Lake Eva & Chatham Strait
The sun graced us with its presence this morning. It lasted little, but was beautiful. During the night we had sailed from Petersburg to this northern part of Baranof Island. This island got its name from the first governor of the Russian America Company, Alexander A. Baranof. At the northeastern tip we veered to port and entered Hanus Bay, where our morning destination lay: Lake Eva Trail. Even before breakfast we sighted a lonely humpback whale, which showed off all a cetacean can do! After breakfast we were ready and began moving by Zodiac to the beach. Different hikes were done, all of them along a lovely stream full of salmon at this time of the year, with a magnificent forest at our left.
Interesting plants were seen, some of them producing interesting fruit: red huckleberries, Alaskan blueberries, oval-leaved blueberries, watermelon berries (fruit of the clasping twistedstalk, see photo) and dwarf blueberries. Also edible were the stone kelp at the beach. Many other plants were available for us to identify, and among them were the poisonous Indian hellebore and the monkshood plant. Don’t poisonous plants always attract attention? Eagles flew overhead, as well as ravens and kingfishers!
After returning to the ship and having lunch, we were already en route north along Chatham Strait, along the eastern coast of Chichagof Island, in search of humpback or other whales. And did we find them! Singles, Pairs and mothers with a calf. We watched them blow, dive and lunge-feed, some of them approaching within a very short distance of our ship.
A few harbor seals were seen during the day, bobbing their heads up to the surface to stare at us, being very curious creatures. In the afternoon William gave us an interesting lecture on mammals, the dominant vertebrate group on our planet. And the whales kept on coming, not minding our presence. One even came up next to our ship, the National Geographic Sea Bird!
