Princess Royal Island
After a bit of a bouncy night, a glorious sunny morning found us cruising across Milford Sound and heading back into the protected waters of the Inside Passage. As the National Geographic Sea Lion made her way through beautiful, narrow, tree-lined channels and past countless inlets, guests and staff alike scanned the waters, banks and sky for wildlife. We were not disappointed.
Birders noted mew gulls, Bonaparte’s gulls, black oystercatchers, and a wide variety of ducks including Harlequin, surf scoter, white-winged scoter, red-breasted merganser, bufflehead and Barrow’s goldeneye. Two kinds of cormorant, the double-crested and pelagic, were common as well as the ubiquitous bald eagle.
Hauled out on one steep ledge were a group of Steller or northern sea lions. These beasts are the largest member of the eared seals and the only sea lions that occur in these northern waters. Its one common name commemorates German surgeon and naturalist Wilhelm Steller, who was shipwrecked aboard a Russian ship Vitus Bering at Bering Island in 1742.
For a few exciting moments, black and white Dall’s porpoises caught a free ride on our ship’s bow wave. These distinctively-shaped cetaceans have been threated by drift-net fishing for salmon and by Japanese consumers turning to this species to compensate for the reduced availability of minke and other whale meat. But today, we were extremely fortunate to see them swimming freely in this coastal wilderness. They also tested our skill of photographing a fast and unpredictable target.
After lunch, the ship anchored in Green Inlet, part of a British Columbia Provincial Marine Park. We had the opportunity to enjoy sea kayaking or go ashore to visit the coastal temperate rainforest up close and personal or to do a little Zodiac cruising. Rufous hummingbirds were a surprise and winter wrens calling broke the dense forest’s silence.
After dinner and just when we thought it was safe to retire to our cabins, a furtive humpback whale lured us outside again. Not a bad day in the wilderness of British Columbia.
