Chatham Strait & Pavlof Harbor
The best place on any kind of ship to see wildlife is on the bow. That is where we stood in the morning, enjoying seabirds (different gull species, pigeon guillemots and marbled murrelets) on a gray morning (typically good Alaskan weather). Before this morning was over, we had seen quite a few different species of marine life, including Steller sea lions, harbor porpoise, Dall’s porpoise, humpback whales and orcas.
The humpback whales were the ones to awe us the most: they were bubble-net feeding! This is a situation where a small number of these marvelous whales get together and create a bubble-net, forcing the small fish upon which they feed to ball up, and then the whales rise to the surface with their mouths open, engulfing the animals and the waters that carried them. As they break the surface, they close their monstrous mouths, and expel the water through their baleen, keeping the prey inside their mouth. With their tongues, they lick off these small animals, and swallow them. Known only from Alaska, and in individual form from the Atlantic, this is one of the most marvelous behaviors shown by whales.
After lunch we were already repositioned at Pavlof Harbor and anchored. The kayaks were taken to the beach, and those guests interested in hikes marched off along a quite large river up to a waterfall, where a small series of salmon were already preparing to go upstream. Bears had already found out their presence, as we saw different refused parts of salmon on the adjacent rocks.
Quite a few flowers were seen, including orchids and the parasitic groundcones! This was a very interesting walk, as we also saw a series of long-abandoned iron pipes and valves, possibly used to power a saltery and packery in the early 1900’s.
