Chichagof Island, Tenakee Inlet and Pavlof Harbor
The deck officers and natural history staff of National Geographic Sea Bird are always scanning the waters and the beaches for wildlife. After investigating several places where whales have been feeding in recent weeks, we searched further into Tenakee Inlet and, far in the distance, CT spotted a group of cooperative feeding humpback whales. Bubble-net feeding is the holy grail of whale watching—a curious behavior that uses bubbles as tools to create a net that concentrates small schooling fish and is practiced by a rather elite core group of unrelated animals; both unusual behaviors among mammals. We spent the morning enjoying our good fortune in finding these exciting whales.
Nearby Pavlof Lake provides spawning habitat for thousands of salmon, and right now those heroic wild fish are running up streams and rivers all over the Pacific Northwest to their spawning grounds. We stopped by the creek this afternoon to see if any coastal brown bears might be enjoying some salmon for their lunch.
Undaunted by rain, our group set out by Zodiac and were soon enjoying a young bear ambling along the beach quite undisturbed by our excitement and cameras. On the opposite beach a second bear appeared. Perhaps a dozen coastal brown bears share this salmon stream and move in and out of the forest sometimes taking a fish into the woods for safekeeping. They consume about half of the salmon and the rest feeds many other species, including the trees!!
We’ll be heading off to our varied lives tomorrow and everyone will carry a part of this wild and vast place home in their hearts…
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night
At the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s life may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water,
And the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their live with
Forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-Wendell Berry
