufted puffins.
So we've got this little measured-off location.
We're going to walk through it and we're going to survey for goldnests.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Look at that.
Oh, you just got swooped.
I just got buzzed.
Yeah, whoosh, over your head.
Oh, there's some.
You can see the beak.
Oh, you can see he's pipping.
See, he's created a little hole out of the shell.
You have one?
Oh, look at that.
Oh, that's really cute.
And you jar them to keep them fresh.
He's pooping.
Would you want to just gently hold him?
Try not to drop him.
Oh, there we go.
Look at that guy.
Oh, yeah, he pooped on me.
Yeah, me too.
He's so warm.
There you go, little guy.
You want to go hang with your brother?
So apparently, these are glaucous-winged gold.
I think glaucous might mean pale.
This is pretty fun.
Well, thank you so much for showing that to us.
That was so cool.
I think I better take off, though.
I've got the tide to hit.
Thank you, that was really fun.
All right, Tom, was that cool?
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
He might have to carry him out of here.
Oh, yeah.
Nathan.
Oh, yeah.
Hey, Nathan.
Thanks for letting us crash your party here.
If you guys would like to learn more about this research, I'm going to put a link in the video description below to the organization that's funding and spearheading a lot of this research here on this island.
You can just go to camp.
I'll get the water.
Filter a couple liters of water, and then we'll have enough water for tonight.
We're about an hour or so before high tide, and I really want to do some fishing.
There's some nibbles going on.
Well, my bait's all gone.
Something keeps stealing my bait, so I'm going to switch to using bait thread.
The bait's tied onto the hook.
That'll make it really hard for anything to steal my bait.
I'm going to switch to using bait thread.
The bait's tied onto the hook.
That'll make it really hard for anything to steal my bait.
There we go.
Little baby dolphin.
Oh, check it out.
It's a kelp greenling.
He's got a blue mouth.
You can eat these, and if you were to gut it, its flesh is blue, neon blue.
They're a really pretty fish.
There's lots of different kelp greenlings, and not all of them have that blue meat.
All right, let's just keep checking it out and see what happens.
Well, Tommy, do you want to start the fire?
Here's my fire bag.
What's on? You got it.
Yeah.
Woo-hoo!
Woo-hoo!
I had another fish on, and my lead got snagged up and broke off.
I think it's time to make some dinner anyways.
I've got some vacuum-sealed bread pudding.
I've got one more steak.
I'm going to throw those in the pot.
Here we go.
Tommy, in the big blue pot?
There you go.
You like that ramen, Nathan?
I almost burned my toes.
Cut up some steak and put it in here.
I had a whole bunch of toppings
I was going to put in our ramen, but I forgot them back at the house, so just steak and ramen, which is pretty darn good.
There we go.
We've got a bread pudding.
Hey, you.
That's pretty good, isn't it?
Do you like bread pudding?
Yes.
Tommy, do you guys want some cookies and hot chocolate?
Yes.
Here, here's your hot chocolate.
And here, the pumpkin cookie.
It's late.
It's about 9pm.
I'm going to get these kids to bed.
I'll see you guys in the morning.
I'm going to warm up these rolls.
Alright, guys.
Alright, guys.
Up and at them.
You said you didn't mind if I wore your shirt.
Yeah, go for it.
You can wear my shirt.
You're wearing Tommy's pants and my shirt.
Yeah.
I told him to get dressed.
I guess I didn't give him specifics.
No, that's not why.
Let's get muddy.
Well, now we wait for the plane.
And I got a message on my inReach that Becca and Jacob are going to be on the plane.
Oh, I can hear the plane.
Ah, there it is. I can see it.
Hey.
Good to see you.
Here we go.
Oh, Becca.
I'm so glad you could come.
I'm glad I could too. That was a great flight.
Well, hopefully you guys had a good time watching this.
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