Frederick Sound and Petersburg, Alaska
This morning found us on a typical day in Frederick Sound, with cloudy skies and some rain showers. However, our morning activity was anything but typical, since we went ashore in the Zodiacs to see icebergs on the shore of LeConte Bay. We walked around huge blue icebergs that were grounded on the shore during low tide. The ice was from the nearby LeConte glacier, which has been rapidly calving icebergs during the past decade. The icebergs were in amazing shapes, with holes and overhangs formed by the slow melting. Because it was the extremely low tide during today’s spring tide, we also saw great intertidal animals on the seashore, such as crabs, sea urchins, limpets, and polychaete worms. Several people had a bonus when they saw two orcas from the Zodiacs and ship!
National Geographic Sea Lion docked in Petersburg for an afternoon of activities. We were surrounded by fishing boats of every size, shape, and age. There were huge sea anemones and sea stars on the side of the dock, evidence of the high nutrient level in these cold waters. Most of us took a Zodiac ride across the bay to go on a nature walk that took us to a boardwalk through a beautiful muskeg bog. We saw many unusual plants, such as bog orchids and carnivorous sundews that have adapted to the wet acidic conditions. We also walked into the small Petersburg “downtown” to look at the shops and look at the fish packing plants. Some of us borrowed bikes to ride around the area, seeing houses, schools, and even some deer. Dozens of bald eagles flew around the ship and the harbor area, feeding on fish and landing in nearby trees. Some of the eagles flew right by us only a few feet away.
For dinner, we had a delicious, if somewhat messy, Dungeness crab feast. We met in the lounge for dessert and a video about the inner workings of the ship. It was a fun evening as we all talked about the day’s exciting discoveries.
