Cliffs and connections

The cliffs of China Poot Bay are like a fine work of art. As you stare at their twists, folds, and subtle colors, you can find patterns and shapes in the chaos of the rock. The cliffs here tell a story.

One story they tell is of billions of plankton and their journey from the middle of the Pacific Ocean to the coast of Alaska. The rock the cliffs are made of is radiolarian chert. Radiolarians are protozoans that can still be found floating in our oceans today. During a population boom millions of years ago the ancestors of today’s radiolarians lived, died, sank to the bottom of the ocean, and became sedimentary rock. On the slowly sliding Pacific plate, the rock that they became made its way north where it was scrapped onto the North American plate and pushed onto the Kenai Peninsula.

It’s incredible how much of the world you can find here. Rock from the middle of the Pacific Ocean forms the cliffs in China Poot Bay. Dust from storms in the Gobi Desert sometimes makes its way here. This time of year, shorebirds from thousands of miles away are beginning to land on the beaches of Kachemak Bay. The salmon will soon make their way back from the ocean to the streams they spawned in. Despite Alaska’s remote location, much of this place is defined by its connections to the world.