Chichagof Island, Pavlof Harbor
Summertime, when the fishing is easy. Well, it didn’t look so easy this morning as we watched a brown bear in the stream at Pavlof Harbor. This young bear, perhaps 4 or 5 years old, would periodically stare intently at the river bed, then lunge forward splashing through the shallows, sometimes dipping its head underwater trying to catch a wriggling fish in its mouth. Ultimately, it would stomp down on the fish with a great paw.
A few times we could see the meal was a male salmon, as milt would spray from the fish while clutched in the jaws of the bear. Careful observation also showed the bear’s preference for eating the fatty tissues around the brain, and the skin of the fish as well. Very little time or effort seemed to be spent eating the pink salmon flesh.
We gathered at the edge of the forest in an area that soon would be inundated by the incoming tide. Surrounded by barnacle-covered rocks and rock weed, we took advantage of this fortuitous opportunity and turned our planned walks into a leisurely morning of bear watching. The shallow waters at the base of the falls made it a challenge for the fish to navigate upstream, but created an advantage for the hungry bear.
At one point the bear sat in the river. With one foot propped against a rock it seemed to be contemplating the water, or perhaps a fish, maybe life in general or possibly a too full belly.
The humpback whales that followed seem much more relaxed about their activities. Our first encounter was with a group of three whales. We oohed and aahed at their synchronous dives, as they lifted their flukes into the air in unison. The powerful explosions of their exhalations punctuated the silence on the bow.
The next pair had some lovely distinctive patterns on the undersides of their flukes – a few black scars were evident on the underside of the whale with the white patches. The second animal had a unique notch cut into the fluke as well as the right tip completely missing, most likely an encounter with the conical shaped teeth in the mouth of a killer whale.
With ‘60’s music playing in the background on the bridge, our Captain navigated northwest around Point Sophia and into the loving pectoral arms of a breaching humpback whale. Numerous blows had been observed all around us, but the attention-getter was the airborne whale just ahead of us.
With our first full day in Southeast Alaska nearly over, we can count ourselves rich with the bounty of mammal sightings; from fishing brown bears to flying humpback whales. Could we possibly ask for more? Well, yes.
There’re still five full days of exploration yet ahead of us.
