(Note that this post annotates and then points to the larger contents of the site page for the trip overview. The entry point for the set of site pages covering the whole trip is located here.)
This is Augustine Island, aka Augustine Volcano.
It is located in and dominates Kamishak Bay, which sits across the mouth of Cook Inlet from Kachemak Bay, and which roughly defines the beginning of the Alaska Peninsula to its south and west.
The island is uninhabited, and the volcano is still considered active (last eruption 2006); really, very few people ever get over there. (It’s not cheap to get there at all, and with no big game populations or fishable rivers–the biggest thing that lives there is red fox–it doesn’t even get the attention of the still-more-remote mainland that surrounds it.)
Which is why it’s at least a bit surprising that you can find so much trash there. So much, in fact, that the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies (CACS) was awarded its third grant to take a boat and volunteer crew over there to see how much they could pick up and get off the island in a three-day effort.
This–picking up trash on this island–was a bucket-list item for me.
(full article at the trip overview; umbrella entry point here)
Kevin Wilmeth 