Pavlov Harbor, Sitkoh Bay
The call from our Expedition Leader came early over the ship’s PA, “Ladies and gentlemen the time is 6 AM. It is earlier than you expected to be awoken, but we have bubble-netters in front of the ship. Grab your binoculars and cameras and join the staff on deck, for this is a display of humpback whale feeding not to be missed!”
We had been primed the night before regarding the possibility of encountering such a display. In short time most of us were on the ship’s forecastle and side decks immersed in the throes of one of Southeast Alaska’s great spectacles.
For the next hour or so our attention was focused in space and time on perhaps the most extraordinary display of cooperative feeding in the animal kingdom. Over and over we watched the scene play out in front of the National Geographic Sea Lion. The stage, Alaska’s Inside Passage. The backdrop, mist-shrouded, coniferous-covered mountains. The lighting, muted gray below a veil of brooding sky. This was quintessential Southeast.
The group of humpbacks, perhaps as many as ten individuals, had been patrolling the waters of Iyoukeen Bay on the southeastern edge of Chichagof Island for much of the season. Clearly the region was rich in a favorable food source, perhaps schools of herring. Repeatedly, the group would throw their flukes high and dive almost in unison. Beneath the waters they would organize themselves into tactical positions, each one with its own role to fulfill in the harvest. Successfully exploiting a school of fast-moving fish is no small task. It requires strategic planning and tactical execution, efforts that demand a high level of intelligence. Following successful sub-surface coordination, the group would suddenly emerge en masse, rostrums aimed skyward, mouths agape to take in volumes of water and fish. Then the leviathans, with their now greatly expanded pleated throats, would collapse gently back below the surface. There they would expel the excess water from their mouths and trap the prey behind the baleen plates that hang from their upper jaws. The sensation went on and on until the group finally moved into the shallows where our vessel could not follow. The bridge ramped up the RPMs, and we steamed on towards Pavlov Harbor.
An hour and a half after the great whale display our ship sat firmly at anchor in the calm waters of Pavlov Harbor. A scout boat was dispatched to survey the waters of Pavlov Creek, a fairly wide but low-flowing babbling stream often choked with pink salmon this time of year, and thus a favorite feeding area for Alaskan coastal brown bears. No surprise here, a very large male as well as a sow and two cubs were spotted in the stream. They moved with purpose from one side to the other, occasionally reposing on the shore where our trail to the forest’s interior ran.
With the safety of operations always paramount, the Expedition Leader’s call was an easy one; we would not be going ashore here. Instead we all boarded Zodiacs to view the bears from the relative safety of our rubber landing crafts. Virtually all of us had the opportunity to watch the great carnivores patrol for and eat salmon, and leisurely stride the rocky shore. Their skill as fishermen is impressive, but the ease with which they snare their prey is resultant because of the tools they employ – long sharp claws, gnashing canines, and quick powerful limbs. In short time and with their appetites sated, all the bears slipped back into the forest not to be seen again.
In the early afternoon, a mild and steady drizzle began to fall. In lieu of our earlier aborted landing, alternative plans were hatched to re-visit Sitkoh Bay, where we had days before cruised with the ship looking for wildlife. Today we would land for a series of walks and deploy kayaks for a soothing paddle. Walks were on an old logging road arched on both side with stands of tall Sitka alders. The road is broad and often flecked with bear sign, both prints and berry-rich scat. Banana slugs, moving at a glacially-slow pace, inched across the road in places, feeding on decaying vegetative matter. The thickets of alders, cow parsnip, and devil’s club smothering the road’s edges belied a mature northwest rainforest interior just beyond view. Only a few feet removed from man’s great scar lay groves of stately Sitka spruce and western hemlock of striking proportions. Moving into them was akin to crossing over to another world.
It is to the benefit of any explorer – indeed it is implicit in the definition of one – to gaze beyond the edge, to stray from the beaten path, to cut away from lanes of comfort, for therein lays virgin scenery and the rewards of discovery.
