Alaska - The Last Frontier | Free Documentary Nature

a fjork world with little civilization and a lot of wilderness [Music] if you want to survive here you'll have to come up with something [Music] the spirit of alaska the native americans want to preserve it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] a land of treasure and then we're in the adventurous [Laughter] [Music] [Music] gigantic fjords endless forests and glaciers the southeast of alaska is also called the last frontier of the usa [Music] ice masses and volcanoes formed this widely ramified water landscape with its thousands of islands [Music] [Music] in the very north of the fjord world not far from the capital juno ray russo has starting difficulties this morning with a self-built special raft and all kinds of equipment from the hardware store he goes looking for gold gold that his predecessors overlooked in the 19th century anybody that really gets into this hobby learns about goldie fever real fast um all my life i was doing the model airplanes and uh i just got tired of it after 40 years of being a model airplaner and my brother was up in haines alaska and on a big gold mine and i went up there to give him a birthday present he said let's go gold panic and i found a nugget about as big as my pinky fingernail and uh i've spent eight thousand dollars building a dredge trying to get it now [Laughter] [Music] ray delved into old maps to find out where the big gold deposits used to be he's certain this sandbank consists of rock remnants that were broken out of the old mine during the great gold rush take some of the top off and starting to see the really dark brown start finding a little pocket for ray finding gold has more to do with brains than luck and now this is something i don't really show a lot of people because everybody and her brother would be right up here in this compartment you know everybody's always down here in the process and because it actually is a little higher value down there but if you want to put the most in your pan at one time real quick it's a cheat it's a little secret now let's go look at some gold alaska was once the land bridge between asia and north america after the last ice age around 10 000 years ago the sea level rose and separated the two continents 1.7 million square kilometers alaska is almost five times the size of germany the south eastern part is also called panhandle adventurers and indigenous peoples for its inhabitants the largest state in the usa is still the true wild west [Music] seaplanes are both air taxis and cargo planes in alaska michelle mastin came from nebraska to the city of ketchikan 35 years ago and got born with odd jobs today she's the only woman far and wide who can fly a seaplane together with jim her co-pilot she has a special mission to spot shoals of fish hey kurt i just want to let you know that we have a uh an elephant over in m12 an elephant in f-12 so that might be worth looking into the elephant is a big swarm of salmon only michelle and the captain know the code well fishermen are very uh secretive about where they go fishing because they don't want anyone else to know where they are especially if the fishing's really good so they don't want to get the word out so airplanes are used to go and help them find where the fishing is good or not so good at low altitude you will discover more fish i go so close that you know he's the point is to try to scare him especially if they're in the wheelhouse they sneak up from behind him and because their engine is running because their towing on the net is really loud in the boat and uh you do a cross-courting pass in front of the wheelhouse because they can't hear you coming just kyle is you know having fun from her first day in alaska michelle knew that being a seaplane pilot is it but on the way to the cockpit there were starting difficulties it's not easy for anybody in the beginning when you're a beginning pilot here nobody wants to fly with you because you don't have any alaska experience so the only way to gain experience is to fly so it's hard for everybody both men and women but it was it's especially hard for women i think because it's definitely advanced world in alaska the next job this house right here below us on the right southern alaska a paradise for dropouts once a month michelle stops by here somebody told me that he was out of rocky road ice cream hey there hey michelle how's it going pretty good how about you all right now that looks like a good box we're looking we were looking forward to that michelle thank you you're welcome you're gonna have time for coffee we just put the kettle on before we heard you in their former lives darlene and floyd miner earned a lot of money in the software industry and with stocks they've been living in the wilderness for a quarter of a century darlene has a green thumb floyd goes fishing and hunting but without michelle's airlift some amenities would be missing and this is you guys right now this is really good yeah floyd can carry the box up and i'll take the ice escape works for me watch your step things are going dormant pretty fast this year but have you ever seen a potato michelle has been supplying them for 20 years and has also been a rescuer in dire straits in the first couple years here she was worried about us really worried about us because this was beer land and we hauled everything in here by boat and carried it up and built this and michelle's come out to me one time i was sick in bing bay and we called coast guard coast guard was kind of schluffing me off and i was very sick and michelle got the message and she came out and she sent somebody to pick up the mail because she didn't know how serious it was but it was michelle that come out and picks me up nobody's like this lady i'm serious i am serious michelle and i miss you i miss [Laughter] [Music] [Music] the next job arrives as a message a fisherman needs a spare part for his diesel [Music] on the pacific coast in sitka is the oldest russian orthodox church in north america it was built when the region belonged to the russian empire in 1867 the united states bought alaska from the tsar 7.2 million dollars peanuts for such a huge area rich in raw materials there is also no shortage of fish today one of the largest fishing fleets in the usa lies here [Music] a crew has ventured particularly far into the wild water landscape [Music] why don't we make a jump in here if that doesn't work out we could always come back around get this in here maybe come down through here yeah we'll find some somewhere mika trani and his father larry are on the hunt for a very special pacific inhabitant today the sea cucumber you like to look for uh little indentations in the shoreline and they tend to kind of school up in those areas and you want to stay off the muddy bottoms you know like to get into the cobble bottoms uh you'll find them on rocks you'll find them on cliffs i mean they're they're pretty much just about anywhere you want to jump in on the inside waters there are around 1200 species of sea cucumber worldwide from two millimeters to two meters long the echinoderms were considered worthless here until the delicacies traders came from asia since then exports have flourished [Music] mika and larry have specialized in sea cucumbers i've been doing it for a long time there's not much that makes me nervous anymore every once in a while a sea lion i'll give you a little bit of a adrenaline rush but they're just curious so they hear you and just want to check out and see what you are larry has been diving for 50 years in every season because the diving suits always froze in the freezing pacific ocean back then he had to make do with a little trick kind of sounds gross but it was kind of a survival thing because you drink a lot of hot chocolate so you got to take a leak and then you'd pee in your wetsuit warm up that'll be just what everybody did in those days but when they came out with the dry suits man that changed everything diving with the air hose is dangerous it can tear if the current is too strong well it's as dangerous as you make it and just don't do anything stupid and always be aware of what's going on use good equipment follow proper procedures so yeah i feel very comfortable with them being in the water as a father the cucumber diving the gooey like dive and all that you know i just like being out there with the boys that's that's what it's all about not the money they like the money though [Music] sea cucumber fishing is strictly regulated from october onwards they may be collected for a few weeks and only from monday at 8 o'clock until tuesday at noon [Music] from 1880 onwards the great gold fever broke out in alaska from all over the world adventurers set out in search of the precious metal only few found the big nuggets most only found stones and some even found death do [Music] ray has a good feeling about this sandbank there has always been fine gold dust in his samples that's why i'm here on this beach and that's part of my research he was asking me about what's luck and what's you know a lot of gold mining is luck it's gold mining is smart if you do your homework ray is looking for millimeter-sized grains of gold that have mixed with the sand over all these decades with a self-made vacuum cleaner he rinses the sand over a special mat the heavy precious metal is supposed to get stuck in its grooves see when the bubbles are coming up i kind of judge how my sand is doing by the color of these bubbles if they're coming up and they're more white it's not as good a gold but when they come out real chocolatey brown color those bubbles then i'm doing a little bit better gold material then we're in the movie [Music] i try to look to at least to get 7 to 10 grams about a gram an hour maybe a little bit more than a gram an hour you know and go gold prices right now that's almost 40 to 50 an hour for standing out here enjoying the sunshine four hours until the flood until then ray wants to wash several tons of sand the few cities in southern alaska are connected by the so-called inside passage this waterway is an official u.s highway [Music] 800 kilometers through a fragile ecosystem that is increasingly threatened by deforestation oil production and climate change the tongass national forest is one of the largest intact rainforests of the temperate climate zones for more than 20 years the clearing of the precious woods was forbidden but in far away washington dc they are thinking about allowing the clearing again [Music] for centuries indigenous peoples the natives of alaska lived in harmony with the harsh nature [Music] seagup price is assumption ten thousand tribal members still live in alaska and canada is also called warrior of the word by his clan he wants to save the language of the simpson from oblivion what are you seeing [Music] his children shall understand nature through the language of their ancestors jellyfish one of the things that made me want to learn the language was our word for ocean means on the danger you know it's different when you're in a classroom reading a book and you see ocean bakshuda but when you see it or you've been on the water when it's rough then you know you you internalize this is our world as a school child sea goop was still punished when he spoke the dialect simagya for a long time he suffered from this only for four years he has been dealing with his origins [Music] you don't remember the word this is a what is it a leg exactly my leg we were prohibited from speaking our language for a couple of generations and so it's difficult for us to sit down and try to make those sounds and to use them every day our mission is to save our language if we don't learn as much as we can and use it consistently it could disappear off the face of the earth in a generation then that we don't want that to happen [Music] sigou's hometown juno the only american capital that can only be reached by plane or ship more than one million cruise ship tourists come every summer because of the native american culture [Music] every saturday members of different tribes meet in the house of indigenous peoples to learn together [Music] in alaska only three people still speak so sigou recently founded a learning group has long struggled with his identity with the help of language he found his way back into life it's been really healing to me um i was maybe not in a good place emotionally about my place in the world i didn't really have a sense of identity but since i've started working with these folks i feel a lot better about myself my health is improving my mental and my physical health is improving i have a family we consider each other family and i was pretty much alone here in juneau and so it really has been a growing process for me so it's been a source and impetus of growth for me is it one person is it singular singular for inviting one person in the house the language of the simchin is complex depending on the emphasis a word can get a completely different meaning would you like to come to my bathroom this afternoon success with father and son trani the first cargo of sea cucumbers is on board a maximum of one ton may be taken out of the water during the two fishing days this is the head tail and this is see all those little bumps those are all tube feet like on a starfish they're just all pulled in and that's what he hangs on to the bottom with so you see the difference between the belly and the back and what the agents like best is a real pronounced spines the spines is a big thing so when you clean them about an inch and a half up okay you see they've got they've got guts in them right now sea cucumbers have a sticky secretion inside they are able to reproduce their organs several times in a life this combination makes the masters of self-defense yeah their defense is to regurgitate their innards when something's attacking them that's pretty common for a lot of things to to throw up that distracts the prey it was the predator and that they get out of the way oh it's fine not very good picking not very many of them a lot of swimming [Music] larry and his son also die for elephant trunk shells starfish and crabs but sea cucumbers get the most money around thirteen dollars per kilogram in asia the skins are considered a potency remedy and miracle medicine you know and i have no way of disputing that you know if it works it works you know they talk about all the different there's rheumatism rheumatoid arthritis that apparently is affected by the the skins if you consume it and stuff so i don't know if they put it in pill form or if they garnish their food with it or just what they do the meat has hardly been used so far larry wants to change that now the sea cucumbers shall become a barbecue delicacy [Music] but first larry has to get his friends from the food truck on board [Music] in asia sea cucumbers are also considered the gang zhang of the sea in sitka on the other hand they are not available in shops or restaurants yeah i think we're missing the boat i would agree you know there's so many good things here to eat you know there's all these little scallops there's cucumbers obviously gooey ducks you know you can't buy a gooey duck in town but they're right out there yeah that's seems crazy doesn't it the test i mean it could be a special or something you know maybe not problem is the season the commercial season it's not doesn't coincide yeah it's it's a little crunchy and it's got a real nice mild flavor what do you think i think so yeah all right it's excellent i don't know why people would it's not it's not it's just very nice this has been the start [Music] there are tens of thousands of glaciers in alaska five percent of the huge state is covered by ice but for how much longer [Music] so [Music] climate change also has an impact on the animal world there is still plenty of salmon but bears are increasingly coming to towns and supplements to search for food in garbage [Music] this makes them a danger to humans so they sometimes get shot [Music] cubs are taken to fortress of the bear the orphanage for bear cubs nine animals live in an abandoned paper mill a gift from the city to claire and chris turner who run the station on donations full board for wild bears i got some apples today and some beef chris went to the supermarkets they donate food with expired expiration dates hiding places for some of these figs the station team is busy day in day out organizing food an adult coastal brown bear eats about 40 kilos per day they really enjoy honey winnie the pooh is real on this one they do really enjoy honey and then from the grocery stores they really like artichokes and mangoes that's a particular favorite and then as i'm sure everyone would imagine it is also salmon they really really like salmon [Music] right [Music] claire is a biologist and researches the behavior of the bears i definitely think weather is a big factor that influences the bears hibernation every season we see that here so when we have milder winters we see much more activity the bears are more inclined to come out and move around and graze i would not be surprised to find climate change having a big impact on how long bears are hibernating if at all a small snack for in between discarded fishing boys filled with dog food and strawberries your whole life is being out here we come out here every single day when we're at home everything in our house is bare themed as well even our daughters called winnie so we really had to go all out on that one but when you get to work with animals like this that are so engaging and powerful you do really build a good respect for them we try and do social things sick as a very nice town and do bits and pieces but this really is our entire life is out here right now chris got a call from the salmon rearing station in sitka before the salmon returned to the rivers to spawn in late summer roe is taken here to ensure their survival today however the neighbors are donating a few kilos of fish to the bear orphanage live food through this type of feeding the team at the orphanage tries to train the young bears hunting behavior the only way the animals might one day be able to return to the wild [Music] so [Music] but the law still prohibits the release of orphaned bears into the wild in alaska the american wildlife authority considers animals that are used to humans to be particularly dangerous in other countries however such bears are released into the wild we truly believe that we can get the program started up here and we can get bears back in the wild of alaska and that's what keeps motivating us to come back and keep moving forward with with pushing forward with fortress of the bear michelle mastin on her way with the spare part for the fishing cutter her dhc-2 beaver was built in 1959 and seaplane pilots all over the world swear by this pack horse of the skies yeah weather is definitely the biggest challenge so sometimes you take some hunters out to a lake let's say and then a week later when there's due to be picked up a storm comes in and so you go out to pick them up and you can't get them out because it's too uh too foggy where they are and definitely had some sometimes when i didn't even get home at all or i had to sleep in the airplane but i'm here to tell about it also the takeoff and landing conditions are not always ideal in south alaska often only a narrow ale remains [Music] [Music] good morning hey good morning good morning hey what you got there oh nice groceries that's the parts you're looking for all right great yes cool thank you michelle you're welcome the spare parts delivery costs the fishermen fifteen hundred dollars that's not cheap but better than not catching any fish for days [Music] [Music] [Music] before they call it today michelle and jim still have something to do hidden in the fjord world they have sunk their crap baskets this is one of the great benefits i let the crab move around just like everything so sometimes you get lucky and sometimes not sometimes you can come back and get 20 30 crab sometimes nothing you're just a little too big so i guess you're gonna be supper back at the base the hungry crew is waiting [Music] the plane on dry land crabs in the pot for michelle it's the best job in the world there's a lady in the guinness book of worlds records who's 96 years old maybe i can be her record where'd you go kelly augstana where [Music] [Applause] do [Music] for ray the prospector the most exciting moment is about to arrive now we'll see if he's not just collecting sand the special mats are washed out right there stuck right down in there that's all right [Music] the material has to be sieved ever finer and finer for this purpose ray has a specially designed miniature version of his gold washing machine oh hell of a deal russ thank you appreciate that over the past four years ray and his buddy russ have found gold worth about fifteen thousand dollars is the gold miners problem the more gold you get the bigger equipment you get so you spent all your money buying getting the gold and then you spend more money to build bigger equipment to get more gold and then you get the more gold and then you buy it more bigger equipment again ray still pays his bills with his 9 to 5 job in the car repair shop he only comes to dig for gold on weekends when i get closer to retirement i would love to go off every day of the week i'd love to go out every day of the week so long as the weather's not pushing me off the beach i'd love to go out there and look for gold every day i mean there's enough out there to you know maybe make twenty thousand dollars a year and that's enough to make my house payment or close to it i still got a lot of material in there look at that piece right there go russ that's a picker damn here for juno a little bit chunkier stuff than we're normally used to seeing let's go ahead and put this on the hog plate and dry it out and throw it on a scale see what it looks like see what we did that looks really really cool let's get that scale factory we're gonna be good enough looks like we got about a hundred and [Music] 131.7 grains looks like maybe four grams out of the day instead of seven grams but hey we're smiling we got a sunny day we got cold beers it's a happy day that's 356 a day buddy right there give me some five [Music] goddamn [Music] [Music] [Music] sega prize has to hurry there's a day of action in town on climate change today demonstrations workshops and traditional dance [Music] [Applause] [Music] some of the tribe members are running the demonstration seagups group is hosting the dancing protest even their ancestors sang about the need to respect and preserve nature in their songs sigup only really understood this when he learned the tribal language it's important to pass them on to the kids that you're going to see with us because when we're long gone it'll be up to them to keep it going and plus it's just a heck of a lot of fun we we work hard at learning these songs and sometimes even if we don't have a lot of language we learn the songs and then as we learn the language we start to realize what we're singing with us happy to have them so let's go over there and do admiration okay we are the journalists of alice learners group and we're singing some of our songs in some agatha the simchian language tonight i'm glad you could join and hear us [Music] [Applause] [Music] seagu prize and his tribe members are determined to do whatever it takes to preserve the land of their ancestors the wild fjork world of alaska [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary - Nature

Views: 3,272,654

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), nature documentary, Free Documentary Nature, Nature Documentary, Alaska, The Last Frontier, North to the Future, Nature, Wildlife, Wildlife Documentary, Alaska Documentary, United States Wildlife, Grizzly Bear, Grizzly Bear Documentary, Kodiak Bear, Wildlife Alaska, Moose, Moose Documentary, Juneau Alaska, Anchorage Alaska, North America

Id: wTujSh4fBXk

Length: 43min 34sec (2614 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021