Petersburg
We spent the morning in Zodiacs enjoying incredible scenery enhanced by numerous and luminous icebergs trapped on a terminal moraine stretched like a net across the opening to LeConte Bay. Some guests also availed themselves of a flight-seeing option by floatplane and soared high above LeConte glacier itself, returning wide-eyed and thrilled by the experience.
Then it was on to Petersburg for an afternoon of hiking in muskeg and forest followed by strolling and shopping in this small Alaskan fishing village. We disembarked our vessel onto a floating dock system that travels the highs and lows of the tides by sliding up and down numerous pilings. We traveled back and forth from the ship throughout the afternoon and never dreamed that the docks we walked on were the roof to a watery world beneath our feet. That is, not until some of the expedition staff decided to employ the ship's "splash cam" and make a short video of the organisms that cling to the sides and bottoms of the floating docks.
We shared the video footage with everyone on board just minutes later during the evening recap session in the lounge. These feather duster worms were the star of the video, both for their Dr. Suess appearance and for the disappearing act they perform when potential danger approaches: they whisk their halo of purple tentacles back into their tube faster than the eye can blink. But there is no food in the tube so it is only seconds before the tentacles re-emerge and unfold again, their cilia beating like crazy to create minute currents that filter smaller organisms from the water column.
