Small boats meet us at Oliktok to lead us through shallow waters

Again, I back up to the day before yesterday as we boated our way back to Nuiqsut from Cross Island. We stayed well inside the barrier islands, but even there the water was choppy enough that I could not hold a telephoto on the other boats, two traveling with flags flying. I would try my hardest to lock into a boat and then motor through a dozen frames or so - some of which would capture nothing but sky above, others just the wake of our own boat and some just indistinguishable blur. Yet I believe that sprinkled in there I also got the images I sought.

The normal route up the Kuukpik to Nuiqsut would be through the Nigliq Channel, but that route was too exposed to the rough waters of the open ocean. This meant we would go up the Kuukpik Channel, which is very shallow. So Jonah, another Nukapigak brother, and some others came to meet us at Oliktok in very small river boats with shallow draft. They also brought a sonar. They would lead us through the deepest part of the channel, in places just barely deep enough. In addition to the oil well, there is also an old Cold War distant early warning radar site at Oliktok.