Fox Creek, Inian Islands & Point Adolphus

Today we woke up sailing through Icy Strait. As the day began, we headed into Idaho Inlet looking for wildlife. Rafts of sea otters drifted with the current and some individuals were seen on their own. As we approached the end of the bay, two brown bears were seen in the distance. We watched them with our binoculars as they disappeared back into the forest.

Our activities for the morning were hiking and kayaking. While part of the group kayaked near the Shaw Islands, the rest of us explored the forest of Chichagof Island one more time. Chichagof is one of the “ABC” islands, famous for their coastal brown bears which may be the oldest living genetic stock of brown bears of the New World.

One of the most impressive feelings as we walked through bear’s land, was to see several big trees with tremendous scratches. Bears here don’t protect territories, but they still seem to mark the areas they frequent by scratching trees and leaving their scent on them. One of the most dramatic examples of this is a tree which scratches reach a height of about three meters!

This afternoon we experienced Zodiac cruising through Cross Sound and the Inian Islands. This area is rich in wildlife due to the violent currents that occur during extreme tidal changes. These currents stir up the nutrients of the bottom and make excellent feeding areas for a number of animals. This is also the place where most of the salmon need to go through to make it back to their spawning streams. Steller sea lions take advantage of this by hauling out on a rock surrounded by all this salmon.

The Inian Islands are also a great place to look for sea birds. Pelagic cormorants, pigeon guillemots, marbled murrelets, tufted puffins and even a pair of horned puffins were seen today.

Making our way towards Bartlett Cove, we saw a group of orca in the distance. As we observed them gathering information on the numbers of whales, behavior and the response of other marine mammals to their presence, we assumed this was a group of resident killer whales. These whales stayed with us for about an hour and we got great looks at the females, young and a couple mature males.

One of the great things about Southeast Alaska is that regardless of the weather, days can still be wonderful, interesting and lots of fun.