Dirty Jobs in Bethel, goose butts

Published 2007 August 28 H5N1 , PPE Personal Protection , birds

[revised]
I don’t have cable or satellite (one of the few) so I’ll try to see this at a friend’s house. He came out this spring to do some of the H5N1 bird flu or avian influenza monitoring in the Kuskokwim Delta (Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, http://yukondelta.fws.gov/ Unfortunately, none of the links work there, except to download a map in pdf and neither do most links at http://alaska.fws.gov/index.htm )

Let’s see if he uses PPE, photo here
Experts will test birds for signs of avian flu or see photo here, Swans and planes

Other resources, Sampling Bird Cloaca or Results Birds and Influenza from Asia into Alaska with map

The show’s website is atrocious, too much flash and no information– here’s the entirety.

Aug 28, 9:00 pm, Discovery Channel (60 minutes)

Dirty Jobs: Wild Goose Chase

Mike Rowe goes on a wild goose chase literally! After traveling to the tundra, Mike joins forces with a team of workers that round up a flock of wild geese with airplanes.

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-schedules/series.html?paid=1.13949.25321.4062.53

REVISED– location of Chevak from Alaska DCED
here’s the locator map for Chevak, courtesy of the Alaska DCED/DCRA department (see sidebar. For more info on the Village of Chevak, go to the database of Alaska communities).
additional resources for Chevak area (or use the site search tags below)
http://www.alaskool.org/projects/chevak/chevak/LessonI.html
See additional resources in the comments.

Another map of this year’s sampling locations is here, but the colors and size are too indistinct. It gives better idea of the local relief, however. I don’t know which goose was on world-wide TV.

http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/avian_influenza/07sampling_locations_20-38.html

Add this to Bookmarks:

Site Search Tags: Kuskokwim, Dirty+Jobs, geese, cloaca, sampling, Yukon+Delta, Chevak, revised

6 Responses to “Dirty Jobs in Bethel, goose butts”

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1 Pam 2007 August 28 at 9:23 pm

Yes! he had his safety glasses and his gloves, but no respirator. One of those geese wagged its tail hard enough to fling feathers in his face. I couldn’t tell if he picked up bird scat with bare hands or not.

Interesting to see how the birds are banded.

I think he said there was no bird flu in Alaska, which of course isn’t true (look for “results” in this site). Several types of avian influenza have been identified in wild birds in Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia, Korea, etc. We even have H5N1, but not the highly pathogenic kind yet. Of course, bird flu isn’t the only disease that wild birds carry and that humans are exposed to, either from the birds themselves or the water and mud they drop scat into.
2 Pam 2007 August 28 at 9:59 pm

And did you catch those mountainous Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta?

I missed this though–

round up a flock of wild geese with airplanes.

The geese can’t fly and in fact, as one watches, they are rounded up on foot (in waders, actually. The people, not the geese although the geese have waders, too.)
3 Pam 2007 August 29 at 4:20 pm

Anyone know where the banding location was? I can try to find a map of the region so others can figure out where the show took place.
4 Pam 2007 September 7 at 2:28 pm

Thanks to whoever was looking for “Mike Rowe” Bethel, AK because your query led me to locations of the episode on Yahoo Video.
Part 1 of 2
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1118913032&fr=
Part 2 of 2
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1118911126&fr=

Also, Delta Discovery, our regional newspapel, has a story from earlier in the year, which somehow I missed because it answers my question about where.

‘Dirty’ in the Delta
‘Dirty Jobs’ crew gets up close and personal with Y-K geese
http://www.deltadiscovery.com/inournativeland/inournativeland.html
7-19-07 by Tommy Wells

Rowe, the host of the popular show “Dirty Jobs” and his crew of nine people, spent several days working with U.S. Fish and Wildlife crews at a field site near Chevak helping band and examine fledgling geese last week. The crew was filming segment on what U.S. Fish and Wildlife workers have to endure in order to mark and examine geese for avian bird flu.

… It’s been pretty hard logistically for them because I don’t think they realized all nine of their crew and their equipment could go on the same plane.” “They were like ‘can’t we just drive there?’ when they got here,” he laughed. “I think they thought we were like the Lower 48 with roads and everything.”

The television crew arrived in Bethel on July 6 … traveling to a field camp at Kanaygak. …

… officials with the show wanted to exhibit what U.S. Fish and Wildlife employees do to monitor Cackler geese and the spread of the avian flu virus in some of the most remote regions of the nation.
…
Rowe and his crew wrapped up filming on the segment on Thursday, prior to departing Bethel on July 13.
5 mpb 2008 July 21 at 8:29 am

This is an interesting aspect of farming and our food security. And all because of Kuskokwim butts!

SR.com: Maggot farmers have own gag lines
“Raising the rubbery, wormlike creatures – destined either for fishermen’s hooks or to metamorphose into flies to pollinate greenhouses of hybrid vegetables – is a smelly but lucrative wholesale business.

In polite company, the Ponsnesses often tell people they are farmers, declining to elaborate on their maggots or their colony of bluebottle flies. But such ambiguity might be no longer possible now that the stench has attracted a “Dirty Jobs” television crew.

“It was really gross,” said David Barsky, field producer for the popular Discovery Channel show. “The smell was almost unbearable. Right now as I stand, three weeks after the shoot, you can smell it on our equipment.”

… The episode is expected to air in September or October. It’s the first time “Dirty Jobs” has visited Idaho.

The producers heard about the Boundary County maggot farm while in Bethel, Alaska, last summer swabbing goose rear ends to monitor for avian flu. Dennis Ponsness’ son is a pharmacist in Bethel and attended a post-filming barbecue; he took the opportunity to pitch his family’s maggot farm. [...]

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=15784

1 Updates on bird flu results, USA AK (HEDDS) « Grassroots Science Trackback on 2008 February 19 at 11:42 am

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